Dear DoubleTake,
My wife is cheating on me with a married man who has three kids.
My wife and I have one child, and she moved out last November when I asked her if she was cheating.
Well, I was right. She now spends all her time with the man I asked her about, a man who has three children and a wife.
I feel bad that my marriage is almost at an end, but I'm torn if I should notify his wife. It is so obvious what they are doing together. But is it right for me to mess up three other children's lives by exposing their worthless father?
My soon-to-be ex has already changed our daughter's life, so I am confused. Is this the right thing to do or not? Your help would be appreciated.

EDDIE SAYS:

What the readers of this column won't see is that you identified your wife and her lover by name and employer in your letter.

That shows me that the right thing is the furthest thing from your mind right now. You don't want to make things better for yourself or anybody's children. You just want to punish them. You want retribution. You want others to feel betrayed like you do.

That's natural, I suppose, but it doesn't really do anybody any good. That includes you, in the long run. You may feel a smug satisfaction for a time, but later you'll realize that you acted like a jerk. Maybe not quite as big a jerk as your wife and her new buddy, but you have to score yourself on a bigger scale than that.

The desire to take out your anger on someone may feel like creating justice, but as singer-songwriter Roger Clyne wrote, "Take an eye for an eye, make the whole world blind."

BETTY SAYS:

Eddie's right. Trying to get revenge on this guy is beside the point.

Hostility and blame will just corrupt the healing process. The philanderer will undoubtedly be exposed without your input, and you know the marriage is over anyway, so why pile on?

Your only worry right now should be your daughter and how to make this crisis easier on her. Set a good example with love, put on a brave face and help her sort out any mixed messages she's getting from her mom. Such actions will prove positive in court once the custody hearings begin.

• Disagree With Double Take? Offer Your Own Advice

Do you need a second -- and third -- opinion about a problem in your life? Ask Double Take and you'll get two points of view: one from Eddie, a married family man in his early 30s, and one from Betty, a single woman in her 20s.

E-mail questions to doubletake@ibsys.com. A new column is published every other Tuesday.

To be considered for publication, please keep letters to fewer than 300 words. If you feel more background information is needed, consider adding it as a postscript. Because of the volume of the mail received, Eddie and Betty offer advice only to the letters that are chosen for publication.

Double Take writers are not trained psychologists and their responses should not be taken as a substitute for professional advice. Double Take reserves the right to edit submissions.

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