Advice on applied philosophical issue

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I want this to stay in PPR since this is where all my friends and argumentation opponents frequent rather than another one which I do not frequent.

Please consider everything hypothetical and not having anything to do with reality.

Pertaining to divorce in consideration only: last year, say a spouse had bitten a three year old child upon the butt and had even admitted that to their spouse.

They were also accused of teaching the children under their care to commit ... actions which should not be done by children, but this accusation against them is doubtful and hopefully false. She wouldn't take a polygraph regarding the other accusation and it might be too late for the results to be remotely accurate anyway.

After all the court sessions were over, she has cost with her lawyer and anger management over $5,000 dollars, which is far smaller than the cost if they were to have evidence usable in court for the other accusation.

Even prior to this, she had been fired on other occasions for being violent toward the children under her care, although her spouse would consider those to be bogus excuses for firing as is highly possible.

In terms of planning for the future, she wants to have a house before children (which her spouse doesn't really want anyway) and wants to have children before she's 35 in four years from now and financially this is unlikely with all the extra expenses incurred by legal fees and requirements of that sort.

Her spouse highly doubts she would actually have taught children to do such things as she was accused of, but the questioning of the doubts still happens occasionally anyway.

Pertaining to polygamy: her spouse has no interest in sex outside of marriage, but has for almost a year now had a crush on a coworker who was and is still only his friend.

When the coworker found a boyfriend in another person about 2 months ago, the spouse who hates himself was at first sad, but happy for his friend who he shouldn't have had a crush on.

Later though, seeing the coworker be hit with a newspaper, empty bottle, pelted with small plastic garbage (of which the coworker told the spouse that she didn't want to work next to her boyfriend because he'd throw stuff at her), and otherwise be treated in disrespectful manners, he wanted to help somehow.

The coworker has only had the one boyfriend, and in terms of hollywood glamor she would not be considered the most perfect body type of the era (she is pretty though, but that's beside the point), and the spouse thought that perhaps with how physically rough the coworker's boyfriend is being with her that he might be using the "nobody else loves you" trope in order to treat her however he wants. In order to remove that rug from underneath him, assuming that he either has used that or would use that eventually, the spouse (about a month ago) let his coworker know that he has had a crush on her for almost a year now, that he doesn't want anything from her and knows the only good that may come out of this knowledge is for her to know that she's attractive. To which she kept trying to hide a smile and said, "thank you" regarding and hasn't tried to have the stupid spouse dude fired, to which he is very surprised still a month later.

For as much as the spouse who hates himself would like to consider divorce a possibility, and may in terms of legalistic paperwork have a valid-ish reason to do so, he can't bring himself to divorce his wife or believe the worst of her as the accusations would have him believe because that's not the woman he knows and even with all this confusing drama he still loves her.

He loves them both, but more so wishes to protect his coworker friend from what appears to him to be an abusive boyfriend and wishes he could actually do something (non violent) in order to defend his coworker if she is actually being abused.

He questions his perceptions, but just yesterday seeing him yelling at her with an angry expression and hearing her having to repeat "stop it" to her boyfriend when he was messing with her belongings has him worrying more as to whether he is perceiving events incorrectly or not.

The spouse who is hating himself for his stupid emotions wishes he could be an actual option for her, so as to allow his coworker to not feel trapped if she does, but still loves his wife and cannot divorce her and as such wishes the freaking Mormons didn't get polygamy outlawed back in the freaking 1800's.

To those legally minded, this is not a confession and should be considered completely fictional.

Last edited by iamnotaparakeet on 28 Jun 2014, 1:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.

It's a bit convoluted if you don't mind me saying. I gave up reading half way through the second long paragraph.

Sorry, I'll try separating the second paragraph into smaller chunks of text to see if that might help.

Meh, I'm no good at formatting. If you want to, go ahead and see if you can make it more readable. To an extent, I just want my friends here to have an idea of what's going on, but at the same time be vague because I'm not thrilled about any of this.

I am not at all sure what advice is being asked for here. Is it "what should spouse do in regards to wife?" or "what should spouse do in regards to co-worker?" or some completely other question.

In regards to wife, if the marriage continues and children become an actual possibility, maybe spouse should carefully observe how wife interacts with children- perhaps nieces/nephews. Would she be a suitable mother? Yes if the accusations are false. No if they are true. Hard to sort that out without seeing her with children.

In regards to co-worker, spouse should leave it be. Perhaps spouse has witnessed abuse. Perhaps spouse has witnessed playful mock fighting that is common among some people and signifies nothing. In any case, it is likely a subconscious distraction that spouse is glomming onto in order to have something else to think about besides the weird and distressing situation at home.

It is certainly a difficult situation, made worse by a lack of certainty about what has or has not happened. The course of action would depend very much on whether the accusations have any basis in truth. So the truth should be sought before making any rash decisions. Failing that you would only have your gut instinct to go on.

Keet, 'Spouse" keeps out of friends relationship, as "spouse' only sees a part of the dynamics involved and most likely will lose friend if he sticks his nose in also the chances of spouses feelings toward friend are very unlikely to be reciprocal. As to wife spouse needs to dig deeper for the truth and then decide if this person is who he wants to remain married to, but should not let feelings for friend cloud the issue, other than should he have this feeling for another if he truly wants to remain with wife.