If a person openly cheats on her/his SO, is that person violating trusts he/she has with others too?

Only slightly pissed at Rene, for making you an accessory, and forcing you to lie to Sam?

Rene is gross. Arie isn’t much better. I wouldn’t trust either of them.

”Isn’t Sam’s behaviour a proof that he/she is an untrustworthy person, not only and mainly for Sam, but also for us?”

Do you mean Rene’s behavior?

Yeah I think it’s strange that one would cheat and then tell everyone. If I knew, I wouldn’t care unless Sam was my very good friend. Otherwise, I don’t care enough to get sucked into drama.

Yes, at least in my group of friends it is.

I’ve been through this with a couple where my ex husband and I uncovered one of them was cheating and were deeply hurt and angered by it. We most definitely felt betrayed since that couple was our closest social connection. We felt the knowledge was an unfair burden and were torn as to whether or not we should tell the cheated on partner.

It’s crappy to do this to your friends!

Thank you @Blackberry, you are right, in that last sentence Sam should be Rene.
Unfortunately the edit time was up.

So it should read: Isn’t Rene’s behaviour a proof that he/she is an untrustworthy person,

@nikipedia Yeah, my slightly was an understatement.
You wrote exactly how I feel about it.
There was already not much trust from me in Rene.
I feel that Rene says to Sam: “Fuck you.” and in a way also “Fuck you, rebbel”.

I think Rene is being really terrible to all of you. Mostly to Sam, her husband, because she’s actually cheating on him. And then, because she told all of you, she’s putting you in an ugly and awkward position, because you may want to tell him, but you may feel like it’s not your place. Ari is a douch too, because I’m guessing that he knows Rene is married.

You could tell Rene that you don’t like the fact that she’s cheating on Sam and if she doesn’t tell him by X date, then you will tell him yourself. That puts the ball in her court to do the right thing, but because you have also warned her, it’s not like you would be going behind her back to tell Sam.

If I was the person (Sam) being cheated on, I would hope that my friends would tell me.

Yes, by cheating and telling others, Rene is making them complicit in his or her cheating. I would be very angry, and I would not agree to necessarily keep the secret.

If you’re the friend with the knowledge of the cheating, you can’t really win. You could tell the cheated on partner and have them associate you with their hurt, anger, humiliation and fact they had to find out from you rather than through their partner or on their own. You can also withhold the knowledge in order to keep the responsibility and reckoning on the cheater and then chance the cheated on partner will resent you for not telling them as soon as you learned of the cheating (that happened to us).

Yes, as @Neizvestnaya

A damned of you do, damned if you don’t situation.

Yes, Rene shows an extreme lack of integrity, not only in her cheating behaviors, but in the flaunting of such behavior with friends in such a casual manner that shows complete disregard for not only her husband/boyfriend, but her friends and their feelings as well.

Sounds like a classic pathological narcissist to me. Bleh!

Not unless they are married.

Yes. Untrustworthy is untrustworthy. Only those who are untrustworthy try to argue that the concept has selective application.

We are all tied together in a web of relationships. Someone breaks trust with one person, breaks trust with all, although to a lesser degree.

Cheaters have a negative energy to me. Whether they are friends or whatever. I try to keep that type of energy out of my life.

Like @marinelife, I strongly object to being forced into complicity, with my only alternative being to rat on somebody. I have been in this position more than once socially, and I deeply resent the cheater’s presumption that I will treat her illicit partner with all the cordiality that I normally show to her spouse. She should at least have the decency to practice enough discretion that we aren’t forced into open acknowledgment, even if we can’t help knowing what she’s doing.

Untrustworth and also horribly disrepectful to all of you.

Aside from the obvious moral objections that come with cheating, her inability to keep her mouth shut has now burdened the lot of you with the awareness of deception and being an accessory to maintain it for the sake of peace. On top of that she has now made a total joke out of Sam. Now none of you will be able to look at him and not feel pity for him that he’s got the wool pulled over his eyes. If she had any sense of respect for herself or others, she’d have kept her own dirty laundry to herself and not spread the moral problem on anyone else.

Like @Jeruba writes, just because you know we know, don’t piss us off further by presuming we’re in acceptance or want to acknowledge the other parties involved.

Holy moly, I would think it shows that Rene has the capacity to be dishonest when it suits her. I don’t know if she tries to justify it or explain it away by making Sam out to be a douche or something. I would wonder what is she capable of trying to pull over on me? I would also have to think of the others who know but are not talking. If I were Sam and she was doing something behind my back, it might go a long time before it came to light, because they didn’t think of me well enough to try to give me anything to protect myself with.

What it comes down to, is if you are willing to jeopardize your friendship, or what you might call it, with less than honest Rene, at the expense of Sam, who seems a very upstanding men? If I truly felt he was not deserving of what he was getting I would anonymously send him a letter, tipping him off.