A senior-living resident struggles with whether to confront a friend who is romantically involved with a married man whose incapacitated wife cannot speak, but a therapist advises her to reflect on her motives, recognize what she cannot know, and ultimately stay out of the situation.
A woman in senior living is troubled that a friend is having an affair with a married man whose wife suffered a stroke decades ago and “can neither speak nor care for herself,” and she feels conflicted about being “nice” while disapproving of the behavior. The therapist urges her to rethink the issue not as hypocrisy but as a deeper question of “what does it mean to be a good person in this situation — one who holds the complexity of everyone’s pain and acknowledges the limits of what I can actually know?” She explains that outsiders cannot know what the husband and wife may have discussed before the stroke, how the wife feels now, or whether companionship might help him be “more present for his wife in her current state,” noting that such circumstances involve profound soul-searching for couples.
The therapist questions whether confronting the friend, husband, or wife would lead to any meaningful outcome or simply cause unintended harm, emphasizing that motives matter and that the woman’s intervention wouldn’t necessarily help the wife she cares about. In the end, after weighing intentions and potential consequences, the therapist concludes: “I land on staying out of it,” suggesting the letter writer may arrive at the same place.