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Suspicious: I suspect my long-time business partner of corrupting our venture's bylaws to give him lopsided gains from our joint efforts. Confronting him might devastate our relation, but I have to know. What should I do?
Business-Abby: Give careful thought, please, to what you "have to" know. Most who fear cheating are mistaken, and even if your bylaws are lopsided that could just be an honest mistake. Even mentioning your suspicions to anyone might destroy your business, and could you really live with yourself if you destroyed your life's work, and betrayed employees, customers, and suppliers who rely on you? If you wouldn't act on the info, why get it? If you must do something, first consult with a lawyer about the consequences of even looking into this possibility.
This would be odd business advice; I'd suggest first privately asking an accountant if your bylaws are lopsided. Why get worked up over something you can cheaply check on? But the above is pretty much what advice-columnist Carolyn Hax tells a man who suspects his wife's two year old daughter is not his:
Give careful thought, please, to what you "have to" know. When just seeking the truth could change your life in dramatic and irreversible ways, it's best to start not by actually doing something but by inviting each possible truth into your imagination as fact. … You need to … assume your wife did cheat … and then you need to decide whether you'd want to stay in the marriage or leave.
If the answer is to stay … then you need to ask yourself, is that outcome better served by not digging into the past? If the answer is to leave, are you ready to challenge your paternity — or have it challenged by your at-that-point-estranged wife? … You can't entirely rule out the rarer than rare, yet not unprecedented, hospital error. …
If you decide you'd want this child no matter what, then the question becomes, again, why you'd want to risk everything to scratch even a torturous itch. And finally: What if you started digging, wrecked your marriage and learned your daughter is "yours"? … If you're considering any action at all, have a lawyer vet it legally. Only then can you be confident whether truth-seeking serves your interests — and your family's — or smashes them to bits.
Is there any other common betrayal situation where neutral third parties would so strongly advise not looking to see if you've been betrayed? I can't think of one.
Ignoring Betrayal
Everyone has failed to mention the elephant in the living room when it comes to marriage & children , and business relationships as opposed to a "significant other" & trust. That is the role of the State in our interpersonal relationships. Paternity is important because it lays responsibility for support (i.e. resources) for children on someone, even if that someone isn't the biological parent. (As in the case of LA wherein the spouse is considered to be the parent, for example.) Marriage was once the instrument the State used to help insure, albeit imperfectly, individual responsibility for children. The rise of the welfare state, access to divorce & abortion, the sexual revolution, DNA testing etc. has allowed individuals to abandon, shirk, or otherwise bail on financial responsiblity for children collectively. Consider the case of a biological father who relinquished his parental rights so a step-father could adopt, but that person did not adopt. When the parties divorced, the biological parent was told he could not sign away the child's right to financial support, nor could the biological aprents contract to do so by an agreement even if it was approved by a legal document. Responsibility reverted to the biological aprent even though he believed he was legally no longer the parent. Trust, as an emotional component of an interpersonal relationship, is akin to a deeper social need for "good faith" in business and other contractual relationships on which social order is based. Our's is a social contract society with or without a license, permit, formal contract, or other paper proof of intent. DNA and other trust-exploding technology become mighty inconvenient for the State because it makes keeping social order (and social roles assist in social order) more difficult. Ask the IRS to trust you and see what happens if there is suspicion you're a cheat --- there are situations where the state has a vested interest in knowing (about income) and not knowing ( about paternity that relieves financial repsonsibility for children). As for individuals - remember the adage, the truth shall set you free? It will also make you a prisoner of choice, forcing you to make decisions you may not like making. But, are you going to live life life as a weenie or as an adult - and perhaps have to make difficult, moral choices and live with your decisions? That is the question as the root of the original question.
Robin,The oddity of Carolyn Hax's advice to the potential-cuckold has been picked up in other parts of the blogosphere as well. One particulary entertaining one is Roissy in DC's take on it:
http://roissy.wordpress.com...
It is also interesting that some of your female readers take the "what's the big deal?" line on paternity-fraud. Either they naively don't understand how this means genetic metadeath for the cuckolded chump, or alternatively they hemselves see cuckolding as a legitimate evolved tactic. I hope it is the former.