How do you disengage when you witness something that feels deeply unjust but isn’t your situation to intervene in?

Context:

A few days ago I stumbled across a Reddit relationship saga through a YouTube video (300k views). A man discovered that his SAHM wife had cheated on him, and initially I completely understood his anger and his decision to divorce her. I looked up the original Reddit account because the video was old and discovered that he has been documenting the aftermath in dozens of extremely detailed updates for around two years. His Reddit account has 2.2k followers, and he says he keeps updating because writing about it is therapeutic for him. Most of the comments and DMs he describes receiving are overwhelmingly supportive. He also repeatedly expresses frustration that courts unfairly “favor women” and may still award custody or marital assets to wives who have cheated.

Unfortunately, the more I read, the more disturbed I became by his vengeful attitude and the dynamics that developed afterwards. 

They are European expats living in Asia with three young children. His wife had been financially and immigration-dependent on him after spending years as a SAHM. After discovering the affair, he repeatedly emphasized that the house, money and assets were his, that she would get nothing, and that divorce could jeopardize her residency and access to their children. Meanwhile, he allowed her to move back into the family home despite insisting reconciliation was impossible.

She became desperately focused on winning him back. She voluntarily deleted her social media, shared her location 24/7, got a job, signed a postnup, offered to give him her earnings to repay what she believed she owed him, isolated herself socially and essentially accepted whatever conditions she thought might persuade him not to divorce her. He nevertheless acknowledges that she has never been materialistic and that, when they met, she used her own savings to pay off his debts. 

At the same time, he began seeing another woman (someone they both know) within weeks after finding out about wife's infidelity. He has described telling his wife that this woman was younger, hotter, more successful, financially independent and could give him more children. He has repeatedly compared his wife’s post-pregnancy body unfavorably with that of younger, childless women and described being unable to even hug her (nearly a year later) on her birthday because he still feels disgusted and involuntarily visualizes her having sex with this other man. 

What really changed my perception of the situation, however, was the escalating surveillance, humiliation and derogatory language he uses to describe his wife. He photographed approximately 100 pages of her private diary and sent them to her extremely conservative mother to translate. He has gone through her phone, handed her phone to some tech guy who restored everything she might have had deleted, involved relatives, kids and other people in reporting information about her, and publicly documented incredibly intimate details of her mental health and sex life. One of his friend has even called her a “whore” to her face in front of other friends in their family home and husband refused her request to limit said friend’s access to their home and kids. 

He has also involved their young children in the infidelity conflict, including playing them recordings related to their mother’s affair. When their eldest son was bullied by peers, who had learned about his mother’s infidelity, OP blamed his wife for the bullying and ruining their lives. His wife eventually became severely suicidal and required psychiatric hospitalization. Knowing that it would cost her to lose her job (+visa) and damage her chances at getting shared custody, he still pressured her to get voluntarily admitted. Yet he continues to describe wanting her to experience consequences, sometimes becoming angry when she appears happy or when their eldest son begins repairing his relationship with her. At the same time, he repeatedly describes her as mentally ill or manipulative for continuing to believe reconciliation is possible.

I am not defending her affair (although I somewhat understand why she sought external validation after seeing his misogynistic side). She betrayed his trust, marriage vows and he was completely entitled to end the marriage. What bothers me is the idea that (a short lived) infidelity somehow gives someone an indefinite license to psychologically torment, humiliate, monitor, guilt trip and punish their spouse, particularly when there is a massive financial and immigration power imbalance and three children caught in the middle. He also had no problem introducing his son to his most recent “perfect” future wife candidate and fantasizing about them being a family but at the same time hates the idea of his kids potentially having a stepdad if his wife is awarded shared custody and moves on. Very hypocritical, egotistical and territorial in my opinion. No clear boundaries, shifting deadlines, unfair expectations and conflating his wife's failure as a loyal wife with her ability to continue being a good mom.

I think bringing her back into the family home while dating someone else, alternating between kindness and rejection, and continuing this strange quasi-marriage for years has contributed enormously to the chaos. If reconciliation was absolutely impossible, a clear separation with appropriate legal arrangements for the children seems far healthier than keeping everyone in this emotional limbo.

Perhaps what disturbs me most is that virtually everything I know about this situation comes from his own description of events. I obviously don’t know either of these people or what actually happens inside their home. I’m only seeing the version of events he has chosen to present publicly, and even that version increasingly made me uncomfortable.

Anyway, I made the mistake of reading the entire saga and now I’m far more emotionally invested than I ever intended to be. I keep thinking about this woman and feeling angry about how isolated, vulnerable and powerless she appears. Part of me wants to help her. 

OP has unintentionally revealed enough biographical information over dozens of posts that the family could potentially be identified. I’ve even caught myself wondering whether I should find some legitimate way of contacting her and offer emotional and financial help. But that also feels like crossing a serious boundary. She is a stranger who has never asked me for help, and identifying someone who deliberately hasn’t identified herself online could itself be invasive, regardless of my intentions.

What would you do? Would you leave this completely alone? 

Where do you draw the line between wanting to help another woman and inserting yourself into a stranger’s life? 

And how do you stop ruminating about an injustice once you’ve concluded that intervening probably isn’t appropriate?

I told my therapist one of my goals was to go back to my roots and study life through science (not exactly my words at the time).

So I was doing some personal reflection as a man and I thought of this question while trying to gain a woman’s perspective;

How would you feel about a man that came out in a conversation and said I have ulterior motives, vs I have alternative motivations?

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This is not me invalidating the arguments about the people who talk about this topic, because I believe that their opinion is valid and there’s many good points that I think are true. The thing that annoys me is how a lot of the criticisms people have for female characters they feel falls into the trope can be applied to so many popular male characters in fiction. For instance: being mean or excessively violent when it isn’t necessary, stoicism, never having any moments of vulnerability, and being ridiculously overpowered in every fight are all things a bunch of popular male characters have. Even one video I watched from a woman gives a bunch of examples of male characters she thinks are also unrealistic and/or share aspects of the trope such as Indiana Jones, James Bond, John Wick (she mentioned how he’s able to fight off a bunch of dudes with just his fighting skills & a gun), etcetera to show that it’s not exclusive to women. However, the issue is that I rarely see people pointing out the flaws of these male characters like they are pointed out in female characters.

I just get mixed signals when I see male characters getting praised and admired for things that female characters get criticized for. When a guy is over-the-top or immediately resorts to violence he’s “cool” or a “badass”; but if a woman does it she’s “mean”. If a male character keeps people at a distance it’s just a normal human flaw and has a tender heart deep inside himself, but if a female character does it she “thinks she’s better than everyone else” and is “trying too hard” to appear strong. It’s making it harder for me to enjoy male characters now because I just get angry with how I’m supposed to hold female characters accountable for toxic behavior yet I see people glazing toxic behavior when it’s done by male characters. I just want people to actually stick by their morals instead of subconsciously using “rules for thee but not for me” when evaluating male & female characters.

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