I don't agree that they are being a tad harsh. If you do something like that to a person, you can't expect them to treat you well in return. And he just discovered her half-a-year deception, catching her red-handed. He has every right to be angry, *everyone* would react like that in their position, something they would have to admit were they not too busy monday-morning-quarterbacking (by contrast, most people wouldn't deceive someone they love for half a year). It's like grieving after a funeral, people don't have the right to expect you to crack jokes on the return trip to the cemetery. You can't betray, humiliate and deceive someone, and then expect them to treat you civilly, as if nothing happened.

Strongly agree on this.

"Everyone is exhausted" and "everyone lives that way" are completely fair statements. That he may or may not be part of that "everyone" does in no way constitute a "problem", a claim's truth doesn't change based on who states it (besides, while an unappreciative asshole, he is not lazying on the couch all day contributing nothing). I might be a billionaire and argue that being short of money doesn't entitle anyone to rob a bank. There is no contradiction in that.

Also being an unhappreciative asshole might mean you deserve her to leave you. It doesn't mean you deserve to have your trust betrayed, and to be lied to your face. You are not owed love, but you are owed the bare minimum of honesty and respect. He was not perfect. Does this mean he deserved to be cheated on? No. Let alone deserve, is her reaction a justifiable leap from the sorvable initial problem of bad communication? No. Making him cook would make him a better husband, but it doesn't mean he would be any more or less deserving of being hurt, humiliated and deceived the way he was. There is simply no proportionality.

The post above basically concede his point. without apparently realizing that it destroys his ad-hominem argument. Working women that have to take care of the house are overworked, assholes husbands help less than they should and he was actually one of the "good ones" in that, while being an unappreciative asshole that took her for granted, he did have a job and helped a little. That's basically the claim he was making, and you will notice that it's not as if people generally respond by having affairs. That's because it's not a reasonable way to respond.

Having to deal with stresses and issues doesn't give you a free pass to hurt, humiliate and deceive people who love you and have not hurt you in any way. We understand the path from A to B, and call people that behave like that, taking their frustrations out on others, assholes. She feels that her excuse for her affair is invalid for a very good reason: because it is (for the reason explained by her husband and that you yourself confirmed).

Let alone working women, life balance is something people in general struggle with. People need to take their minds off their concerns. They might consider better time management, exercise or meditation. There is no justifiable leap from that to betraying your husband, humiliating him and lying to his face for half a year, it's simply not one of the available options. Plus, a lover doesn't add extra hours. In the time she spent with him she could have just as easily gotten some me-time doing yoga.

Ultimately, I take issue with calling her exhaustion, or lack of communication (that they both contibuted to... he should have been more attentive, but he can't be expected to be a mind reader), or any of their issues, which could have legitimely lead to a breakup, the "reason" or "excuse" for her action. She did what she did because she chose to...

Consider that some texts were all she needed to catch his attention and alert him that there was a problem. Not *that* oblivious and self centered, right? Could have been better. But he was not *that* dense. Imagine what she could have done had she explicitly told him she had an issue when she finally realized she was tired, rather than playing bs guessing games like a fucking teenager and pretend that he read her mind. The other guy was coming at it from a fresh perspective, sometimes the people we see less clearly are those closer to us (which is why it could very well happen that other people know someone has an affair before his partner does). It might be a higher emotional intelligence, a fresh perspective or chance. It doesn't say much about them morally (the fact that they would be willing to betray their spouse, humiliate them, and lie to their faces, with no case for how it would affect their partner or their children, does).

As for "excuse", there is a difference between explaining a behavior and excusing a behavior. A crooked cop wants money. Money is a valid explanation, but it doesn't excuse his behavior. Now, to me it's pretty clear that nothing could excuse her behavior. As for explaining, it is a pretty piss poor explanation. She had to work and do housework. That's though. She had to take care of *one* kid. In the show they make this out to be a huge deal (he too, in the future). Now, consider the billions of people in the world in the same position with less money, having to work two jobs to make ends meet and maybe having to take care of two, three, four kids, maybe even someone with disability, or an older/sick parent or relative. There are tons of people that had it *much* worse than her all over the place, just around her, without having to go so fare as to consider war refugees or people in third world countries dying of hunger. She has a busy schedule, and this is partly by choice (after all, it's not as if her career is something that someone else decided to choose for her, if you value your time, choose something with a flexible schedule). Not to say that it was a wrong choice, or that she should necessarily sacrifice one or the other, but that's essentially what she had agreed to, thinking she could do it, and when she realized she couldn't keep up, what she should have done is either reorganized her schedule (as she did when she needed to find the time to meet with her lover, so nothing impossible -after all, fucking someone doesn't add extra hours to the day), or had a frank, *explicit* talk with her husband (not some teenege "read my mind" bs game). Just a few messages were enough to catch his attention, and surely between being lied to, humiliated and betrayed for half a year, and a potentially harsh conversation, he would have much preferred the former. If she wasn't willing to have that conversation because he was an asshole, then that simply means that she cared more about avoiding the hassle of rustling his feathers than about his feelings, their relationship or the promise she made when she married him.

Well, he will later also come in useful when it comes to changing the lights and fixing something in the house, given the way they keep calling him to help with that.

Once again, I see no obvious or reasonable connection between being tired and overworked and sleeping with someone else, anymore than I would with being mildly irked by someone and start beating him in the streets. It just doesn't excuse that kind of behavior. In both cases, I would say "Okay. I understand. You are an asshole".

This is hogwash, him being less busy has no bearing on the truth of the claim at all (that's what it means for something to be true). Relaxing the interpretation of that "everyone" (so as to exclude stoners in a commune, etc.), the fact of the matter is that there are tons of people living harder lives than her, single parents with multiple children running three jobs, families with three/four children where both parents have jobs. Again, they have *one* kid. If stress was an excuse, no fortune 500 CEO (the Marissa Meyers of the world) would be able to have a relationship.

As for "her excuse for the affair is simply invalid", that's because it is. She could have told her husband, furthermore she was the one that chose these commitments (some, like them mom's group, being clearly optional), they could have hired help for the home or sent the kid to a boarding school. Not sure how having an affair is supposed to clear up her schedule, seems like it would add more work. As for not being able to have time for herself, apparently when it came time to plan and meet up with her lover suddenly she could find the hours to spare. Those included hours she could have spent reconnecting with her husband the day after their anniversary, for example, when she chose to spend with her lover instead, before picking up her son right after having slept with another man.

Again, if the roles were reversed and this was a Wall Street banker living on the job, working 80 hour weeks, we wouldn't be excusing his months of deception due to "stress". Reconsidering gender roles is its own issue where I am in complete agreement, but that's a separate problem. You cannot seriously suggest that her being tired is a reason for deliberately deceiving her husband for six months and destroying two families (that's the other bit: she could have at least chosen an unattached lover, it's not only her husband she hurt, it's her lover's wife who never did anything wrong to her).

If the affair had not happened *and* she had talked to her husband about her problems *and* she wanted to leave because he did nothing to help her, I would fully sympathize. The fact of the matter is, she didn't even notice it, nor she told her husband about it, choosing instead to have an affair. This situation is similar to Crazy Rich Asian, where if not for the cheating, I would have fully simpathized with the fight against the family's classism, but after the cheating this all became besides the point.

"Everyone is exhausted" and "everyone lives that way" are completely fair statements. That he may or may not be part of that "everyone" does in no way constitute a "problem", a claim's truth doesn't change based on who states it (besides, while an unappreciative asshole, he is not lazying on the couch all day contributing nothing). I might be a billionaire and argue that being short of money doesn't entitle anyone to rob a bank. There is no contradiction in that.

Also being an unhappreciative asshole might mean you deserve her to leave you. It doesn't mean you deserve to have your trust betrayed, and to be lied to your face. You are not owed love, but you are owed the bare minimum of honesty and respect. He was not perfect. Does this mean he deserved to be cheated on? No. Let alone deserve, is her reaction a justifiable leap from the sorvable initial problem of bad communication? No. Making him cook would make him a better husband, but it doesn't mean he would be any more or less deserving of being hurt, humiliated and deceived the way he was. There is simply no proportionality.

The post above basically concede his point. without apparently realizing that it destroys his ad-hominem argument. Working women that have to take care of the house are overworked, assholes husbands help less than they should and he was actually one of the "good ones" in that, while being an unappreciative asshole that took her for granted, he did have a job and helped a little. That's basically the claim he was making, and you will notice that it's not as if people generally respond by having affairs. That's because it's not a reasonable way to respond.

Having to deal with stresses and issues doesn't give you a free pass to hurt, humiliate and deceive people who love you and have not hurt you in any way. We understand the path from A to B, and call people that behave like that, taking their frustrations out on others, assholes. She feels that her excuse for her affair is invalid for a very good reason: because it is (for the reason explained by her husband and that you yourself confirmed).

1) he was an unappreciative asshole.
2) for the betrayal itself, it *was* all her fault. If two people argue and both are in the wrong, but then one escalates the confrontation and physically assaults the other, he can't refer back to the argument and claim that it was because of that. He chose to escalate.

If he was such an asshole, she could and should have left him. But she owed him the basic honesty and respect to not break his trust and lie to his face for half a year.

I really get irritated to see those things discussed in the same breath, as if lying to someone's face for six months straight, betraying and humiliating him, would be somewhat comparable to . I think that we wouldn't be talking about this if it was something more openly cruel like outright domestic abuse. But in my eyes, it's a morally unacceptable behavior on the same continuum. Meaning that it's *really* fucked up, not *a little* fucked up. It's not a verbal fight or beign oblivious to someone's issues. I also have to note that Sun Woo was the *only* one that noticed (her son and her other friends were equally oblivious, which to me makes your unfairly critical assessment of her husband -coupled with a weasly, slithery minimizing of her actions- dubious at best). Also, you probably don't have teenage kids, or your assumption that you should be able to perfectly understand and introspect someone you love if you just chose to, even if they don't tell you anything, impossible to mantain without laughing.

She betrayed his trust, humiliated him in the worst way possible and lied to his face for half a year, without caring how it would affect him or their child (so much for "putting them first").
She was overworked, partly because of choices she made. He took her for granted and didn't support her enough. He was also not a mind reader. They had problems communicating. Those are simple problems of work life balance that, as he pointed out, basically everybody has (he should have been more attentive, and while she did chose her lifestyle, there is no reason they couldn't have rescheduled it so that she could enjoy work, home life and alone-time).He loved his wife. He took her somewhat for granted. He could have been more attentive. He did help out occasionally, but not enough. Now that he has discovered that he had been led by the nose for the last six months, he is angry and wants to verbally provoke his wife. He is basically lashing out, and it's not really about the trigger, but about what she did to him. One has to point out that he has just discovered the betrayal, humiliation and deception by catching her red handed, so it's not exactly inexcusable that he might be filled with anger.

Now, when I see people saying things like "yes, she did cheat but" or "yes, he is hurting but", I think that they are either insane or hypocritical assholes. There is no place on Earth where the emotional trauma of learning that you had been deceived for the last half a year is morally equivalent to having angry outbusts after learning that fact. It's basically an objective truths that there is no universe where her actions are "understandable" and he is completely unsympathetic because he is angry. The differences are many. For starters, these are qualitatively different acts in terms of severity, quantifiable as the emotional harm caused to the person. Then there is the fact that him being angry with her is completely within reason and a perfectly justifiable response. I can essentially guarantee that none of the smug assholes currently finger-pointing as monday armchair quarterbacks would react the same way, if not worse. We are human beings, so it's not believable that keyboard warriors will proclaim Christological equanimity and feign outrage. By the same token, I can almost guarantee that no one would act like she did, this is empirically proven by the fact that in the modern world most people have busy lives, and yet most people don't betray and deceive the people who love them.

Also, regarding the "putting him and the kid first". I would say that six months of not giving a damn about the way her actions would affect her husband and child are more than enough to make the contrary case in terms of selfishness. You can eat vegetables all days for years, but if you eat cows for six months, there is no way you can pretend to be a vegetarian. I think that this is the morally normal way to approach the situation, and I can't really...

I truly hope that the people who are making this false equivalence that they said it here first: unless you are perfect, don't bother hoping for any sliver of honesty or respect. Hope they can sing the same tune something similar happens to them in the future. Maybe the will discover that they, too, are not perfect. Assholes.

This is hogwash. I agree on the merit of the comments on her motivations, but he has just discovered that she lied to him for the past half a year, so obviously he is reacting in anger and wouldn't say the same things in a normal circumstance. And frankly, after what she did to him I would hope that she would keep the "comeback" for herself: his opinion of her has gone from "perfect woman" to "serial liar". It's unfair, but perfectly understandable given the circumstances.

Regarding the "sucking up" point, he put it crudely, but he is right on the fact of the matter: she has no obligation to pander to them, and that's exactly one of those "non essential" committment that she has chosen and should discard.

"Hyun-woo is understandably frustrated, saying that he thought they were doing well"
"Soo-yeon answers that she thought they were doing well too"
"she went out of her way to smile and be relaxed "
"she wasn’t particularly happy or unhappy."
"Soo-yeon finishes, saying that she knows it isn’t an excuse"
"Hyun-woo asks if she had an affair because he didn’t notice how tired she was"
"ends up just apologizing again, saying that she should have told him she was having a hard time. Still, she cries that she can’t face him anymore,"

Regarding the "arrogant and shallow", they are not having this conversation devoid of context, they are having the conversation in the context of him having just recently learned that the person he trusted unconditionally had been deceiving him for the past half a year. Obviously he is not perfectly calm, collected, gracious and completely fair. He is angry and in "fight mode", despite trying to understand. I would drop the condescending attitude because I and anyone else in this chat would be acting the same way (the self righteous Monday morning quarterbacks probably much worse).

I disagree with the characterization of the lover. From the quotes, when around her husband she always smiled and lied (even recently right before discovering the affair), and *neither* of them realized something was wrong. He happened to see her "defenceless" and they started an affair (not that she changed anything in her life or priorities, so I am not sure what the point of thinking about what made her happy was, not to mention that she was the one that chose all these commitments -some superfluous like the mom chat- in the first place). I find it insulting to compare the guy to her husband. The guy would have deceived his own wife indefinitely, robbing her of the ability to make her own choice and essentially treating her like property he owned, like he was entitled to have her in her life without giving the ability to make a fully informed choice, as he would have if he respected her as an autonomous, equal individual.

He also summarily fired (rather than moving away from the project himself) his lover, who he claimed to love, and later told his wife that she was nothing, someone not worth meeting. The kind of snake like My Mister's villain, putting up a noble facade but really not being willing to give up anything -he does not leave his wife despite claiming to love another woman, then when things go south he does not come clean, he fires and badmouth his lover, plus all along he acts continue to act guilty/apologetic/chubby with someone whose wife he would be having sex with at that moment, had he not been caught, and this never translates in him actually choosing to be honest with his wife-.

He was certainly not a champion of women's rights, but someone that treated his wife as an object he was entitled to make decisions for (not even letting her know there was anything to decide). Plus, if we...

I agree with society's critique in and of itself (and more... her lover claiming to love her but not leaving his wife, then firing her when it was inconvenient to have her around rather than go away himself, and badmouthing her to his wife). I completely disagree with chalking the deception up to society. The drama doesn't really draw a moral distinction between male and female cheating (she and her lover are treated the same in terms of the disgust the protagonist feels towards their actions towards their families, so if there are old perceptions they don't affect this particular case, the protagonist does not condone male cheating... I think that I would have like to see a feminist critique with the deceived wife blaming her husband and leaving him, and I think that her thinking she has to put up with him treating her as an object and not being honest with her and letting her make her own decisions might be tied to sexism).

Above all, it is patronizing to treat a grown woman, someone with agency, as if she was not personally responsible for her own actions, and she does not use society as an excuse in the drama. This is not feminism, it's treating women as inferior. I would have liked a feminist spin regarding her lover's wife, though: her kicking him to the curb and finding herself a lover, rather than putting up with him (including his attempt to continue deceiving her and robbing her of the ability to make an informed choice, a decision that to be completely clear the protagonist's wife was perfectly on board with, not that one should be surprised, considering she was sleeping with her husband, and that's pretty indicative of any absence of female solidarity here):

"Hyun-woo is understandably frustrated, saying that he thought they were doing well"
"Soo-yeon answers that she thought they were doing well too"
"she went out of her way to smile and be relaxed "
"she wasn’t particularly happy or unhappy."
"Soo-yeon finishes, saying that she knows it isn’t an excuse"

It's insane to claim that society has made her deceive her husband, and neither her nor the show make that absolutely crazy claim. It is also untrue that she did not have an option, she simply didn't realize she had a problem, and when she did she chose to cheat rather than talk about it with her husband. Note that here she is having issues facing her actions, it's not about him:

"ends up just apologizing again, saying that she should have told him she was having a hard time. Still, she cries that she can’t face him anymore,"

re: no sympathy for women

I would like to ask where was her sympathy for her lover's wife while she was having sex with her husband.

Frankly, I found rather revolting how, from the perspective of a woman, she could be onboard with the continue deception of her lover's wife. Not that she showed her any regard when she chose to have sex with her husband, despite knowing he was married and with children. But now they have been found out, and she is onboard with her lover continuing to deceive his wife, basically treating her like a puppet or a property he owns, as if he was entitled to be in her life. He takes away her ability to choose, not only not consulting her, but not even letting her know that she had a choice to make. He would continue to deceive her without letting her make an informed choice about such an important aspect of her own life as who to spend her life with.

I would have liked her lover's wife to focus more on this aspect of the situation, being treated as an object and not being allowed to make her own decisions. In the conversation with the protagonist, it's not clear to me that the fact that her husband essentially treated her as his property and would have never told her the truth has sunk in. I think that she might be influenced by sexist tendencies in society that normalize male cheating (not an ubiquitous or maybe not even prevailing point of view, the protagonist was clearly horrified) and in some sense she thinks she has to put up with it. I wish she could have made a stand and had the courage to assert that she deserves better, she would never cheat and so she deserves someone that is as committed as her and would treat her with honesty, showing her self respect and sense of self worth.

Lastly, there is the fact that *just* discovered it. This is something that just happened. He has every right to be angry at her. If you treat someone like shit, you can't complain that they treat you like shit in return. It's in no way unjust or unfair, you reap what you sow. Or, put otherwise, it's perfectly fair for him to be unfair in this circumstance. It's not rocket sience, if you put people through this kind of pain, you can't expect them to like you and treat you well. It's like grieving after a funeral, people don't have the right to expect you to crack jokes on the return trip to the cemetery. You can't betray, humiliate and deceive someone, and then expect them to treat you civilly, as if nothing happened.

I am not against them splitting up, but it's completely absurd that she would be the one asking for divorce (after hurting and deceiving him as she did, she can't exactly be outraged that he would tell her at any change how low of a person he think she is... she had his trust, she squandered it, now she can't complain that he won't trust her and always think the worse of her -she gave him ample reason to make it logical to prefer that heuristic-) when it should be him that doesn't want anything to do with her anymore. Though, of course, he should jump at the chance.

Also, regarding the "putting him and the kid first". I would say that six months of not giving a damn about the way her actions would affect her husband and child are more than enough to make the contrary case in terms of selfishness. You can eat vegetables all days for years, but if you eat cows for six months, there is no way you can pretend to be a vegetarian. I think that this is the morally normal way to approach the situation, and I can't really empathize not only with her characters, but also with some of the comments. It's like saying, yes, she did torture and shoot the dog, but there's worse, her husband passed when the light was red. Err... the first is much, much worse than the latter?

Also, regarding the "putting him and the kid first". I would say that six months of not giving a damn about the way her actions would affect her husband and child are more than enough to make the contrary case in terms of selfishness. You can eat vegetables all days for years, but if you eat cows for six months, there is no way you can pretend to be a vegetarian. I think that this is the morally normal way to approach the situation, and I can't really empathize not only with her characters, but also with some of the comments. It's like saying, yes, she did torture and shoot the dog, but there's worse, her husband passed when the light was red. Err... the first is much, much worse than the latter?

To complete the metaphor, I would say that the guy suffers from a variant of battered wife syndrome. He was better than the other husband, which puts things in perspective... I mean, not that we want to follow the lowest common denominator, but the charge against him from some commenters (and himself) is *literally* that he is not perfect. If this he was one of my female friends I would seriously be worried about what else she would be willing to accept from the relationship while being paralyzed by self blame and holding herself to an absurd standard (and excusing away the boyfriend's behavior). He is in no physical risk, but it's basically the same attitude and the same dynamic of unreasonable expectations and being unable to let go of a toxic situation. This refers to the him in the future, not to the relatively, if not introspective, one we see here.

I take that back: on second read he is behaving like this because he is hurt and angry, it's made pretty clear in the first episodes that she was the perfect woman for him and he adored her, he has become unappreciative now that she has abused his unconditional trust. He is speaking from a place of anger, and justified anger at that.