How Were the Kids Impacted by Infidelity?
How were your kids impacted by infidelity? I think one of the classic Stupid Sh*t Cheaters Say utterances is: “This has nothing to do with the children.”
As if risking their intact home lives for a bit of snatch was a trivial thing.
As if children don’t make discoveries. (And whatever creepiness lurks in the secret sexual basement.)
As if children weren’t pressed into conspiracies against the chump parent after discoveries or introductions to affair partners.
As if children didn’t have enough on their plates being children without having to deal with a parent’s double life. Or a chump parent’s monumental grief.
So, today’s Friday Challenge (by request) is:
How did the infidelity impact the kids?
Any children of cheaters here?
And bonus points if you want to share how you’re rocking it as a single parent. I have nothing but love and admiration for you mighty, MIGHTY people!
TGIF!
My daughter developed an eating disorder. Asshat also criticized her body or said inappropriate comments. She became very depressed. He abandoned her and discarded her. Told her she could live in his SHED out back.
Doesn’t affect kids? What planet do these people live on?
How terrible.
That’s unconscionable. ☹
My daughter too👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻😭😭🤬🤬🤬
I separated from my now-ex husband once before D-Day and the subsequent divorce. The marriage was unhappy and he was emotionally and psychologically abusive, withholding validation and affection, giving me the silent treatment (to the point of refusing to look directly at me) and devaluing me in myriad ways.
Our youngest child and only daughter was 9 at the time, and it was hard on her. She got a little chubby during the 10 months or so we lived separately.
Her dad made her go jogging around the neighborhood while he biked alongside her!
Daughter is 26 now and has lived through years of disordered eating, much of it prompted by her dad’s insensitive comments and general archaic/chauvinistic attitude towards women’s bodies. Ugh! (Through much hard work and therapy, she is healthy now.)
Naturally he did a number on my body image, too, but I’m 100 times more pissed off at what he did to our daughter.
Ditto 👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻. XH also abused my daughters like this too. 😭😭😭🤬🤬🤬
One of my least favorite phrases is “kids are resilient.” Nothing but a flimsy excuse for thoughtless damage done by selfish adults who are unwilling to put—or incapable of putting—their kids first.
Anyway, here’s some of the damage done:
—DD found explicit photos of the OW on ex’s phone. She was 15 at the time, and on a daddy/daughter vacation with dad. Lo these many years later, still helping her over that one. Back then, it took her months to tell me. Held her for hours as she sobbed.
—Ex and OW, who “worked” for our company, routinely travelled to DS’s college to visit him, go to basketball games with him, take him to dinner, etc. DS found that whole deal deeply confusing and humiliating. The knowing comments from his friends added insult to injury.
—Speaking of injuries, a few years after divorce was final and ex married the OW, ex invited DS to an NBA game. Somehow, that all ended up with ex beating DS up. Yup, you heard that right. Ex apparently got annoyed with DS for dropping his phone a few times while attempting to set up his Uber ride. So, he hit him, picked him up, and threw him into the street. One whole side of his body was one big bruise for weeks. DS was still distraught when he called me the next morning to relate the whole story. “I had a perfect opening to punch him in the face, mom,” he told me, “but I just couldn’t do it.” There’s one good man in that story, and it isn’t the ex.
—Ex (who is 61) and OW reproduced. He texts DD and DS pics of the little one. They don’t respond. He also texts them about assorted struggles with the little one (behavioral stuff like pinching other kids at daycare and hitting their family dog) and tends to add commentary along the lines of “we never had these problems so I don’t know what to do about this.” They don’t respond, but do note to me how telling that “we” is, since I raised those two alone the vast majority of the time, and had to counter his horrid attempts at parenting whenever he did deign to breeze in for a few hours every few months. “We” indeed. Have fun with that.
—The kids are the ones who forced ex to confess. DD told DS about the raunchy phone pics. DS told dad to man up, tell me the truth, and free me. He told some of the truth, but still made me have to fight hard for freedom. Nonetheless, the kids are the heroes who ultimately set us all free. We love the Harry Potter series, so they know what I mean when I tell them they gave Dobby a sock. Grateful, but that obviously was not their job.
—They find the shotgun wedding (OW was 8 months pregnant), the geriatric fatherhood, the fact that ex had another kid after telling them that he hated the whole family life deal, and the cliche of running off with the very young secretary embarrassing. They find him, in his entirety, strange, creepy, and always vaguely dark and threatening. DD straight up says that she has daddy issues, and of course she does. Who wouldn’t, under these circumstances? They both know who and what he is, but knowing can’t erase the deep wound of a father incapable of loving you.
The kids have both chosen to be remarkably kind and thoughtful people. Their strength is no excuse for the damage he chose to inflict, some of which will never really heal, even though they choose to move through life with grace.People of character and spirit can elect to be resilient. That gives no one permission to go around hurting their fellow humans with wanton disregard for the damage done, and the long-term consequences thereof.
That man sounds truly evil and the kids should just go NO CONTACT with him, his whore and her spawn.
Where do I begin?
It was the kids (then 11, 16 and 18) that suspected that something was up.
It was the kids that discovered the texts between Ex-Mrs LFTT and her AP congratulating themselves on their wonderful relationship but that they would need to be discrete because it would all go to sh*t if I found out.
It was the kids that checked their mother’s search history (because she was too dumb to clear it) and found that she had been Googling “How to have an affair and get away with it?” and “What should a woman in her 40s wear on a first date?” amongst other things.
It was the children that had to tell me that their mother was having an affair …… which she had the brass neck to deny and yet articulate her displeasure at them for their disloyalty in telling me.
And a thousand other horrible lies, manipulations, deceptions and nasty surprises.
The upshot was that our eldest’s relationship with her mother became impossible. Our son tried to end his life and started self-harming, and our youngest daughter developed anxiety, OCD and started self-harming. With a huge amount of effort I have – with the support and help of friends and family – managed to get the kids through this all; they are all in a much better space than they were, but all bear – to this day – the mental and physical scars that result from her unilateral choices, her lies, her gaslighting, her manipulations and her refusal to accept responsibility.
So you’ll have to excuse me, but the phrase “kids are resilient” makes me spit with rage; kids are fragile. In their formative years they need protecting and nurturing; not being exposed to the self-centred abuse of an entitled Cheater. When I hear a Cheater say “Kids are resilient” I know they mean “I’ve created a shitshow that will damage my kids, but I’m not doing anything to stop them from being hurt because my needs are more important than theirs.”
Sorry for the rant.
LFTT
I have a friend who is incredibly strong. It’s just who she is, and who she has always been. She was struggling with something once, and reached out, which wasn’t something she did often, and she said something along the lines of “just because I am strong and CAN handle a lot, doesn’t mean it is always easy”.
Generally, most kids CAN be pretty resilient. But they are also growing and learning, and exposing them to a bunch of fuckery is NOT ok. Because they aren’t ALL resilient ALL of the time. And infidelity is something that can and often does impact how they see things for life. It’s infuriating.
My FW didn’t want a divorce post cheating and used the kids as a reason, he didn’t think “WE” should screw up their lives that way. ummm..where was your concern for the kids when you were out with people that weren’t your wife? Nah, let’s not divorce and screw them up, let’s stay together unhappily and model that toxic behavior instead.
LFTT, I’ve always appreciated your comments, but this one especially helps me to know a little bit more about the excellent human being you are. I know from direct experience how much courage it takes–and courage is the world–to keep offering all one’s intelligence, heart, and stamina to help a child who has sunk into severe psychological troubles after the marriage has fallen apart because of infidelity. (My daughter developed severe OCD, and had to be hospitalized twice.) And I imagine that many other chumps besides myself have found that once their child’s agonizing troubles begin, their ex is very good at denying that the child is struggling at all, something that adds another stressor to an already devastating situation. Anyway, I’m glad to hear you and your children made it through this (mine has too, though she too has lingering trauma). My hat is off to you.
Leedy,
You are too kind. Like most Chumps, I do not consider myself to be in any way exceptional. I am an ordinary person who found himself in an extraordinary situation and – with the help and support of some wonderful people – managed to just about get through it.
LFTT
My eldest, also daughter, discovered the affair and hid it for me for a few months which was tough on her at the time. It certainly affected and continues to affect her relationship with her mother, but as far as I can tell my daughter is OK. Though people have suggested that daughter’s commitment to her somewhat lackluster boyfriend is her seeking someone who is safe and low-drama in reaction to the upheaval.
“So you’ll have to excuse me, but the phrase “kids are resilient” makes me spit with rage; kids are fragile.”
Yes they are. Thankfully, they had you ro mitigate the damage.
I had the F’n judge at our custody hearing (single, never married, no children) tell me that even though he had decided to go against state court precedent in allowing our kid to be spend his year split between two different communities and two different schools (and one community had very clearly less to offer and lets not even consider the dysfunctional environment of that one community on our gifted child) because if any kid could navigate this successfully, it would be our kid, because of how ‘resilient’ he was. This judgement was based on one 45min video interview of my 10 year old who wasn’t ‘alone’ when the interview took place. Am I still made about it 8 years later? You bet your ass, even though kid is rocking it on the Honor Roll in is Sophomore year at college.
Oh, and 3 DAYS after I lost that custody hearing in which I offered every single holiday and break to the XAss if he’d just let the kid be in one (great) school for the whole year, a horrific violent murder took place back in the community I had taken my kid out of. Both the victim and the murderer were very well known by my then 11 year old son. But the judge thought his living out there was just fine….. Ggrrrr.!
Wait. The judge allowed your kids to spend half the year in one school and half in another? I have never heard of that and can’t imagine any professional endorsing it.
Yep. If I had had the $ I would have contested that decision, but I had to eat the shit sandwich and do the best I could.
My kid spent the first semester of school with his father in a tiny remote community where the teachers spent all their time with the other kids who were all emotionally and developmentally disadvantaged, leaving my kid to drift by himself. Then he’d get to me and have to play catch up to get on par with his peers at the #3 in State HS for STEM, which my kid lives for.
When covid hit and the schools shut down I insisted that kid be enrolled in our school system’s online program. That was Jr. year. I also took XAss back to court that year, with kid’s blessing, to have kid spend his entire Senior year with me and his class so he could qualify for scholarships. (cost me 8k, best $ I ever spent that I didn’t have.) He finished up with a 3.9 GPA and a very nice 4 yr scholarship to the college he’s now attending.
This week the comments section has shown me that the courts are seriously screwed up. So this latest addition doesn’t entirely shock me. Though, I do get your point, I thought that giving kids stability was one of the most common “base level” things we could expect from the courts….and here’s this buffoon of a judge throwing even that lowest of bars out the window.,
I could have written every work- except X was male. They really are all the same: EVIL😭😭😭🤬🤬🤬
Word not work
Child of a cheater here. A lot of childhood trauma (physical violence, verbal and emotional abuse, parentification), repeating the pattern in my first relationships (entering relationships with psychopathic, sexually and verbally abusive men), ignoring my own needs for years. Also heard from my father when I personally discovered his upteenth mistress that it “doesn’t concern me”. Getting trained for years into thinking that gaslighting is normal and feeling like I can’t even trust my own judgement. Quoting my father’s answer when I asked how in God’s name he doesn’t see the problem in cheating on his pregnant wife: “Your mother was constantly emasculating me and undermining my authority. By your sense of what’s morally right and wrong, I should have hanged myself, but, sorry to disappoint you, I chose to defend myself in another way”. That was the last time I tried asking lol Not to mention all the time and money stolen from your children as well.
Even now – adult, pregnant and in a genuinely happy marriage – I am constantly scared that my child is going to be a psychopath and feeling irrationally incapable of raising it right if it’s a boy. So yeah, to me saying it doesn’t concern the children is just another symptom of compartmentalizing and treating other people as appliances.
I wrote about my kids. Now I will write about myself: I am the daughter of two serial cheating, alcoholic, narcissistic dad, sociopath mother, sexually and physically and emotionally abusive parents. My dad was a pedophile, he sexually abused young boys, and lured them into our home using us five kids as bait. Several boyfriends when I was in middle school informed me that he had sexually abused them. My mother used me sexually to lure men when I was a teenager. I was 15 and she would take me to clubs and dress me up as a tart and get guys to come back to hotel rooms to have sex with us. Then, when one of her many husbands was friendly to me, she became enraged and kicked me out on the streets when I was 16 and didn’t speak to me for four years. I was suicidal for years. No one ever helped protect me. I married my first cheater, abusive drug addict husband when I was a pregnant teenager— he offered me shelter. I had a tremendous fortune of having them born very intelligent. I worked my way through university with a baby -left my first cheater in 1989 despite his death threats and stalking me, I went to law school. My baby was only two years old. I did it myself. It was incredibly hard but empowering. With my second husband, I confused intelligence with integrity. We met in law school. I thought we had a good enough relationship for 25 years until the day. Now I look back and realize my entire life has been a mirage. I found a Chumplady and other resources recommended here and I’m finally starting to understand my life. I’m 56 years old. Things are finally starting to make sense.
I am so sorry this happened to you !
Your story is beyond tragic and I’m most heartfully sorry for what you endured. I’m happy to hear you are rising from those ashes like a Phoenix. What you have accomplished in your life is nothing short of amazing. Mighty doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Yes!!!! You are mighty!!!!
No, Mighty doesn’t begin to cover it. MotherChumper, you are incredible. I am sorry for what you endured, but boy have you kicked some ass. And you’re still growing. I hope you live a long beautiful life from this point forward.
While parenting after childhood trauma is tough because you don’t have a good model for healthy parenting, it is possible. You won’t be a perfect parent because no one is. Do your best. Be honest. Model the best behavior and values you hold dear. Kids learn even when you think they aren’t. If you hold that knowledge and consider your child when you act, they will be fine. Love them. Show up for them. Don’t lie to them. That’s all you need to do (not that it’s not hard and not that you won’t stumble sometimes). And talk to them about your mistakes. I think it’s really important to acknowledge mistakes when parenting and discuss how you take responsibility for the mistake and try to fix things and also about what you can’t fix but what you learn from the mistake. You can do this.
Thank you ❤️
I never had to share parenting with a known cheater, ours was fully emancipated by the time my RCGs fell off. I feel very fortunate for that.
But, fw after we D’d, went on to just screw his own life up horribly. That included a few years down the road all but destroying his relationship with our son. The only reason there was any relationship left was because our son kept a connection as best he could without allowing fw/whore to further damage him and his family. My daughter in law refused to speak to him or to whore for the last year of fw’s life. She didn’t interfere with my son keeping a connection with his dad. She said if it had just been fw, she would have made the effort; but whore was so mean and nasty to her she just couldn’t get past it.
Once fw was gone, son helped whore get all the info and numbers she needed to attain any benefits. She was totally inept, so for his dad he did it. That was a little over two years ago and neither he, or my DIL and grandchildren have seen or talked to her since. My son said if she ever called and said she was hungry, he would have food delivered to her house, or if he passed her on the street he would say hi and treat her respectfully, but that would be it. They live in different states, so not likely.
My son did see some things when he was about 12 or so that didn’t resonate until years later when the marriage blew up. I don’t know if he told me everything, and I didn’t press. He knows he can talk to me, but it is his story to tell if there is anything else.
I am sure the very well heeled can insulate their children more than us rank and file chumps. But yes children suffer, whether they are young or grown.
XAss brought his AP into the house with her teenage daughter barely 3 months after I left. My son has been told by his father since he was little to not tell me anything. So I’m sure the kid has witnessed a lot of very bad behavior. Kid is fairly protective of me though, and never wants to tell me things that he thinks will upset me. I’ve just told him that I’ve documented everything about his father’s and mine marriage/divorce and if he ever has any questions to ask, I’d be happy to talk to him, show him the papers. But for now, he’s just struggling to find his own way as a young man.
I can only hope that I’ve successfully modeled integrity to him, and he sees how far I’ve come since I took us out of that sad, sick situation, and that it will serve him well as he makes his own life choices.
My kids went to two reunification therapy sessions with their dad after the divorce, court ordered. They were suppose to do more but the therapist agreed it wasn’t helpful, so they stopped. They have texted with him a handful of times about necessary items (like insurance) over the years but haven’t seen him since 2018. I had them do their own communication (presumably him but we suspect most were intercepted by the other woman and they never really knew who they were texting), but they understood enough to know that he wasn’t someone they wanted in their life. My son graduated from a top university this past May and is working for the federal government, living with his girlfriend and deciding on his masters and where to move next. My daughter graduated top of her class in May and is having a great first semester of college while working and just basically being a bad ass. I believe this whole saga has made them closer and stronger individuals and on the positive side can spot narcissism and gaslighting from a mile away. I have no doubt there will be long lasting effects but I also know, they are successful, empathetic and funny as hell, and it is their father’s loss to not see what wonderful people they are becoming.
It’s all your influence. All of it.
My son was 7 when his dad left. He has struggled ever since. I took him to the doctor last week and heard him tell the doctor that he hasn’t felt happy since his dad left. It’s not that things haven’t been good, it’s just that can’t feel happy as he thinks he’s clinically depressed and wants to go on medication.
I sat there and tried not to cry as he told the doctor that the last time he felt happy was when his dad hadn’t left. He’s 14. He’s been through a lot. Bullying at high school, anxiety, depression. His dad leaving did change him.
He is on the spectrum for Autism too. The doctor praised him for explaining so well how he felt.
My daughter who wasn’t born when my ex left doesn’t experience the same issues. She’s never known her dad all that well.
My mother cheated on my father. She isn’t a nice person. I have a good relationship with my dad, not so much with my mother. She’s completely narcissistic, but it took me until my ex left to realise this. I tried so hard with her, but now I don’t.
My heart goes out to you. I just want to mention that my own experience was that medication was an absolute game-changer for my daughter, who started on Prozac when she was 11. It didn’t completely eliminate her depression and anxiety, but it had a profoundly positive effect. I felt as if she was getting a good chunk of her life back, before my eyes.
I was a work-from-home mother for 4 years, then a SAHM for another 6 years. During that time, I appreciated when my husband spent time with the kids and gave me a break on weekends. I went back to work in 2020 (remote then in person in 2021). When I had work (and adult interaction during the week), I started to enjoy time with the kids on evenings and weekends because I wasn’t maxed out. My husband apparently didn’t get the memo. He thought I still wanted time away from the kids even when I was no longer with them all the time during the week. He would overbook them for play dates and meet ups. He arranged these things when I was at work or wouldn’t tell me that he was going to be gone all day with the kids on weekends. While this all sounds innocent enough, he was carrying on an affair with my son’s best friend’s mother using play dates as one excuse to see her. (They also arranged parties to which I couldn’t come, and other families thought that we were swingers because they observed them together.) Eventually, the AP’s husband found out and told me. I told my FW that we had to tell the kids because the play dates would have to end. My 9yo son struggled with a lot of things: will he act out against his best friend because of his anger, not being able to hang out with his best friend, other kids being able to hang out and him not being invited… My now 10yo son has not yet realized that his father pimped him out to see his AP, but someday that realization will happen. My 13yo daughter already realizes this (on her own, not from me) and is struggling with how she can be angry and also love someone. My son is still not included in things because there are parents who think that my failings as a wife (cruel to my husband, cold to my children) is the problem and have shunned my 10yo. There are some parents who are just now, 6 months later, finding out what really happened and that they were the ones who babysat my son’s best friend not so his mother could visit her brother but so she could travel halfway across the country to hook up with my husband.
When someone engages in an affair and there are children involved (and honestly, even when there aren’t), the cheating isn’t just on the partner but also on the children and the community/family with whom people interact. The lies affect everyone, and there is betrayal on many fronts.
My take-away is that my FW is a “good dad” because I did the heavy lifting of parenthood. Since D-day, he’s only talked to the kids about feelings once at my insistence. He has mostly been acting like everything is fine. Meanwhile, my 9yo found me having an anxiety attack and took care of me, my 13yo has had conversations with me that are quite tearful. Acting like everything is fine is just another form of deceit and hiding the truth; it’s perpetuating the lies and image of everything being fine when it’s not.
My FW apparently fantasized both about leaving me and the kids for AP and also about leaving me and taking our kids to be with AP. The kids don’t know this and never will, I hope. He also wanted to continue being with me (despite his insistence that there were serious problems in our marriage that he didn’t tell me about but are still, in his opinion, half my fault) while having AP on the side. He finally admitted that he wanted that because I make his life work. I am an appliance. He even told me that the fact that I got mad at him and yelled at him twice in 20 years made him clam up because it’s like touching a hot stove – you don’t want to do it again – so that’s why he didn’t tell me what was wrong. Even he acknowledges that I am an appliance. We are getting divorced and will share custody of the kids because it’s probably best for them, though I have my doubts. We are still living in the same house for now, and the kids always ask me when the next “Mommy day” is because we are splitting days as if we have split custody. I think they are realizing now that he’s not the one who cares for them and values their needs. When I move out and we are really splitting custody, I expect that will become more clear to them. So, I do the best I can being open with them and talking about feelings, expectations versus reality of others, and how to act with integrity. There are lessons that my kids are learning from their father that aren’t good ones, but like anything with children, you can’t force anything and have to let them learn and make their own conclusions and choices.
“Acting like everything is fine is just another form of deceit and hiding the truth; it’s perpetuating the lies and image of everything being fine when it’s not.”
thank you for this beautiful sentence. I just sent it to my daughters.
Preface this with saying FW is a diagnosed Narcissist with a comorbidity of depression. DDay was 07/17/2021, Our children were D9, S16, and S24.
Our daughter dealt with panic attacks, extreme emotional outbursts, and insisted on sleeping in my bed again. She already struggles in school with ADHD, Dyslexia and an auditory processing disorder and last school year was a complete sh*t show where she missed 23 days of school with her panic attacks happening in the middle of the nights, and she would go 24+hrs with no sleep. It’s taken a full year to get her to an emotionally healthy state where she feels in control with little to no contact with FW.
Our middle son dealt with suicidal ideation and ended up inpatient at a juvenile hospital. He called the cops on his father when he showed up late at night intoxicated, refused any and all communication with him and will not take a penny or item from him. After a physical confrontation between he and FW he moved into my sisters house last January and after HS graduation instead of going to college as planned, he joined the Army to feel in control and have to not rely on FW, or me, to complete his goals and dreams.
Our oldest had moved back home for a year when everything was discovered and after FW trying to have him arrested for not immediately moving out of the house when he called his father a a$$hole and a pu$$y for handling things so poorly, our son who has struggled his entire life with depression and anxiety, really spiraled for an entire year before deciding to move to NYC with his girlfriend a year ago. He is literally JUST starting therapy next month to try to get a handle on his own mental health.
This is all while their father is sending them emails threatening and alluding to Suicidal Ideation himself if they don’t forgive, forget, and respect him. I can’t even list the manipulation and trauma he’s tried to impose on us all. This is the smallest snippet and I feel like it minimizes what they’ve experienced. There is enough for me to truly write a full book, I just don’t have an ending yet.
Children are innocent no matter their age and they sure as hell should NEVER have to experience the horror that is imposed on them from the FW’s who not only abuse the Chumps, but them as well. They are just as much of a victim as we are. If there is anything I mourn now, it is the fact that my children will never have a healthy father and I am very thankful that my own father is in their life.
I’m so VERY sorry. My ex was more covert about his misbehavior, but his issues truly poisoned our household. He also had an unsuccessful suicide attempt after years of diagnosed mental illness and addiction. It was YEARS, after he was gone before my kids (now post-college), were able to manage their food and anxiety issues.
Thankfully, there was no need for ongoing contact, and I had a lot of therapy myself and then got involved with a twelve-step group that really helped.
My child was a baby when it all went down, and he’s currently only 5, so still young enough that it’s yet to be seen how this will impact him and his future, but I do see him trying to take care of me and saying things he thinks I want to hear. I see his anxiety and need for routine and control of his world.
We’re both working on it in therapy.
My daughter was too young (under 2) to remember any of it. While she would sleep, I was breaking down my parts of the house and crying in rooms by myself while he was somewhere else in the house. It doesn’t matter though — it’s quite obvious that other kids have a mom and a dad, that I have a mom and a dad, etc. There was that time she, at 2, tried to comfort me when everything just came spilling out of me on the floor of our new apartment. It’s been a long road. I would love to say I’m rocking it as a single parent — I’m the one who is there, who is stable and sane (as much as that is possible while being the only parent and therefore maxed out with no one else with whom to tag team all the daily stuff)…we have our rituals and I’ve made it my mission to be her rock. I went back to work. I got us from our apartment into a town home just before the housing market went to shit. I know I’ve got this. She’s now 8, our relationship is good and she knows she can count on me. But the more time goes on, the more it’s apparent it’s all on me (he has her only every other weekend and is otherwise following whatever fancy he pleases — one additional marriage and a third impending move further away later), and it can be emotionally exhausting and very lonely. Dating and that part of my life is second fiddle to my child — as it very well should be. It’s just that I never expected to have to set aside that part of my life having originally done it in the prescribed order. All of it was supposed to be integrated into one life — my life. When that went to shit, I just went full on into parent and survival mode as the sole breadwinner and adult in my household. It seems I don’t have room for anything else. I don’t know if given the trauma of having invested in another adult, making a family, and having that implode that it’s better this way. I just feel so isolated when I look at my other friends with their partners and intact families — hell, when I look at complete strangers with their partners and intact families. I still fight tearing up at her swim class when I see all the mom/dad-and-me folks with their babies in the pool. It’s not just the initial devastation, but the continued grief and emotional exhaustion that comes with hoofing it alone, and it still comes out sometimes. It’s the end of one of those weeks, I guess…
ah, children are “resilient.” I hate that phrase. They are impacted in different ways. I still wonder how things would have turned out differently is FW has been more transparent, etc. FW had spent the 11 months ahead of the divorce announcement away from home for a job, came home every 4-6 weeks. of course, started an affair with a married coworker… I was blindsided at month 8…
As for my kids: D was a Daddy’s girl, and it was devastating. New baby came only 5 months post divorce finalization (and that was 2nd pregnancy, first ended in miscarriage of twins). Then ex and OWife moved overseas. Kids visited for 5 weeks in the summer (D13 at that point) and they spent the summer telling D was a great marriage they had (and by implication how horrible I was….) Poor D came home thinking I was a monster, yet if I was a monster, why did FW leave the kids with me and moved away??
D attempted suicide 3.5 months later, and 5 months after that had another attempt all planned out. The phrase your blood runs cold is true– that’s how I felt while sitting in the psychiatrist’s office listening to D14 explaining how to she had planned her 2nd attempt. I had to sit very still….
Son is 3 years younger. For him, I feel guilt over how the focus was on D for so many years– I tried to not make it so much. It is tough when all scissors, knives, house cleaners, etc had to locked up for 6 months. Poor S has a personality like mine, and it went into over drive for years (is that ok? was a constant refrain.) He now has anxiety
I have now been officially divorced for 10.5 years, FW moved away 10 years ago, and I have been in a serious relationship for 5.5 years.
D has a variety of health issues now (anxiety, PCOS, ADHD/ADD, etc) and I wonder how all this might have influenced her health.
Both kids, though, seem to finally be doing alright. D just graduated from college, completed a 6 month internship in their dream field, and has a job interview today (!) in said field. Son is a junior in college and seems to be thriving. He is a musician and I love going to his performances.
It is hard not 2nd guessing myself, what could I have done differently that would not have impacted them so much, but I have to let that go. The main is to simply be there for the kids. They both said they always knew I was there to support them
My FW used to tell the kids if we get divorced its absolutely your fault. I would counter it and tell them no. I would ask him not to say it to them. But he kept at it. But damage done. This was when we had what I thought was a good marriage. Kids yes are stressful, but they are more stressful when you have OCPD. Didnt figure out he had this mental illness until 17 yrs into marriage. My daughter asked if her entire childhood was a lie because
of her dads infidelity. It sucks because I felt the same way when I found my dads affair. I told her no, that we had been together for a long time and that life is messy.
I have kept my dads affair semi secret since I was 13. Its not something we openly talk about. I assume he knows I know. My brother is in denial of anything bad in life. Im sure he knows but subconsciously pushes that down. I became my mothers emotional caretaker when I found out. But I was raised to not have needs anyways. I asked her why she didnt talk to a therapist or get marriage counseling. She said my dad would not go, and said she didn’t want anyone in the community to know. If she went to a therapist everyone would know. We lived in Long Island. It is densely populated. She could have found a therapist 30 min away 3-4 towns over, different exit off the LIE. As a kid I accepted her explanation. As an adult I see the BS in this. She had issues and most people with some sort of personality disorder do not want to do any introspection or work on change. But I thought if I cleaned the kitchen and gave them a valentines day card and present that I could save their marriage. Be the great helpful kid. Its no wonder I picked a cheater with mental illness.
My children were already adults when the SHTF on D-day. How learning the facts of their father’s egregious sexual betrayal of me has impacted them is still something I have yet to learn.
However, I do know that when they were growing up, they were pressed into secret keeping (conspiracies) when they were instructed by their father, “Don’t tell mom” regarding his actions of financial infidelity that they observed as children. So they were conscripted into a conflict of secret keeping and divided loyalties and I did not even know it.
Their childhood was chaotic. Both developed eating disorders and generalized anxiety. He had addiction and mental health issues that made everything so much more complicated, and then there was his belief that he deserved anything sexually that he wanted. They never knew that specifically but picked up on how he talked about women and the way he treated me. His porn habit was not a secret. They’d ask why I put up with it and why we didn’t just pack up and leave because they were tired of his dysregulated emotions and wild talk when he was high.
Post-divorce, both kids opened up and told me more about what they observed and what they suspected. They asked me some tough questions about their father, and I answered honestly. I could tell that they were looking for closure, not details, so I followed their cues and left it there. They hadn’t seen or talked to him in several years by then, their choice.
The divorce was such an important milestone. I didn’t share much with my college kids about the divorce when it was going on, but they knew it was rough and asked some perceptive questions about my attorney and what the settlement would be like. I could tell that they were worried about me.
During that period, my oldest once said that he felt like they were getting divorced from their father while I was getting divorced from my husband. They never had contact with him again. I chose to handle some things with my ex during closeout via email, and it was horrid. It was a fine day when my attorney and I closed the file.
Both kids aced college and are successful professionals. One is still in therapy, and chose that for themselves. I’m glad that I normalized that for them.
I knew I was making the right decision by my kid’s reaction.
When I told him Dad was moving out? He said “okay, that’s fine” without a single tear. When I told him we were getting divorced he had the same reaction.
In the years since then my kid is doing better than ever. It’s like a fog over him slowly lifted.
My only regret is not getting divorced when my kid was two and I first considered it, it would have saved my kid and I so much grief.
Yes! My experience too
Ah, I have a lot of fantasies about walking out after the second trimester of my last pregnancy. Time machine, please!
First, how did it impact my kids. I talk about this part of my story often, so you may have heard it before – I almost LOST my kids! How? After divorce, he married next door neighbor sidepiece (~eye roll~ how typical). What wasn’t typical is how this sidepiece was mentally deranged….as in “Single White Female” wants to be me and take everything in my life kind of deranged. This behavior fueled my ex and soon after our divorce not only was she removing me from my kids medical records and replacing herself as their mother but they slapped a years long custody battle on me because as in their words to “bleed me dry” and take my kids because I didn’t deserve kids. That custody battle involved jumping through hoops of court ordered family and couples therapy for “better communication” because it was “best for the kids”. That resulted in YEARS of counseling abuse where I would present solid evidence of his/her abuse to the counselors and they would twist it siding with my ex. saying things like “I should just learn to get along with them”, “I should give him full custody because he will keep bleeding me dry until I do”, “its a mans world and I should fall in line”, and the “I’m too strong and need to be broken”. After years of this BS, things finally came to a head and the court demanded a psychological evaluation to be preformed by a psychiatrist who specialized in narcissistic behavior because in the courts eyes someone was lying and they couldn’t figure out who (even though they had hard core fucking evidence right in front of their faces….UGH!) Anyway, we were both tested and interviewed along with the kids and other people involved in the kids lives (like family) and that is when the truth came out after my daughter confessed to me and I recorded our conversation giving it to the psychiatrist. That MF’er made my daughter lie about me and write a letter which is what they used as the premise for the custody battle. It also came out that my FW, sidepiece, and his family were coercing my kids to lie about me on other things on other things as well…..this is why the previous years of family/couples counselors all hated me. The psychiatrist wrote a scathing report about my FW and specifically told me whip it out anytime I needed to get FW back in line. I have whipped that report out to many professionals (police, doctors, lawyers, school admin, counselors, etc.) that he convinces that I am the bad guy until they read it. That psychiatrist (who also was appointed as my kids Guardian ad Litem) saved me and my kids. That was the pivot point in stopping the abuse cycle from my ex. Rightfully so, soon after that report came out it came to light that sidepiece was beating my ex. She did it in front of the kids and the police made him allow me to keep them during his time to keep them safe and away from her. That went on for 1.5 yrs until she beat him so bad he decided to divorce her. The other things she did to my kids was restrict their food, fat shame my daughter (who wasn’t even fat and sadly began showing signs of an eating disorder), sat my daughter down and told her she was going to end up pregnant and on drugs before she was 18 (when in fact it was her daughters that were exhibiting that behavior and both ended up in rehab).
Second, how are we now? My kids are older now and we are VERY close! We talk about everything! And, when I say everything I mean it…..from their dad, toxic people, to sex, their sexuality, drugs, alcohol, school, who they like, what happens in their relationships, etc. They are thriving in school, socially, and with us (FW included in that us). FW is away from sidepiece and now with 3rd String so things are much better than in the past. My daughter is rocking her freshman year of college (drug and pregnant free). My son is rocking his Junior year of high school making solid A’s & B’s since pre divorce (yes, divorce and the crap afterward totally effected his grades). People compliment my kids all the time what great kids they are as they are respectful, kind, helpful, not selfish or dramatic. And, I have to admit CN, that is because I talked to and taught my kids about their dad, toxic behavior and how not to be an asshole or associate yourself with people like that, how to set boundaries, giving the freedom to be themselves without putting unnecessary pressure on them (like sidepiece fat shamming my daughter when she wasn’t even fat), etc. My kids are some of the most amazing people I know and I helped them by teaching them what toxic looks like.
Third, how am I rocking as a parent. I communicate and teach my kids about toxic behavior and setting boundaries. It is one of the most precious gifts I can give my kids. I almost lost them because I sugar coated the truth. I spackled the reality of what was really happening because I was told to so society and counselors to not paint the other parent as bad. That went out the window when the psychiatrist wrote that report and sat me down and told me to use that report against my ex. During that conversation, he also told me that my sugar coating almost cost me my kids. I should have told them the truth about what their dad was doing in age appropriate conversations. What that looks like in real time “you need to be aware that your step mother took my name off of your medical/dental records and put her name on them instead erasing me as your mother….if there was an accident and you were in the hospital I would not have been able to make medical decisions needed to possible save your life. Thankfully, I was able to get the doctor to change it back after they saw your birth certificate, our divorce degree, and pictures of us together. Please understand that I am telling you this so you are aware of the truth” and show supporting evidence as needed. From that day forward, THAT is the way I started communicating with my kids and it has changed our relationship from distant and pressed to open and vulnerable. They know I am the safe person. They now see their dad every other week and their relationship is as good as it can be. They know what he is, what to expect, and how to navigate him/his family. 3rd String is nice to them but they see she enables him and how toxic it is. Now we are working their personal relationships with other people….that is a hard one because they have chosen some toxic people but they are vulnerable with me and we are working on it together to help them learn and grow so they can learn how to choose the right people – and that is what counts!
Thank you for sharing your wisdom. I think more focus needs to be put on domestic abusers’ “social abuse” of partners –i.e., smear campaigns and character assassination. It can completely destroy people and should gets its due as a very potent tactic in coercive control and DV.
I figured out it was better not to sugarcoat when I saw what a friend went though with her daughter. My friend felt compelled to protect her daughter from the truth about the cheating, embezzling, power-abusing, whoremongering ex but that left the field open for the ex to get ahead of the narrative, paint my friend as disordered, himself as a “victim” and then turn the little girl into an informant against her mother. I was horrified when I was talking to my friend on the phone and she had to hide in the bathroom so her daughter wouldn’t hear her discussing even minor personal things that had nothing to do with the ongoing divorce because the daughter would then repeat everything to dad.
Consequently, when my kids asked, I told them the basic facts and only editorialized to establish my own values. “Yes, Dad was drinking a lot in secret but I don’t think that justifies what he did or lying to all of us for years. Yes, dad viewed a lot of violent pornography. Yes, a lot of those women are trafficked and the rapes in porn are often real. Yes, Dad had emotional affairs with several other married coworkers with kids until he found someone willing to have sex with him. No, I don’t think that’s a good way for adults to treat kids. Yes, Dad denied us things we needed, even medical care, while he spent money on bars, bistros, hotels and weekend vacations. No, you don’t ever have to meet the AP. Okay, if you think she looks like Jack Black in a wig, you’re entitled to your opinion but her appearance wasn’t the problem. Yes, I hope she doesn’t boil our cats but we have a security system in the house just in case…”
I wish you’d pose this question frequently and give us Chumped the chance to provide evidence to researchers and change the narrative on this – such research might would greatly improve the custody decisions, therapy, emotional support, for instance. My kids were 10, 15, 19 and 26 when they discovered XH was cheating, on Christmas. He threatened them to keep them silent. My two oldest said “fuck that” and told. He lied and minimized it— “just a flirtation…”. No. He was a serial cheater, a diagnosed narcissist with BPD/possibly sociopathic— diagnosed after extensive testing. He blamed me, our kids for their very existence, our culture, Obama (despite being a white cis male with a law degree, law firm partnership and high six figure salary— his entitlement had no bounds). My youngest two became suicidal when dad blamed them then abandoned. My son got into legal trouble and was kicked out of uni where he was a star on a sporting team. My middle daughter spent 3 months in a locked behavioral unit, years of therapy/intensive DBT — they survived, barely. It’s been 9 years. I raised them solo and despite XH’s and AP’s ongoing disruptions and aggressions towards the kids. They would say their father is a deeply disturbed person that they have to maintain very strong boundaries to protect themselves from. My heart breaks for what he did and my role in picking him, in my choice to bear children with him. It’s very complicated and always will be. I’m completely no contact, have a great big life, have been happily repartnered for 6 years and my kids like my partner. But….. XH terribly abused us. we will never be the same….
“He blamed me, our kids for their very existence, our culture, Obama (despite being a white cis male with a law degree, law firm partnership and high six figure salary— his entitlement had no bounds).”
“Obama made me do it.”
Worst cheater excuse ever.
How was my son impacted? Well, he was 9 on DDay… not yet diagnosed as being on the spectrum (officially diagnosed a few years later). He thought his family was perfect. We had fun together and he was happy.
Then DDay and his dad left us abruptly and moved right in with his AP coworker the same day. My sweet son and I went into complete trauma. I lost tons of weight and couldn’t eat and couldn’t sleep. My son cried every night. My son worried about me and I had to pull myself together so that he wouldn’t be scared. And I knew he needed me to protect him. So I did.
While I dealt with (new to me) anxiety attacks and trying to get an attorney and court orders in place right away, I also had to find a job immediately and no longer be home to support my son (i was a stay at home mom for 9 years). So my son went from carefree kid to broken and sad. He started throwing chairs at school and melting down. He needed weekly therapy.
And he was continually being gaslighted by his dickhead dad. And the mama bear in me went into full “fight that FW” mode. My son questioned our whole past as a family… His FW dad told him that we never loved each other… that we fought all the time. So I asked my son “what do you remember?” And he said “I don’t remember any of that!“ and I said “That’s what I remember too. Because that’s the truth and what happened. Trust yourself!! Don’t let your dad change what you remember as truth.” My son already knew FW was with AP so I let him know that his dad had started seeing AP and that’s why he was fighting at home for the past few months.
My son grew up quickly. He saw what his dad was doing. Then his dad became really abusive to him — calling him fat… calling him a baby… locking him outside of the house… shoving him. And I got my son the backing of attorneys to get him a say… And he hasn’t gone to his dads house in 4 years. Now they only see each other for lunch or a movie or short vacations away (with no AP or her kids).
During that time his dad tried to get our son heavily medicated to control his behavior — he wanted to “fix him.” I had to fight with therapists and psychiatrists to prove that all of those issues stemmed not from my son’s autism but from HIS FW DAD. His dad would purposely fuck with him and trigger him and then my son would melt down. His dad and AP called the cops on him several times — a kid aged 11-13.
Once I got son out of that house of horrors, no more issues. No more meds. Funny how that works.
It’s now 8 years later. My son keeps his dad at arm’s length. He had to work through so much.
We need to stop the “kids are resilient” shit. They aren’t. They can be crushed by abusive FWs.
I never thought I could be a single mom. But I am and I’m damn good at it. I got a real job and I take care of my son 99% of the time. Both of my parents have passed away and I have one estranged sister (another story for another day) but I get it done. And I’m trying to make my son feel safe and able to be an independent happy adult.
I did some advocacy projects with a coalition of disability lawyers who were trying to outlaw schools’ use of dangerous restraint and seclusion practices. I interviewed a department head and autism expert who’d acted as expert witness in a few dozen lawsuits against schools and institutions and even his own university for using restraint and seclusion as a disciplinary method. He told me that hundreds of kids die every year due to these practices and that the vast majority of children with autism would never be violent or self-injurious if it wasn’t for this kind of brutal and unnecessary “discipline.” He said the overdrugging of affected children largely stemmed from this mistreatment as well. He told stories of institutional staff deliberately harassing and provoking children into acting out so they could call police or have children court ordered to take antipsychotics. In his experience, parents weren’t the problem as often as the institutions but the same principle held either way– that most affected kids aren’t “just like that” (violent, self injurious) but are “made like that.”
One of the attorneys in this group told me another common occurrence in disability families is for OWives to lobby for full custody of disabled kids to get out from under child support payments and then to force the kids into institutions on a state waiver, thereby ditching both the expense and any responsibility to care for these kids. I asked how any of these dads could let that happen and the lawyer was like “I know, right? But yet they often do.”
It’s enough to make a stone weep. So glad you fought the evil and won. That fact will stay with your son all his life.
Hell of a Chump – thank you. Thank you so much for posting this. All of what you wrote was what I dealt with from FW and AP and psychiatrists trying to “fix” our son with antipsychotics. I’m forever grateful for spending stupid amounts of money on an attorney to fight for my son. I got an attorney who also has a child with autism… and she fought hard for me and my son. Otherwise, everything was stacked against us. And honestly, I’m thankful for the pandemic lockdown. That gave me real time with my son and I weaned him off of all meds and kept him safe at home. Now he’s doing great. So grateful.
In his soul and for the rest of his life, I’m sure your son will carry with him every cent and every sleepless night you spent worrying and wringing your hands, every effort you made. It will likely keep him on track and at peace. I feel convinced that kids internalize that kind of parental effort even if the kids aren’t mature enough to know all the details.
I come from a long line of cheaters: my father cheated, his father (and his mother) cheated, his grandfather was famed throughout the county for his prolific cheating and I even unearthed a photo of my married great-great grandfather on my father’s side holding hands with my maternal grandmother’s teenaged sister. When I was a teenager with a flat tire, an older “gentleman” stopped to help me change it. As is common when you encounter someone you don’t know in a small town, he asked who “my people” were, and when I told him, commented that, “You probably have aunts, uncles, cousins and even a sibling or two you don’t know scattered through three counties.” Yeah, cheating doesn’t damage the kids.
Equally damaging was my father’s tendency to confide in me about his girlfriends, lovers and a fiancee who was in the class behind me in high school. (She was a couple of years older than me, and was not known for her intellect.) “What am I going to do?” my father demanded on evening when I was trapped with him for the nine mile ride home from town to our farm. “Your mother won’t give me a divorce and I promised to MARRY this girl.” (Mother said she would be happy to give him a divorce, but she was keeping the family farm. “I paid for it,” she said. “I’m keeping it.” That wasn’t acceptable to my father.)
My father wasn’t an ordinary, garden variety cheater you understand. He took stealthy photos of young girls changing clothes through a peep hole drilled into the wall of a dressing room with a camera attached to a bracket bolted to that wall. When I discovered something he didn’t want known, he pulled out his Smith & Wesson .357 revolver and, pointing it just inches away from me, threatened to “use this” if I told anyone.
I grew up with no self esteem, believing I was ugly and unlikable and I ended up marrying three times. All three were cheaters and abusers. My parents encouraged me to STAY married to the first two because “there are no divorces in this family, and cheating is no big deal and probably your fault anyway.” Dad didn’t think the abuse was a big deal, either, at least not when it happened to me. My perfectly honorable divorces were worse to them than cheating would have been. Cheating could have been “kept quiet.”
My sister, who was the golden child, cheated on (and, in most cases, with) every man she’s ever dated, been engaged to (six engagements in four years) or married. She slept with at least two of my husbands and probably would have slept with the third, but he liked men better. There were 12 cousins on my father’s side — my cousin John and I are the only ones who haven’t been caught cheating or bragging about cheating. I have never cheated on anyone; I’m not sure about John.
😱
Ai yi yi! Your family! My deepest sympathies.
Child of a cheater raises her hand! I remember my mother asking me to call the bar that my father was flirting with the bar maids to see if he was coming home for dinner or not. I was 10. At 12ish I overheard something about Dad having a child by one of his mistresses. My co-dependent mother finally divorced him, and at 19 I was accused by my paternal grandmother of not “promoting a relationship with my father” The man who discarded us without a thought and put absolutely no effort in any way shape or form, not even ensuring he paid his full child support on time, sat there and looked into his scotch and didn’t say a word.
And I married a covert narc who tried to make me responsible for every selfish act he perpetrated upon me, and every ball he dropped as a husband, father and man.
Took me awhile, but now I can see the forest for the trees and am very happily single without any narc men in my life trying to control me and make me miserable.
FW and our lovely young adult daughters flew back to his hometown this weekend for his niece’s wedding. Our legal separation was filed July 21, and FW has not told his sisters. He has told no one but his therapist. The daughters are anxious about my absence and asked me if it is okay to tell people mom has Covid to not draw attention away from the bride—and also avoid the inevitable questions and gossiping. I told them I trust them & support whatever decision they make.
When I confronted FW the day they were leaving about how difficult this is for our daughters who are their cousin’s bridesmaids, he just stared at me wide eyed “Why?”
me: “Didn’t you consider that they will be subjected to questions and feel awkward?”
FW: “Why would I think about them? This is about me.”
“This is about me.”
I could write a book about when my ex said things like that. Each time when I lost a parent, he said that I was being a poor wife because my attention was on that and not him. So I grieved privately. Such a red flag!
This prompt today, for me, is the most tragic part of infidelity. As a chump, I was free to seek new love ethically and find a better partner. But kids are stuck with their fuckwit cheater parent forever. One child got involved in an abusive relationship with a schoolmate at a very young age. Two of my kids have disordered eating. One blames me for everything because I was the present parent (fuckwit lived in another country), and didn’t do an awesome job at times because I was raising and supporting three kids while in active trauma. My eldest will forever carry the weight of this “adverse childhood event”. They are always navigating around its long-term effects. They want to love their dad but they also see him for the weak, self-loathing looser he is continually showing himself to be.
People don’t like to talk about the effect on the kids, but it’s very, very real.
My split was when they were commuter college students living at home, and what they went through then and when everything else inside of them came out was devastating and took years. I decided that the best thing for me to do was to be present and to offer therapy if they wanted it, no questions asked. That paid off, but I know that sometimes doesn’t.
I’m a professional educator and had to go through Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) training as part of my duties as a mandated reporter. I was in the middle of the divorce process the first time I had to do that. Oh, my. Thankfully, I did that module at home online because I cried my eyes out and could barely get through it. I had to do that again in August, and it’s still rough for me. I will say that I have a good sixth sense when kids are in a rough space now, so that’s one positive in the end.
Right before DDay #2, when I suspected and was pick-me dancing like crazy, my daughter was in her sophore year in college and was struggling. Because I was in such fear mode, I didn’t reach out more after I saw her at Christmas break and my intuition that she was in trouble went into overdrive. She ended up in the psych ward under suicide watch. I went to see her and Asshat went to work, where HoWorker/Wife was (of course!). I remember driving back (8 hour roundtrip drive) around midnight when Asshat called to thank me for “taking one for the team”.
That was in 2017. My children and I struggled due to so much manipulation during and immediately after the divorce. We are all in a much better place now. My daughter is facebook friends with HoWorker/Wife and is on a text stream with her stepmother and her mother (very hurtful as my mother died during the divorce). She did drop out of college, but has a good job and recently purchased a house (with some $$ help from me and her paternal grandfather, but I’m pretty sure not her father). So she has a relationship with her father, my son barely speaks with him. I know that my son discovered a secret facebook account that Asshat had a year or so before he blew up the family. My son is much more attune to manipulation and maintaining healthy boundaries. I’m glad that I haven’t needed to say very much about his father and he’s figured out what a toxic individual he and HoWorker/Wife are.
I haven’t read the book by Matthew Perry, but I friend relayed a story contained in it. Matthew was in the hospital in critical condition due to his drug addiction. When he came to, he saw both his parents beside his bed and he thought, “my dreams have come true–my parents are back together”. Of course he quickly realized that wasn’t the case, but I truly believe a child’s wish is for their parents to be together.
ASSHAT’S SELFISH BEHAVIOR WILL ALWAYS EFFECT MY KIDS.
Not me. No way did I want my mom to be back together with my alcoholic cheater father. 4 years after they divorced, I no longer could deal with him and went no contact. I was well over 18 then, so I could make that decision.
My ex-FW’s adult daughter was hospitalized for alcohol abuse which she kept secret for years. FW and her mother spent days and late evenings with her during detox. FW said he was attending family sessions during her rehab, but always had “the schedule screwed up”. I’m left to wonder if he was using her treatment to cover up an affair with his best friend’s wife. And I wonder if his daughter knew about it. Guess who was the bad guy for questioning all the chaos?
I think kids wish that too (well most). Even if things are great in our post FW life, things change forever.
Quick note about topic. As far as I know, based on what they’ve told me, my now very-adult kid has not contacted their dad or replied to emails for going on 10 years. Kid was a young, not quite launched adult when all the shit hit the fan. (I sincerely have not put pressure on kid to excise dad from their life.) I think all in all it’s very sad for kid that their father turned out to be such a selfish jerk. I know they would like to be able to have a relationship with A father, just not one who thought dynamiting and pouring accelerant on our family was a good idea.
I’ve spoken about the impact on my daughter recently, which is substantial and heartbreaking. I haven’t said much about growing up around infidelity myself, so I will now. I apologize for the length, but there is a lot to unpack.
I can’t prove it, but I believe my mom started cheating around 1973. It was with our mailman, and I was too ill for school at the time, so I had to see him every day. He’d spend his lunch hour at our house daily. As far as I can remember, they did not do anything overtly romantic or sexual with me present, which I’m thankful for. They may have done so while I was in my room. My mom went out at night once or twice a week, which is when I suppose they had sex. The whole situation was confusing, uncomfortable and weird. He was a married man as well. She used to give him gifts all the time, even getting my dad to pick things up for her “friend.” For my dad’s part, he had a bad temper and yelled at her frequently. I suppose she felt that gave her license to cheat. She was a SAHM with no job skills, so divorce was pretty much out of the question. I do think she was getting revenge on him. They never even attempted couple’s therapy and the frequent fighting was hard for my brothers and I. IMO, they never even considered the impact on us.
I had started to have a lot of mental health challenges at this time; agoraphobia, school phobia, social anxiety, and general anxiety. I was sent to several therapists, none of whom were any good at all, so there was no improvement. None of them explored the dysfunction in my home life as being a contributing factor. One of them was of the now discredited “behavioral modification” school of thought and another was a Freudian who did nothing but show me ink blots once and play gin rummy with me at every session after that. His only conclusion was that my mother was “too seductive” with her children. Never mind being seductive with the mailman. Not a problem for this guy. 🙄 I did tell him about those long, daily lunches, but he didn’t pay much attention. I will give my mom credit for at least getting me some help. It wasn’t her fault the therapists were crap. Later, we had family therapy, in which my mental health problems were blamed for the dysfunction in the home. Not that they even framed it as mental health problems. They claimed I was just a bad, rebellious kid, and that’s the explanation that everyone in the family went with. I’m sure my parents were glad to be absolved of any responsibility. I knew it was bullshit, but could not get anyone to believe me. That was in the late seventies. The therapists were a pair of nasty, petty women who clearly hated each other. It was excruciating.
Back to what was happening in the mid seventies; at this time we had friends of my parents staying with us for a few weeks. I heard my parents talking about how the man had gone out to see a prostitute. They took great care to hide it from the wife, but took no care about talking about it in front of the kids.They also had another couple they were friends with. We ran into the woman with her extramarital lover. Again, this was discussed in front of me, and again, the husband was not informed. I knew this was wrong, even at that age. It disturbed me.
I suppose my mom must have been caught cheating at some point, because my parents started an open marriage arrangement. My father had one long term mistress and my mother had multiple boyfriends she talked about a lot, using me as a confidant. One was much younger than her, and in the eighties, when she was sick of him, she wanted me to date him. I was 19 and he was in his 30s. She invited him to lunch to meet me. He was oily and I felt like I was being pimped out. I did not date him. There had been another occasion that I was invited out with a “friend” of hers, who was obviously a lover. I was 16 at the time and I’m pretty sure the guy was married. I could tell he was a total douche and the way she sucked up to him pissed me off.
My brothers and I found out about my dad’s mistress when we heard him on the phone with her. We were all terribly upset. My parents were angry that we made an issue of it. That’s when we were informed about the arrangement. I felt that it was gross, that they were just cheaters trying to find a way to cheat without consequences to them. The consequences were absorbed by their children instead.
Did it damage us? You be the judge. Two of my brothers are long term addicts. They accept that they will die from this and don’t care. One brother is married to a verbally abusive woman. I married FW, ironically because he did not seem the type to cheat or be abusive. Before FW I had left an abuser with borderline personality disorder, so FW seemed normal in comparison. He was not.
I had no prior experience with what normal looked like, because of the dysfunctional marriage my parents had. They fought constantly. One of FW’s qualities that I liked was that he didn’t argue. I did not realize that being conflict avoidant was just as unhealthy as being combative. In fact, FW refused to talk seriously about our relationship at all, lest conflict arise or that he be pressed to be honest about himself. Of course, when he was cheating, that changed. He began picking fights over minor or totally invented issues. I can now look back on my marriage and see when he was cheating based on that.
I would have ended up with exactly the same miserable marriage my parents had if I had accepted FW’s offer to open it up to others after he was caught. No sale on that. He had also tried the tired old; “I’ll never cheat again” ruse. No sale on that. Best decision I ever made. This did not sit well with several family members, to whom everything is my fault, an extension of the scapegoating back in my pre-teen and teen years.
Fuck ’em all, chumps. Leave them to their delusions and build a life that does not include toxic people, no matter if they are blood. Shared DNA is not worth anything. Shared values are everything. Look out for mirroring, though. It’s how FW made me believe he shared my values.
In spite of it all, you are good
My oldest brother stopped talking to his father when he was 16. Over the years there have been a lot of people asking why, “he only has one father, and he should reach out”. Screw that. I used to say that even when my father was around, he was never around. Bro has a nice way of shutting that shit down when it comes up (even 5 years after my father’s passing when only 1 of his 4 children showed up for his funeral. Not even the 2 step kids showed, whom he lived with longer than he lived with us.) He just casually shrugs and says, ” I don’t like him.”
Your brother has the right attitude.
My father came from a harrowing background but managed not to reflect any of it. I think you can measure strength by the distance some leap away from their origins. In that sense, you’re Superwoman.
Now that poly and open relationships are all the rage, I think back on the secondary school friends I had whose parents had supposedly groovy open relationships. But, in reality, these arrangements weren’t so groovy. Knock down physical fights, substance overdoses and violent police intervention, kids witnessing dual parental scapegoating, wondering where the last lovers had gone, finding half burned extreme SM porn in the fireplace, daughter getting pimped as a nude model for some mouth-breathing perv artist as 10, getting hit on at 11 by mom’s fleeting fuckbuddies…
I’m not saying that ethical non-monogamy can never work, just that, from what saw, it wasn’t and didn’t.
Aw, thank you! 💜
I do think that ethical non-monogamy may be the exception rather than the rule for these kind of arrangements.
I know it does exist, but as you say, I have never seen it, though I have known several people who claim that is what they had. All of them turned out to be disordered, and their relationships were fraught with entitlement and abuse.
I have no issue with it when it truly is ethical. That requires that any children of that union should not be impacted. I believe that would be dufficult to pull off.
Lol, that’s kind of like Marxism. How can people attack, condemn and criticize that which has never been observed to exist in pure form? I like the idea of it– just haven’t yet seen it exemplified. How about democratic socialism and non-coercive monogamy for nice middle-ground compromises??
“How about democratic socialism and non-coercive monogamy for nice middle-ground compromises??”
Yes please!
My three kids are OK. I think the worst part for them is now having to deal directly with XW in a parental role (which seldom happened while we were married since I did all the parenting).
AP’s two kids are a mess with fears of abandonment (hard to treat since they are completely justified), eating disorders, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts. One has been twice for inpatient psychiatric treatment (though only for a couple of weeks each time). I only know this much because his XW and I sometimes vent to each other about what shitty parents our respective ex-spouses are; I’m sure there’s lots more I don’t know about.
In summary: 2/5 = 40% of affected children have documented psychological problems directly traceable to the affair / divorce. My impression is that’s low-normal.
My poor daughter (12) has had to endure a lot in the year since DDay. I was an emotional wreck for the first several months, constantly crying, scared out of my mind about how we were going to get by. FW wouldn’t leave the house for the first 9 months because his lawyer told him he didn’t have to since we are both on the deed. FW (49) was supposed to be saving up to move out but instead just took his child mistress (22) on several vacations and openly dated her while still living with me and our daughter.
Before DDay he at least put on the pretense of being a ‘good dad’. But when he was home, he might as well not have been. He was on his phone, computer or iPad. He was 100% unavailable to do anything. Whenever our daughter asked him to play with her or spend time with her he was too ‘busy’. He would snap at her to leave him alone. She would come crying into me to tell me how mean daddy was to her when she just wanted to play. So she wanted me to play. Sometimes I did and then paid the price, working till 2-3am to get the work done. Many times I had to say no (which I hated).
After DDay he stopped pretending. He was living with us but even less available. He was openly dating his mistress and our daughter knew it. He rarely spent any time with her that wasn’t taking her to/from school. Our daughter started calling home from school almost daily with headaches and stomach aches. FW came to me angry about ‘what was wrong with’ her. DUH. I said it was the stress! She internalizes everything, wants to love both of us, and doesn’t want to take sides or hurt anyone so she’s trying to pretend this is all normal and it’s coming out as pain in her body. He said that was ridiculous, she was fine.
She was trying to be my caretaker, looking out for me but I told her that wasn’t her job. Unfortunately, she saw me crying so much that she felt she needed to do this, so I took to crying in the car or the shower or late at night in bed to keep her from getting even more stressed. She was worried about money because she’s smart and knew that he made a lot more than me. Again, I had to tell her this was a me problem, not a her problem but it made her resentful of her dad.
It came to light over the summer that he was telling her to keep secrets from me. He told her not to tell me anything about his new apartment, his roommates, his girlfriend, his life because it would make me cry and she didn’t want to make me cry, right? He told her that I had a terrible temper and iff she told me things I would go crazy.
In July she reminded me that a couple of years ago, while FW and I were still very much married, her dad had taken her out bowling. I’d been so happy for her at the time that he was voluntarily spending time one-on-one with her. Well, turns out that this wasn’t some super special father-daughter time. He had just reminded her of that event and said, hey you know that girl we met there whose boyfriend never showed up for their date and she spent the whole day with us? That was actually my girlfriend. I wanted you to meet her but not tell your mom. My poor daughter was living with this knowledge and couldn’t handle it. She was so upset that her dad had lied to her, lied to me, and then pretended it was no big deal.
He told her that he knew he didn’t love me when she was in preschool but that he didn’t want to make me cry or deal with my temper so he just pretended to love me. Until he met his girlfriend and fell in love. No mention, of course, of the years of infidelities before that that led to him finding this paragon or the other random hookups while he’s seeing this trash. He didn’t seem to realize that confessing to his daughter how easy it was for him to stop loving me might hurt our daughter and make her feel that Daddy might not always love her, either.
The good news: since he’s moved out both of our stress levels are way down. We don’t walk on eggshells anymore. My daughter and I are closer than ever. She tells me everything. FW barely makes any time for her and for her sake that makes me a bit sad. She sees him for about 8 hours during the week but he always turns down weekends. He will spend a couple of hours on a holiday week (not the holiday itself). Sometimes she turns down time with him. She is still trying to be neutral, saying she loves us both but she also says things like how she can’t trust the things he says, asks me to verify things he tells her, says she isn’t interested in his girlfriend, and often asks to come home early from their time together.
I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning and I know I contributed to her fear and anxiety and it’s very hard to forgive myself for that, but she is and will always be my #1 concern and she knows it. She also knows she can’t rely on her dad and that’s not because I’ve told her that. I try not to talk about him much and influence her opinion.
Having a secret double life requires compartmentalization skills. Those “skills”? People are separate. Everything is separate. Nothing and no one is related to anything else. Which is not what the word “relationship” means. The meaning of that word flies high right over their heads. Of course cheaters see no RELATIONSHIP between their actions and how children feel. Or how anything or anyone is affected by deceptive sexual behavior. They don’t understand what the word RELATIONSHIP means to begin with.
If you respected a child you’d consider their feelings as well. To expect a child to have no feelings about one parent being terribly harmed by the other and their life and family (aka security) nuked is a testament to how emotionally clueless and broken people who cheat are. People are objects. Situations have no relationship to anyone or anything else. It’s all one big world of separate separate separate people and situations.
And the ultimate in being affected? Last night I watched an episode of Caught in the Net on Investigation Discovery channel. DJ Creato cheated on the mother of their child so she ended their relationship. His new seventeen year old girlfriend did not want a boyfriend with a child, so he did what any healthy person with a working moral compass who “just cheated” would do. He killed his own three-year old son and left his body in the woods.
Lacey Peterson….Chris Watts…our own Tessie….there’s more…..
It’s funny how the people who cause the catastrophic harm are the ones who deny they caused catastrophic harm.
Consider the source.
This reminds me also of Susan Smith. She was in a romantic relationship and the guy broke it off because he didn’t want to date someone with kids. So she drowned her two little boys. Wouldn’t let the father take them like he wanted to. So she drowned them. Not a cheating situation, but the story of someone who is supremely selfish and evil.
I’ve posted this song before but feel like reposting in response to all the harrowing stories of FWs’ callous treatment of children. This is what I think of those types. Apparently Yo-Yo Ma agrees. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unknkdq_DVE
Where is your love
Who are you not above
Your babies aren’t born
Their mother won’t return
The torch you’re trying to carry burns
For no one but you
Play us a song
Show us where we belong
Our lovers nod their heads
They’ll never tell our kids
They wish they’d had the life you’ve lived
For no one but you
‘Cause when it’s time to go
You’ll have so many things to show
To no one but you
FW claimed that the divorce wouldn’t affect the kids, but it did. At 17, they’re happier than they’ve ever been, more confident, and more outgoing. When FW left, right before their 15th birthday, I promised that I would never lie or yell at them going forward. Our new family is based on listening, empathy, and respect – a far cry from where everyone huddled in their rooms to escape FW’s broody, angry presence. Farewell FW, you were missed a bit at the beginning, but no more!
How timely. My son who has always gotten straight As and is projected to get a perfect score on ACT stopped handing in homework.
One of the things I struggle with as an adult is the mental dissonance of people telling me they love me and their actions, Growing up, my siblings and I kept our needs small and our heads down while the parents fought, divorced, reconciled, carried out affairs, etc. My mom borrowed my lingerie to go to a BDSM sex party with one of my college friends while she still married to my dad at the time. It was all so inappropriate, so weird, and so jarring, but everyone acted like it was perfectly normal, If I said anything about her choices I was “lashing out” and she couldn’t understand “my anger” and how I was “just like my father”.
So now, as an adult, someone will do or say something hurtful and I really struggle. Am I being dramatic, needy, too sensitive, too irrational here? Is it OKAY for me to be upset? Will they love me if I have needs? Will they leave me if I speak up? This person says they love me, so there must be a reason they have done this hurtful thing. They were tired, hungry, drunk, or just didn’t know better. And I will struggle with the big feelings and anxiety for a long time, try to spackle over the issue, until FINALLY I realize that they were manipulating me, or were self-serving, or knew they were hurtful and just didn’t care. Love is an action, not a feeling,
I grew up as a third spouse in my parents marriage. They both worked, so before I was a teenager I was the only after-school child care, made sure laundry was done, dinner on the table, handled homework. They’d hand me money to buy gifts for each other at holidays and birthdays. They tell me all the intimate secrets of their marriage and sex lives, complain about each other to me like I was their friend. I didn’t have the capacity to understand all of that and shouldn’t have had to – I just wanted to be loved and cared for, protected, and safe. I still don’t know what that looks like in a healthy relationship. I would love to find a real partner, with reciprocity, but somehow I end up in the care-giver mommy role.
“My mom borrowed my lingerie to go to a BDSM sex party with one of my college friends while she still married to my dad at the time.”
🤢 Sick!
“So now, as an adult, someone will do or say something hurtful and I really struggle. Am I being dramatic, needy, too sensitive, too irrational here? Is it OKAY for me to be upset? Will they love me if I have needs? Will they leave me if I speak up? This person says they love me, so there must be a reason they have done this hurtful thing.”
Here’s how I navigate this; are these occasional, minor incidents, in which the person was being insensitive rather than cruel? Then I think this can be solved be being honest about how it made you feel, as long as the person is generally kind.
If it’s either a consistent pattern of hurtful behavior or it’s something so objectively heinous that it’s unforgivable, you are dealing with an asshole. File such people onto your shitlist and get them out of your life. Don’t worry about being left in those circumstances. Leave them first.
I’m the child of a cheater.
When I was 11 years old I found out my Mom was cheating on my Dad with a man she worked with, another school bus driver. I was told by my best friend at the time who was the daughter of a woman who also worked with my Mom. My friend overheard her Mother talking about it one night.
I was devastated and overwhelmed by that information. I decided that I needed to fix it. My friend told me the name of the Man. He was also married with children. I looked up his number in the phone book (this was before cell phones) and called it. A man answered the phone and I assumed it was him and I yelled “Stay away from my Mother!!” and hung up. Years later my Mom told me that it was him that answered the phone and he “felt bad”.
Unfortunately, according to my friend, the affair didn’t stop. I was in the School Band at the time and the man actually drove the bus to one of our events after that. I didn’t say anything to him but I glared at him from my seat, hoping my dirty looks would be enough to make him stop seeing my Mom. I was a bit of a magical thinker back then. It didn’t work.
I then decided that maybe if my Dad found out he could fix it. I was afraid to tell him directly so I figured out a way to let him find out by just overhearing it. One morning while my Mom was at work and my Dad was sleeping I loudly told my Brothers about the affair. I was hoping my Dad would hear. In hindsight it was an awful thing to do to my younger Brothers but I was focused on my goal and didn’t even consider that. It was all for nothing because my Dad didn’t hear me. I gave up.
When I was 12 my Mom got caught. My Dad was working the graveyard shift. After he left for work we had a snow storm. Apparently my Mother’s affair partner came by before the snowfall and left after the snowfall. His footprints were in the snow. The storm happened about 3 AM so my Dad was suspicious about these footprints and questioned my Mom. She lied. First she said they were hers and that she was chasing the cat. My Dad observed that they were too big to be hers and also there were no cat prints. Then she said a man ran out of gas up the road and wanted to use the phone. So my Dad went out and followed the footprints up to where my Mom’s affair partner had parked his car on the side of the road about 200 feet away. Dad saw no signs of the man going to his gas tank, no signs of gas spilled, no signs of another vehicle that came to help the man, only footprints going directly to the car door. More lies and denials came after that. Eventually confession. It was a horrible fight. I heard every word.
My Dad moved out. He started dating, remarried and had four more kids with his new wife. My two brothers and I saw him on Sundays for 6 hours. My Mom’s affair partner moved in. When my Mom would work late he would come into my bedroom, lay down with me and talk about sex and masturbation. One night he brushed his hand across my breast. I put a stop to the bedroom chats and thankfully he didn’t push it. Then he cheated on my Mom and they broke up. Mom lost her job (not related to the cheating) and we went on Welfare for a couple years until she got another job. It was awful, we were very poor. I was so angry with my Mother. We fought, a lot. She became abusive, emotionally and physically, to me and my brothers. Most days she would come home from work and go straight to her bedroom. I can see now that she was probably depressed.
As a teenager I watched my Mom go on to “date” a few married men. I think, because of that and because I was brutally punished by my Mom for my righteous attitude about her cheating, that dating other people’s boyfriends and husbands became normalized to me. A parent’s influence is so powerful. It took a long time and a lot of suffering for me to learn, the hard way, that I was doing a disservice to myself and hurting other people by following her example. I haven’t cheated or dated anyone’s boyfriend or husband in 37 years. Ironically every man I’ve been in a relationship with, since then, has cheated on me.
Parents are like Gods to their children. They set a precedent for them. Cheating has been a legacy that I can’t get away from.
“Parents are like Gods to their children. They set a precedent for them.”
So true. I wish all parents understood this.
Your story is terribly sad. Good for you for having the ethics to stop doing the things you learned from your mom. I have no resentment towards former OW who have changed their ways. Some chumps may. What’s important is that you have sustained that change for 37 years, so it must be heartfelt.
As far as I know, neither of my parents cheated on the other. My father actually really loved my mother in his own incredibly unhealthy way, and mom was basically asexual and afraid of men in that respect as her own stepfather tried to rape her when her mom (my grandmother) was dying in the hospital. She had to sleep with a knife under her pillow and she would have used it too. Both of my parents were alcoholics, for different reasons, my mother just slept all the time and my father was a very violent man. So even aside from the cheating issue, there can be plenty of problems and secrets in a dysfunctional family. It affected me and my choices all my life….how can it not. We should never blame OURSELVES for this as you frequently don’t even see or understand this until you’re much older and life has been lived. Every man I dated or was involved with was 180 degrees different from my father physically and personality, etc. My mother and I had a good relationship but she told me too many things I should not have known or dealt with including intimate things about sex with my father. No kid needs to know this but he had driven away all her family and friends and she had no one else to confide in. I was basically – like many of the people here – her caretaker and protector for much of our relationship. She would try to protect me when she could but she was too sick. Even know I don’t like to talk about myself or my background/family because it all feels like a big dark secret no one should know, that I should be ashamed of, and that I’m talking too much about myself. So a lot of me is walled off like a mummy in a tomb.
But one thing I wish every parent would do with their kid is TELL THEM THE TRUTH including the truth about the other (cheating) parent and why the marriage is breaking up and what is going on. It has to be age appropriate but there is nothing worse than gaslighting a kid because they are still developing a sense of what reality is and how to handle it, and who THEY are as well, who they can become as adults. WHO TO TRUST AND WHY/HOW. If a parent is a liar, a cheat, a thief, some who cannot be trusted CHILDREN SHOULD KNOW THIS. I am not someone who believes that you have to preserve a relationship with the other parent. I hated my father and I was not conflicted about that, I always felt that way. Now as an adult, I understand many of his issues, he’s long gone for decades, but I have pity for him but it didn’t change how I grew up or how it affected my life. It’s been long since I hated him and I recognize his good points now but I’m glad that I understood what he was like back then.My mother didn’t sugarcoat him, and neither did I. I didn’t trust him, nor should I have trusted him. It’s so important that children know that what they see and understand IS real and accurate and that their assessments of someone are REAL and that they don’t have to love or even like people they are “supposed to” including close relatives. It is okay to distrust or even hate them. It may be life saving. I also don’t think kids should be forced to spend time with the cheating parent if they don’t want to. There’s frequently NO BENEFIT to this and a lot of negatives. You’re not gonna learn anything positive from most cheaters. I’m in favor of shunning bad people. But bottom line….please support your child’s sense of reality….if they are really wrong about how they are viewing something, you can guide them, but when you know they are actually RIGHT about the parent’s nature and behavior…..never undermine this. Let them see what is the truth and support that. You don’t have to embellish it by calling Mom or Dad names or telling them secrets (esp about sex) but children have to be supported in their sense of reality, their ability to judge, and to make decisions about who to love, trust or be involved with. They don’t HAVE to love, like or respect the cheater. If they were to realize that the problem is NOT in them, but in the BAD PARENT (and they ARE bad), it would do a lot for their mental health and perhaps stop them from internalizing these problems. The fault is NOT in the kids….but in the bad parent. Kids frequently see and understand far more than we realize and sometimes they know things before we do. We should never conspire with “therapists” (whom I always found USELESS) to undermine them. SUPPORT THE KIDS AND TELL THEM THE TRUTH!
Also…..we frequently don’t focus on this aspect but many children feel ASHAMED of problems in the family and they often think it’s somehow their fault. If they were better, smarter, prettier, neater, etc, everything would be better. And that shame can keep kids locked up inside themselves so it can make it hard to make friends and to form good future romantic relationships too. Keeping secrets is BAD. Always try to figure out if your kids are hiding themselves from others and have some secret shame about themselves and their family life. It will become a habit and carry forward into adulthood. It is so incredibly important to tell your kids the truth about people and situations so they can learn to make accurate judgments for themselves. Otherwise, it leads to dysfunction, bad choices, and a lot of loneliness based on distrust and shame. And don’t listen to goddam therapists either, most of them are absolutely useless pill pushers or people who keep trying to excuse bad behavior by getting others to accept “explanations” that don’t help.
I would be really interested in a podcast with a parental alienation expert- in particular how to manage efforts by FWs to alienate the children from the chump/victim. FWs collusive tactics are well known to many of us, and some here have described losing their children to the FW.
I appreciate CLs safe sane parent approach, I just think sometimes it isn’t enough to buffer the effects.
Stay sane everyone!
Yes, parental alienation is a topic all it’s own. If you are a victim of this, then you have been double-traumatized. Yes, my FW said “this has no impact on the children”. In hindsight, for three years prior to Dday, I realized that my FW was actually plotting to take my younger son away from me. (This is the son that I was actually closest to.) I understand that as an (at the time) 27 year old adult, my son should have known better, but that is how convincing a Sociopath can be. During an attempted divorce mediation, the FW actually stated “she doesn’t talk to her son”! This was none of my doing.
To this day, I have had no contact with my son for 11 years and have not even met my two grandsons.
Just like my FW NEVER admitted to the affair and NEVER told me he was filing for a divorce, my son has NEVER told me the reason that he has cut me off. I can say that he is actually a coward like his father. I have made attempts at contact, but nothing is acknowledged.
What kind of father would purposely make sure that their son had no contact with their mother?
Regardless of age, divorce can have catastrophic effects on children!
ITA. I’m also estranged from my eldest and have not met one of my grandchildren. I haven’t seen my eldest or talked to her in more than five years. Neither has anybody else in my family. She wrote us all off for no reason. To some extent I do blame FW, but she is a grown woman and capable of making her own decisions, so the responsibility is hers. The result is that FW gets to play happy families with the grandchildren he does not deserve and will only disappoint. I feel bad for the kids.
It was the kids who discovered condoms in the car more than a year before I really found out and he told them all they were crazy and they belonged to a guy friend of his and did they want to hurt Mom by telling her???? They were all teenagers at the time, but no one told me. Then, our oldest son witnessed him writing his phone number on a receipt for a waitress when they were out to eat after buying him a suit for his high school graduation. When our son confronted him about it, asked what he was doing, the ex-FW gaslit him and said he was insane, he hadn’t done that!!! Our son told me weeks later. Apparently, he would leave his phone number on receipts and that’s how he met some of his women—he wanted to see who would call him and apparently, some did. Gross.
After I left him, he went into melt-down mode and made our grown daughter’s life hell by dropping by her place and crying about how I’d left him (in front of our grandson, who was a toddler). He STILL tells the kids how cruelly I left him and says all kinds of misogynistic things to all of them (even our daughters) about how women only want money and ruin men, etc. One of them refuses to talk to him any longer.
I can’t even imagine what he would be like if they were younger and I am in awe of the strength of some of you who left with younger kids.
As you may guess from my username I was strongly affected by my father’s infidelities. And I am to this day. I have trouble with trust in both friendship and romantic relationships.
My son was four and my daughter was 10 months when my ex moved out of our marital home. My kids are now seven and four, and my son still occasionally cries when we have moments where we talk about divorced life, and they both occasionally cry during moments when they have to leave my house to go to their mom’s (actually her boyfriend’s) house. They don’t cry and aren’t sad when they leave their mom’s to come to my house, and I honestly can’t put a finger on why. I don’t think they favor me over her. Maybe it has to do with her boyfriend…maybe it’s because I decided to stay in our marital home…maybe it’s because she often gets babysitters for them while I don’t…I’m not sure. So compared to many on here, my kids are doing well. Their ages probably have a big part of that. But the hurt of divorce is always rears it’s head on a regular basis. Dropping the kids off at school…”Who’s picking us up today, dad? Are you?” Just constant micro moments of hurt. It really sucks.
Our 17 yo is depressed with suicidal ideations and hates us both. Life is grand.