My Son Is Cheating on His Girlfriend
Her son is cheating on his girlfriend. Not for the first time. As a mother, can she intervene?
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Dear Chump Lady,
I have a 30 year old son with my ex FW#2 and just found out that he has been cheating on his girlfriend for at least six months. Maybe longer, you know how cheaters don’t like to tell the truth. She is very sweet and loving, has a couple of kids from her first marriage.
My son, whom I love very much — but and also insanely angry with at the moment — cheated on his first girlfriend too. When he’d done that, it just happened to be the same time his father, my then husband, was cheating on me as well. I didn’t have proof yet, but suspected it. And his reaction to our son cheating at that time, gave me further reason to suspect him. He refused to say he was disappointed in our son, that it was wrong, etc. I had to force him to say those things, the things I immediately said.
My son’s cheating this time is different.
Last time, he just had a quicky sexual affair a couple of times with the same woman and then it was done. But it wasn’t done because after he broke it off, he slept with a married woman and her husband told him to tell his girlfriend or he would!
I was so freaked out when I found out. Very upset and I gave him the point of my finger and said, “Never treat a woman like that again and never ever insert yourself in a marriage again either.”
He knew I meant it by the look and tone of voice. I was not kidding. I told him just how harmful that can be to people and it was not good behavior. Not ethical or moral… the whole spiel. I told him then I was supremely disapointed in him.
He promised me he’d never do it again.
So, I can’t describe how was I heartbroken when I found out he’d cheated again and that he broke his promise to me. And I am so very sad for his girlfriend, told her that I was there for her and she could talk to me any time no matter what time of day or night. I instantly told her this was all my son’s fault and she didn’t deserve this at all. She is in fight or flight mode right now, since it’s so new. She said she feels traumatized and I told her that’s because she was.
I told my son it is time for help.
The texts he was sending these women were not normal type of cheating messages, but more like “How have you been, send me pics of your tits.” OMG. He is objectfying women and abusing them! WTF? I did NOT raise my son to behave like that and he knows it! He was crying on and off when I talked to him about it yesterday, but that did not deter me from saying this is NOT okay and I insist you get help. I told him: Call this number. Get diagnosed like your dad did. And he did it. The appointment is next week and I am going with him.
His father was diagnosed with NPD and I understand there is a hereditary factor there.
Possibly, as his dad most certaily got it from his mom, who clearly is intenstly narcissistic. I have 5 other kids and none of the others act this way. I am shocked.
So here I am, dealing with my cheater, s*x addicted son, which is very triggering to me. I freaked out the first night. My heart was pounding so hard I thought I was going to have a heart attack! Meds helped that calm down, thankfully. I still have panic disorder from his dad betraying me!
My question is:
Is it okay for me to love my son and want to help him, even though he betrayed my trust?
He broke his promise and has hurt his girlfriend and just thinks it is okay to abuse women. I want to help both of them, but I feel stuck in the middle. And he’s my son, I love him but don’t love his behavior and actions, but he needs help, like professional help and now.
Should I just bow out and let them deal with it? I did that last time and it didn’t go too well, obviously, and I already told him get help, have already stuck my nose in. She has also asked for my support and I know how much she needs it and don’t want to shut her out. But I am feeling overwhelmed and triggered by all of this!
I guess I am also worried about people judging me for sticking with him and trying to help him, instead of kicking him to the curb for being such a creep! What a mess!
Sending out an S.O.S. to you and the wise folks of Chump Nation to see what you guys all think and how I can navigate this by helping him and his girlfriend, but not losing my sanity at the same time.
Thank you in advance for any thoughts on this mess!
Chumpy Momma Caught in the Middle
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Dear Chumpy Momma Caught in the Middle,
This is not your mess to clean up. It’s your son’s.
I’m sorry, I know it must hurt so much and you’re not going to like my advice. Your son is a 30-year old man. He doesn’t need you to manage his dysfunctional love life or book his therapy appointments. What he does need are cold, hard consequences. Like the girlfriend dumping him. Like his mother distancing herself. And the family considering him a loser.
“Never treat a woman like that again and never ever insert yourself in a marriage again either.”
He knew I meant it by the look and tone of voice. I was not kidding. I told him just how harmful that can be to people and it was not good behavior. Not ethical or moral… the whole spiel. I told him then I was supremely disapointed in him.
Your cheating son doesn’t have an insight problem, he has an entitlement problem.
He knows his behavior is harmful — he doesn’t care. It gratifies him.
He knows you’re disappointed in him and were chumped — he doesn’t care. Your trauma isn’t his trauma. His dick wants what it wants.
He knows his behavior is not ethical or moral — he doesn’t care. It doesn’t hurt him to hurt others. He weighed his girlfriend’s pain, her children’s pain, and your pain and decided he’d rather see some rando’s tits.
That is who he is.
You need to radically accept that your son sucks.
I’m not saying it’s a permanent condition. But HE has to want to change. You cannot want it for him. And because he has an entitlement problem — transgression feels good! F*ck the little people! It’s good to be King! — the only thing he will feel is HIS pain. And that comes through the natural laws of consequences. People don’t want to be around him, or invest in him, they don’t respect him. Because HE IS NOT A SAFE PERSON.
Safe people have empathy. They care about your feelings and try to behave ethically. It would hurt them to hurt you. Transgression FEELS transgressive when you value the social glue — trust — that binds us all.
Your son, on the other hand, traffics in chaos. Burn one relationship, start another. Destroy that one, sucker another person into believing in your potential, but this time raise the stakes. Include small children.
When it blows up, cry and play the victim, and maybe some adult will swoop in and be your chaos janitor.
REFUSE TO BE HIS CHAOS JANITOR.
He promised me he’d never do it again.
I’m sure he promised his girlfriends he was in a committed relationship with them. Liars lie.
I told my son it is time for help.
Does your son need help? Yes. But that’s a different question than is he open to getting help? Time to trot out the Dr. George Simon axiom again: “It’s not that they don’t see, it’s that they disagree.” He knows what he’s doing is wrong. But it works for him and he doesn’t agree that he should change his behavior.
Someone who thinks he has a problem doesn’t have his mom book his therapy appointments. Thirty year old men can operate phones.
The texts he was sending these women were not normal type of cheating messages, but more like “How have you been, send me pics of your tits.”
Those are totally normal types of cheating messages.
Actually, this is a far more honest transaction. The real lie is that he pretends to invest in women as girlfriends. When what he really wants are body parts.
Therapy isn’t character change.
I did NOT raise my son to behave like that and he knows it! He was crying on and off when I talked to him about it yesterday, but that did not deter me from saying this is NOT okay and I insist you get help. I told him: Call this number. Get diagnosed like your dad did. And he did it. The appointment is next week and I am going with him.
Oh geez no. Why would you do that? Do you doubt he’d attend unless you drag him there by his hairy ear?
See what he does of his own steam. Watch his ACTIONS.
His father was diagnosed with NPD and I understand there is a hereditary factor there.
Perhaps? This is still his problem to figure out. His being a FW is no reflection on you or your parenting. As you point out, you have four other kids who don’t behave this way. We don’t control other people. Even our own children. And it’s heartbreaking to see someone we love behave self-destructively.
But booking therapy appointments and insisting on treatment is thinking you CAN control this. If chumpdom has taught you anything, it should be the hard realization that you can’t change people.
You only control you.
Is it okay for me to love my son and want to help him, even though he betrayed my trust?
Love your son, sure. You can help him by letting him face the consequences of his actions. And directing his girlfriend to Chump Nation.
Should I just bow out and let them deal with it?
Yes.
The mental health community still trots out that old story about NPD “we can fix it if they really want to work with us”. There is not one recovered narcissist out there – because I am absolutely convinced (and so are quite a few mental health practitioners who don’t want to admit it) that this is neurological. Literally a form of neurodiversity. Nothing is going to make this young man feel anyone else’s pain. Behavior modification could be effective, with strict supervision and behavior supports. That’s not fair to any partner.
I know the mental health community wants to assume the best because its job is helping people, but I’ve yet to meet a disordered person who even admitted they had a problem and went to therapy, let alone stuck with it and stopped abusing others.
Those are terrible odds, and I can’t bet my life anymore on potential that’ll never arrive.
True, though I do believe it is partly environmental. Nevertheless, it is not treatable. Honest therapists will admit it, it’s the frauds who won’t.
Honestly, too many therapists are disordered themselves. I’ve met way too many who shouldn’t be allowed to interact with the public, let alone hold a license.
Totally agree! Thanks for saying it. I’m experiencing close-up right now just how hereditary narcissism and other mental disorders are, with my 25-year-old son showing extremely unpleasant similarities with his narcissistic dad, my mom, and my grandpa. It feels incredibly helpless! He’s basically only getting worse, and does not seem to think it’s a problem. He hasn’t cheated on a girlfriend that I am aware of, but displays all kinds of those unhealthy neurological qualities that in my book would make him a terrible partner. So heartbreaking 💔.
Thank you for saying what I have long suspected
So very sorry about this, LW. However, if you are having panic attacks and accompanying others to their therapy appointments and fielding calls from son’s GF, it indicates that you have some healing to do.
Your son does not necessarily have NPD, and it’s unfair to armchair-diagnose him with that based on his father’s life. It is unfair to overlay a parent’s issues (your trauma or your husband’s problems) onto a child. That’s enmeshment.
I know it’s hard, but maybe focus on your own healing instead of your son OR his girlfriend. I heard a great saying once: “Instead of trying to carpet the world, put on slippers.” Like, really put on slippers. Comfortable, warm, soothing slippers.
Whether he has NPD or not, that is a personality disorder which likely is not hereditary (like mood disorders such as Bipolar, which can be).
His behavior, and attitude of entitlement and objectification of women, is not a disorder, it is all a mindset. It is learned. See Minwalla’s “Secret sexual basement” and Lundy’s “Why does he do that?” research.
As far as newish neurological research, I believe I’ve seen some research suggesting that “imput” can change neuron pathways, which altars brain function and emotion. Simply put, I believe we will one day have more research that confirms that porn kills love (in the minds/ brains of the consumer). It makes him unable to care about women, unable to love. I believe that my trauma story all started with porn, back when the internet became streaming. Before the internet, he was a different person. He was the loving, caring, honest young man that I married. I realize there were lying cheaters before the internet. It has always been a choice, based on entitlement and the mindset of “a man’s right to do whatever he wants” (patriarchy).
I would like to see more discussion of the factor of porn addiction in this entire subject of infidelity.
I divorced a FW narcopath whose father is a grandiose narcissist.
You are already miles above my crappy MIL who ghosted not only me but the kids once FW was exposed. And I was the one who treated her like gold not FW who screamed at her on the phone and refused to give her $300 for food while literally blowing thousands a month on hookers.
Your son does not want to change. He is almost certainly a narcissistic personality disordered creature same as his father. Serial cheating involving young children, he’s trash and continues to be trash because he likes it. Cry some crocodile tears get dragged to therapy lie to clueless therapist then rinse and repeat.
No amount of therapy will help him. Get him a vasectomy
This concerns me. I have sons and one of the reascuses the man I picked for their father used for his cheating was that it was “learned behavior”. He watched his father do it. Thanks for that, therapy!
So far they have exhibited positive learned behaviors that are clearly what I showed them. And if they decide to perpetrate their father’s learned behavior on their wives I will be squarely siding with my chumped daughter in laws.
I have five kids and one of them seems to have some level of narcissism. The rest of them have their own issues, but not that. I totally understand the desire to love your child who does bad things while hating the bad things. It’s incredibly painful as a mother to watch it happen. It’s one of the big joys of breeding with a narcopath. /sarcasm
My problem child has mostly separated herself from me and her siblings. However, my mom is about to have a milestone birthday and would love to see her grandchild one more time. I expect some difficulty.
I feel you on that. My disordered child wouldn’t even attend her (supposedly beloved) grandmother’s funeral, let alone go to see her when she was dying. She had ghosted the entire family except for my mother, but even the one person in the family she still interacted with wasn’t worth going to any bother for, apparently. I hope your mom gets her birthday wish.
This is so painful for me to read. Many years ago as a newlywed, I was alone with my mother in law when my new father in law came in and proceeded to give her a VERY detailed description of how he planned to spend his day and where he’d be and when he’d be home. After he left, she baldly explained that “he has a woman in that part of town and he thinks he’s covering it up. I don’t even care anymore; I’m not about to divorce him now that we have it made.” I was speechless. Two decades later I finally recognized the same awful behavior in my husband – explaining his whereabouts before I asked any questions, answering questions I hadn’t even asked. I believe that children learn how to adult from observation of the same sex parent. I am pretty sure that’s what happened with my FW. I think it is almost certainly too late for you to change your son. You have my deepest sympathy, but no amount of any kind of counseling is likely to change him. Many traits are in fact inherited, but behavior is largely learned by example. This is why you leave and go no contact. It isn’t just your own life you save – it is your children’s lives and the lives of their partners.
Chumpy Momma,
The first principle of First Aid is to not become a casualty yourself. When thinking about wanting to help your son, you need to be very clear about the emotional, financial and physical cost to yourself and your own wellbeing. You also need to remember that you cannot help someone who appears less that completely invested in helping themselves.
You should feel no guilt if you feel that you need to step back from him. Ultimately, it is his decisions and his actions that put him where he is now …. and the consequences that he needs to feel are his alone.
LFTT
Chumpy Mama: Your oxygen mask on first, remember? Your sons behavior is traumatizing you, very clearly. It is abuse. What if you told him that, and that he could not come to your house or discuss the situation with you as long as he chooses to behave this way? That way, you could re-establish a safety bubble around yourself.
Good luck to you, BTW. I know as a Mom you will never stop loving him, but you also have to protect your own sanity and serve as a model for the children.
Chumpy Momma Caught in the Middle, you are not caught! Get out of the middle.
You set boundaries with your son: No cheating. You were very clear in what you told him when he cheated on his first girlfriend and then had sex with a married woman.
Now he cheated on his second girlfriend, someone you knew well enough that she is seeking support from you.
Although it wasn’t clear if they had broken up, the best thing you can do for her is to direct her to LACGAL and a divorce support group, and to tell her cheater son’s history so she knows she wasn’t the first. Let her know that this situation is triggering for you, and that for your own mental health, you are unable to provide the support and 24/7 availability that you initially offered. If you were involved with her kids, it would be kind to meet with them and let them know that you are sorry that you won’t be an ongoing part of their lives, and that they are not at fault and they will be in your thoughts.
As for your son, he is treating you like cheater did, as an appliance, and one he expects to serve him for a lifetime. Crying is not a commitment to change, and it can be faked. Or maybe those tears were for himself.
I’d treat him like you’d treat a cheater partner. Establish a distance. Limit contact. And don’t do anything for him.
Yes, it’s a loss to grieve. And that may be why it’s so triggering.
Dear Chumpy momma, Younare far too late. 30 is a grown man, fully functional. What else are you doing for him? Is he living with you? At your house every night?Do.you do his laundry, are you his therapist. What you are doing is overfunctioning BIG TIME and minding his business. It’s too late for YOU to change his deceptive patterns. STOP just STOP. You have given up on your number 2 cheater you need to steer clear of all cheaters games you are caught up in
I don’t know about counseling the chumps that will.flood your home. I’d just cry and get.my self stronger. You are in over your head. I’m very very sorry
This is heartbreaking, Chumpymomma. Unfortunately, at 30 years of age, your son is probably set in his ways and will likely not change. So I think you are setting yourself up for a disappointment by being involved in the therapy. It’s worth a try, but prepare yourself for it not working and plan accordingly. You may end up having to limit contact with your own son, which is awful, but it will ultimately save you from more pain. Chump Lady is right. I’m sorry to say that your son is not a good person. I don’t mean to say he never can be, but it seems unlikely, especially if he is NPD. There is no proven effective treatment for NPD and any therapist who tells you they can change him is a charlatan who just wants your money.
I have an adult child who is like her FW father too. We are NC by her choice, probably because she knows that after what FW did to me I won’t do non-reciprocal relationships, even with close family. She was also accused of cheating by her former husband. It’s hard to let go and not try to get the relationship back, but protecting my peace and serenity requires that I do and I have to make my mental health a priority. You may find the same applies to you. I’m so sorry.
Chumps ALWAYS deserve to know they’re being cheated on. So yes, tell the girlfriend, tell the fiancée, tell the wife! If she doesn’t know, you may have saved her from weeks, months, or even years of pain, deceit and abuse. If she does know and she still chooses to stay, that’s on her.
If I ever found out that any of my three sons was cheating on their wife, especially after living through what their FW father did to me and to our family as a whole, I would not just be disappointed, I would be beyond livid. And I wouldn’t be shy about telling them as much and having a very frank conversation about how that knowledge would impact our relationship going forward. Just because I love my child to the moon and back does NOT mean I have to approve of their horribly irresponsible, selfish and disgusting behavior, especially when they know firsthand that the total destruction of something very sacred could be right around the next corner.
Would I suggest therapy? Absolutely yes. But the decision to go is his to make. I wouldn’t “send him” anywhere; that’s an adult choice he must make for himself. But if I don’t see evidence that he has an interest in leveling up, becoming a better man, getting to know himself and digging deep to discover why he resorted to gutter behavior, then I would step back and let him face the consequences of his actions.
Dear Chumpy Momma,
I think it’s time to take a step back.
Your son is an adult. You didn’t cause this situation and it’s not your job to fix it. If he lives at your house, kick him out. Stop doing him favors. Don’t give him money. Don’t go to his counseling appointment. He’s a big boy, he can clean up his own mess.
If he chooses not to fix himself because you won’t do it for him, then he was never going to do it anyway. Abuse and misogyny aren’t a diagnosis and even if they were, you can’t force an adult to do anything he doesn’t want to do.
You say his ex needs support, how so? Is she in therapy? Does she live with him and need help moving out? You can only support her to the extent you’re capable, and providing it doesn’t harm your mental health. Moral support is one thing, but that doesn’t mean you need to stay on the phone with her for hours at a clip. You need to set boundaries, with her and with yourself.
I’m sorry your son put you in this situation, it’s terribly unfair. But see him for who he is and don’t take responsibility for his life choices. We do the best we can raising kids and after that, it’s on them. Put on your own oxygen mask and prioritize yourself, you deserve it.