Should I Encourage My Children’s Relationship with Their Gay Dad?

Issues involving the kids are so difficult. My ex left the US to join his “true family,” that is, his affair partner and her four (!) young kids. He told me that his girlfriend was considerably younger, prettier, more glamorous and much, much richer than I was. All true.

He also said that her kids were smarter, more talented, better behaved, more lovable and more interesting than our own two young children. He told me that biological ties were not what made a family; love made a family. Therefore, because he didn’t love his biological children, they were no longer his family.

He hasn’t had any contact with our kids for years. And certainly doesn’t pay any child support.

Everyone says my ex is an awful person, but I kind of understand his point of view. Doesn’t he have a right to choose who is part of his family? Why should he be bound to kids he no longer cares about?

“just stay out of it.” five words that are difficult to achieve when it comes to an X. but he’s got to sort out what his relationship is with his kids.

i try zoning out when my adult kids inadvertently talk about my X. it’s hard because we live together–if we didn’t all live together i wouldn’t hear a word about my X and that would be A GOOD THING.

the other day, my daughter was on speaker phone with her dad and i was absentmindedly doing the laundry nearby, and heard his voice. it was kinda traumatizing. this surprised me. i think it was because i was caught unaware? #PTSD

I concur. Stay out of your children’s relationships with their father, whatever stance they take.

I also get your mixed feelings . My ex was closeted, although there was nothing closeted about his parading in front of me his crushes and emotional affairs (I have evidence only of those). He’s still closeted, which means our son, who was an adult at the time I left, doesn’t know the reason we divorced, other that what I told him, which was “your father has a secret life, and if you want to know what it is, you can ask him, although I already know he won’t tell you because he told me so. I will tell you if you want to know.” Our son chose not to know; I have honored his wishes. Full stop.

Does this decision of mine to honor his wishes cause me pain? Yes. I would like to have an honest relationship with our son. I would like his father to have an honest relationship with our son. I would like our son to know the truth, because I think it explains some family dynamics he has commented on. I would like to get out of my ex’s closet once and for all and completely, and I would like to stop enabling his dishonest relationship with our son. But I gave my son a choice; he chose; I honor his choice. He knows what he knows, and he knows he can know more if he wishes. In the meantime, his relationship with and thoughts about his father are his to negotiate. As are your children’s. Stay out of it.

My children were all adults when the FW detonated our family. Initially I couldn’t think about my children navigating this, was spending time on the floor as a hot sobbing mess! They, however, rallied round ‘me’, gave me love, tenderness and understanding. I will be forever grateful to them that when I was (for want of a better word) weak, they were incredibly strong. As time passed (just shy of 3 years now since separation) I knew FW wouldn’t be able to manage his relationship with them. I was a good spackler! True to what I thought he blew up his relationship with middle daughter early on because he’s such a demanding wanker…. She saw through his bullshit and said ENOUGH. He has never sincerely tried to right his wrong with her. Youngest daughter gets married this year. I’m giving her away. FW is not invited even though she sees him occasionally. Her words to me after telling him that he was not invited ‘yeah mum he didn’t care’…….. He. Did. Not. Care. How sad that I picked this poor excuse to breed with, don’t think I’ll ever come to terms with that or forgive myself! My son does see him but again occasionally but we do not speak about FW. It’s the unsaid rule. FW is not part of my life. Their relationship with him is theirs to own. Do I feel sad that they have a sorry excuse for a father….. Hell yes!

But they’ve got the most motherfuckingawesomemumma EVER! I know they feel this way about me because they show me. I’m very proud of them all. ❤️

This is a timely column for me right now. I’m babysitting my grandpuppy while my daughter vacations with her father, who stole my past (by deceiving me about his orientation) and stole my future (by stealing marital funds and secreting them away for 24 years in the off-chance he got busted).

No doubt about it, it really sucks. CL’s response is exactly right here, though: you neither encourage nor discourage your children. You support them from a distance in whatever they decide. In my case, that involves taking the puppy for a week.

And, remember this much: you put a lot of sweat equity into those kids. Whatever credibility you’ve built up with them — keep it close. Don’t squander it trying to do your ex some big favor with the kids. Daddy’s just gonna have to learn how to take his punches.

Anna – You’ve only been living on your own since March? Remained in the marriage for decades after you knew the truth about your ex-husband?

I’m guessing that he offered you and your children some benefits. Is it possible that he was/is a loving father?

His relationships with the adult children are apt to be complicated and evolving. Your focus should be on gaining your new life. It’s still early days for you.

I don’t know when a child realizes sexual orientation. I have gay friends who tell me they figured out they were gay at different times in their life. I don’t know about trans-gender either. I do know about prejudice, and moral judging, and minding other people’s personal business. I believe it is much easier now than it used to be to declare your orientation, but it still has to be incredibly hard to do. I never had to stand up and tell my nearest and dearest that I was a heterosexual woman, or when I knew. I did have to keep quiet about my beliefs and activities, and opinions until I was old enough to support myself. So, I agree the problem here is not that your ex is gay, but about his lying and inability to deal with his true preference. You had 4 children, evidence he had some interest in you sexually, and that would be confusing to anyone. The problem is he lied, he endangered your health, and he was a bad marriage partner.

My sons were 9 and 12 when I finally divorced their dad. I had to control my human impulses to trash their dad, especially when he was playing Disney dad and I was struggling to pay bills. But you are past that, your children are adults. They can, and will, make their own decisions. You were the stable, sane parent when it mattered the most. They will figure that out eventually, if they haven’t already. They probably also knew things about their dad you didn’t know or couldn’t see at the time. I was amazed at how much my kids had figured out. As my sons matured, their evaluation process matured, and their attitudes changed. Their dad died almost 2 years ago. I had to stay out of their grief, if they wanted to talk, I listened. I understand the urge to love your parent is powerful, no matter what. I struggled for years with loving my parents the way I thought I should, as opposed to how I actually felt. Sometimes when my sons were growing up, I struggled with how I could still love them so much, when I wanted to throttle them at the moment. Two opposing thoughts can exist at the same time.

You are not responsible for the way other people think or behave. You are only responsible for you. You already influenced your children when they were growing up. For better or worse, let them be. If they are adults, trust them to make decisions without your influence. Undoubtably, some will be good, some bad. When you made decisions, as an adult, did you blame or praise or even consult your parents? Remember that song, “sometimes the greatest gifts are unanswered prayers”? Sometimes the greatest gift you can give your children is silence. The ability to navigate life without your presence is the end game of good parenting.

Slight digression– I’ve noticed a tendency of cheater apologists– regardless of whether or not they’re white, straight, middle to upper class, etc.– to grub legitimacy by using a sort of “minority shield.” But as much as these arguments might seem politically charged, they’re typically just expressions of disordered thinking and personal issues which can affect anyone regardless of orientation. I sometimes hear arguments like the following which, at the very least, are guilty of shoddy logic:

“Well, it’s okay that s/he cheated because s/he’s gay and they were forced” to live a double life.”

Is that really true outside countries that criminally punish and persecute LGBT? And even then, wouldn’t it be better to marry an LGBT person of the opposite sex to put up a cooperative protective facade? If there’s any way for someone not to light another person on fire to keep themselves warm, isn’t that preferable?

Or

“It’s okay for hookers to take marital assets from married clients because sex workers are an embattled underclass and yada yada liberating to use their bodies as they choose…” Never mind if the victims of this are also minorities or poor or disenfranchised or that robbing consent from other people is always ungroovy and contrary to social justice no matter who does it or who the victims are, not to mention grossly unfeminist if the betrayed and embezzled parties happen to be women. As far as it being always groovy and liberated for women to use their bodies as they choose, as much as I hate Oliver Wendell Holmes’ eugenicist rulings, his quote on relative freedom is apt: “The right to swing my fist ends where another man’s nose begins.”

Yet I heard a self-proclaimed feminist lesbian (very white, raised middle class) who attended the last Zapatista Indigenous Women’s Summit in Chiapas before the pandemic complain bitterly about how the Zapatista women organizers barred sex workers from speaking at the summit. When I (also very white, raised middle class and not LGBT) brought up the point that the local sex workers in Chiapas generally service the Mexican military troops who were sent to suppress the Zapatista labor and indigenous land rights movement (ergo making troops more cozy in their role of occupying and suppressing), sometimes act as informants and also frequently peddle to married Zapatista men who pay with scant marital assets while their Zapatista wives work 20 hours a day to support families. Another thing to consider is that there’s a history of authoritarian regimes using sex workers to spread STDs to the political resistance. So, no, the Zapatista women didn’t allow what are essentially Vichy sex workers to speak. I’m sure it would have been different if the sex workers were speaking out on the violence and exploitation they endured instead of basically defending and promoting their profession.

The self-proclaimed feminist didn’t believe what I was saying until I dug up the documented history and research, then she just mumbled something about how monogamy was a blight and a manufactured construct. And I, of course, suggested that men who pay for hookers without the consent of their wives were embezzling and enforcing one-sided monogamy and what was stopping them from separating and living a sex pozzy poly life on their own? She said that these men can’t because the social norm demands they be married (among Zapatistas who so often defy social norms?) and that these men can’t afford divorce (so why are they blowing money on hookers?). I said that if the social norms demand it, then– due to reigning gender inequality that goes with patriarchal norms– their wives were under a far bigger gun to remain married to men who steal from them (therefore further disabling these women’s ability to divorce), betray them and expose them to potentially deadly disease.

Like someone on this page put it, the cheating apologia arguments all fall apart the second the issue of consent is brought up. The conversation devolved from there and I realized that when people make these arguments– especially when the arguments contradict their stated political beliefs– again the position typically isn’t even political but just a garbled expression of personal problems and disorders. Whenever I hear people making absurdly illogical arguments like this, my inner misanthropologist gets really curious about their backgrounds and FOO issues so I pried. True to form, the individual arguing the other side turned out to be a mess of contradictions who, despite having every educational opportunity growing up, remained financially dependent as an adult on both parents, including the father who abandoned the family for some side piece when she was 8 years old. She also seemed very emotionally dependent on her dad’s approval and seemed to reserve most of her scattershot resentment for her victimized mother as if she’d internalized her father’s abusive contempt towards her mother and, in a not-very-indirect sense, was siding with abusers. She also turned out to be casually pimping for a escort friend to supplement her own income and argued that, because the friend has a child with a serious disability, taking money from married clients was somehow justified (never mind if the clients’ own children were also disabled). She was also unable to maintain stable romantic relationships of her own through all of her adult life and tended to pursue heterosexual dabblers who were using her for some purpose (like the local hooker friend) and where there was no hope of long term relationships. In the end, I couldn’t detect much cohesive “feminism” or egalitarianism or logic in the way this woman lives or her views.

Considering the source of garbage arguments can be a pretty depressing or scary exercise most of the time but it at least clarifies things.

I can’t believe that even here we have the gay cheater defenders. I didn’t expect that. Why are so many straight women so obsessed with gay men that they will support them abusing women? Decent gay men absolutely do not support that. Fucking gross. It’s shameful. Some of you want to give men like my ex a pass because they also screwed men… then you are just as evil as he is. I cut out literal blood family over this shit, you people are nothing compared to that.

Late to the game, but two cents to add:

A person isn’t ‘illegal,’ even if their actions are. That’s a term used to dehumanize. We don’t even call criminals ‘illegal.’ The fact that OP’s ex was preying upon a person in a vulnerable position, however, is a red flag.
As a recovering chump, I am finally learning to consider how what someone else does affects me, rather than focusing on why they did it (and often empathizing/excusing them as a result). Is it acceptable to me? If not, what can I do? Intentions matter, and harm inflicted intentionally is likely far worse psychologically — but whether someone breaks your arm intentionally or accidentally, you’re still left with a broken arm. Whether or not it was truly an accident is yet another matter, and we all know liars lie. CL has helped me understand that cheaters have far more agency than we give them credit for, while simultaneously undermining ours.

Reading here has also made it clear that while there are many different flavors of FWs and serial cheaters, they all use the same playbook and they all suck. I am sorry for what the OP went through. David Sedaris wrote an aside in his diary about an acquaintance is gay and who married a woman, only deceived his wife for decades; Sedaris’ comment was something to the effect of, what a monster. Double lives are calculated and cruel and put unsuspecting partners at risk in every way imaginable. Cheating is abusive and destroys lives. There are no excuses or explanations for abuse that remove or minimize the harm to cheaters’ partners and families. A “closeted” gay man married to a woman willfully deceives her and feels entitled to use her as a wife appliance and take her life as a sacrifice to himself. He’s selfish, manipulative and abusive, same as all cheaters who feel entitled to do the same.

This issue does not diminish the extreme and institutionalized homophobia that is still very real and present in our country (and around the world). When the OP and FW were married, it wasn’t easy, and even today, it isn’t easy — especially depending on your family, religion, where you live, etc. It’s certainly not easier. (To be clear, I’m not excusing OP’s ex or trying to untangle his particular skein, and I know that many LGBTQ+ and individuals chose/choose not to deceive spouses about their sexuality.) It is ignorant and dangerous to deny the challenges and pressures that lead to people feeling the need to remain “closeted.” LGBTQ+ folks are too often vilified/made scapegoats and disproportionately face hate crimes and discrimination. Just read the news! Another chump noted the negative connotations in the letter and some comments, pointing out that being gay isn’t something to “cure.” Some of today’s comments seem to fan the flames of homophobia, which is disappointing. We’re anti-cheaters here… not “anti-gay” or “anti-illegal.”