Should The Kids Know About Dad’s Affair?
Once again therapist Lori Gottlieb gives terrible infidelity advice, answering the question, should the kids know about their dad’s affair? No, chump. Your PR duties are required until death.
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Much of CN sent the Universal Bullshit Translator Lori Gottlieb’s craptacular victim-blaming advice in the New York Times yesterday. My Husband Had an Affair, and I Divorced Him. Should Our Kids Know Why? (gift link). This isn’t the first time Gottlieb has run afoul of this blog. You can read more of her lousy advice (and UBT commentary) here, here, and here.
To sum up Gottlieb’s advice, the kids should not know about dad’s affair, because hey, you drove him to it. “He cheated” is your story. He might have a different story. So, quit playing the victim, and protect his reputation. Shit sandwiches (FOR THE CHILDREN) are delicious.
I’ll begin with my reaction to the chump, and then pass the baton to the Universal Bullshit Translator.
The dilemma
My ex-husband and I were married for 15 years. We separated nine years ago after he had an affair, and then divorced. We tried very hard to reconcile but were unable to, in part because I felt he never took responsibility for the affair.
Our two children are now teenagers. Several of my friends have insisted that one day I will have to tell my children that their father was unfaithful to me. They believe that our children won’t ever really know or understand their father and their own lives without that information.
It’s interesting how the chump distances herself from her friend’s advice. You can see the lengths she’s going to communicate I AM NOT BITTER! to Lori Gottlieb.
I disagree. Their father and I are cordial co-parents and the kids have not experienced a lot of conflict between us.
Right. Because you’ve preserved his entitlement. HE has not experienced a lot of conflict. But you appear conflicted about keeping his secrets or you wouldn’t be writing an advice columnist.
Together we celebrate holidays, attend their events, make decisions about the kids and present ourselves as a united front. Plus, the kids don’t ask about the divorce anymore.
What did you say before when they asked? Did you gaslight them with the best of intentions? Share the blame for his wandering dick?
On the other hand, I understand that people deserve to know the truth about the things that have profoundly shaped their lives.
Perhaps lying to the kids isn’t the best strategy.
My kids both struggle with anxiety and depression (as do I), and I feel like if I told them about their father’s infidelity, it would cause them to lose a trusted parent whom they both love very much. Moreover, their father would be angry at me for doing so, and it could cause a rift that puts the children in a much more contentious situation than the one they are in now.
Did it ever occur to you that keeping secrets, or having secrets kept from them, might be causing everyone’s anxiety? And the only person comfortable in all this is your ex?
What is the emotionally healthy thing to do?
If you wrote to me, I’d tell you to stop eating shit sandwiches. And if the kids ask again, I’d tell them the age appropriate truth without editorializing. “Dad had an affair. I chose to divorce, as a result.” Action. Consequence. No name calling.
Even if I don’t tell the children anything now, if they begin to ask questions when they are older, is it best to tell them the truth or can I continue to tell them what we have always told them: that their father and I fell out of the kind of romantic love that people feel in a marriage?
Why do people think the “falling out of love” narrative is comforting? It’s exactly the opposite. Instead of understanding that life has dealbreakers (action, consequences), we tell the lie that bad outcomes are nebulous and no one’s fault. Like weather. One day a Big Bummer Cloud descended on our marriage and we fell out of love!
Children are left with a huge sense of unease. HOW CAN I DEFEND AGAINST MALEVOLENT CLOUDS? Instead of learning, if I fuck up and abuse the people around me, my relationship will end.
How did Lori Gottlieb answer the should the kids know about dad’s affair question? With victim-blaming. Of course.
Now to the UBT.
In order to answer your question, you’ll need to define what you and your friends mean by “the truth.”
The truth is situational. There’s your whiny, scorned woman schtick and there’s his version of events. Guess which one I’m giving greater weight to? If you answered “I’ll take Patriarchy for $200, Alex, you answered correctly.”
You’re working from the assumption that your version of the end of your marriage is the one and only truth: Your husband’s betrayal — and his unwillingness to take responsibility to your satisfaction — caused the split. While your perspective is true to you, I imagine that your husband has his own perspective that’s equally true to him.
His dick didn’t wander. You made it wander.
Perhaps in his view, the two of you were in a precarious place even before the affair — maybe one or both of you had become disconnected, couldn’t communicate well, avoided bringing up issues that needed to be addressed, stopped treating each other with care, didn’t know how to deal with the impact of one partner’s anxiety and depression, or felt profoundly hopeless and lonely. The affair could have been his way of coping with what he saw as an already dying marriage.
Affairs are coping mechanisms! You were so awful he could only communicate his displeasure with a double life.
The UBT needs a coping mechanism to deal with Lori Gottlieb’s advice columns. From the UBT’s view, Lori couldn’t communicate well, so it stuffed her into the crushing mandibles of a combine harvester. That’s ethical, right? I mean, the advice was really lousy.
What’s that, Lori? You think combine harvesters are an unjust way to resolve conflict? Because it hurts to be extracted like shredded wheat? Well, that’s your truth. And a highly suspect “truth” at that.
Marital breakdown is nuanced.
In other words, the cause of most marital breakdowns is a nuanced web of two subjective narratives, both of which contain painful truths. So your question then becomes: If you share one of the causes that led to the divorce — the affair — would you also need to share all the other reasons the marriage didn’t work? And if you did, how would your children’s having this knowledge support their continued emotional well-being, which includes maintaining strong relationships with both of you without becoming the arbiters of which parent hurt the other more?
The truth is subjective. If the UBT shoves Lori Gottlieb into a combine harvester, Lori Gottlieb would have to share the reason for her injuries — her terrible advice. Should the reading public have to be the arbiters of this disagreement? Because these crimes are equivalent really.
Don’t call it secrecy. Call it privacy.
What your children need is honesty, but that’s different from unsolicited oversharing. Parents aren’t obligated to discuss their marital issues with anyone outside their marriage — including their kids. While secrecy can become toxic, privacy can be protective. If and when your children come to you with more questions about why you divorced, you can say something like: “There are always layers to a relationship that outsiders aren’t able to grasp, and there’s no easy answer that fully captures what happened between us. Your dad and I tried very hard to make things work. But we’ve agreed to keep the specific details between us. That said, I’m happy to talk as much as you want about the effect the divorce had — or still has — on you.”
I’m happy to talk about the divorce without any specifics! Let me express this in differential equations and shadow puppetry. Hey, I’m being honest. It’s not my fault if you cannot understand the subtle nuance of (d²y/dx²) + 2(dy/dx) + y = 0 or (xy² + x)dx + yx²dy = 0.
Of course, it’s possible they’ll hear about the infidelity from someone else,
Of course, it’s entirely possible they’ve known about the infidelity for years and are suffering because their Chump Mom doesn’t know, and this expresses itself as anxiety and depression. Which they could be relieved of if only an adult would be honest with them.
But nah, children never get introduced to affair partners, Lori. They never figure things out. Or have intuition. Children do best with secrets! Call it privacy! Is this uncomfortably similar to what abusers say to victims? Come into my ice cream truck. It’s private.
and if that happens, you can still be honest without oversharing. You might say: “Yes, that happened. And it was very painful. We tried to heal our marriage but ultimately prioritized becoming solid co-parents instead.” If they want details about the affair, you can reply, “If that information is important to you, I’d suggest asking your dad, since I feel like that’s his story to tell.”
Chump-o has no story to tell, and if she did, it wouldn’t be important. Mom is a very unreliable narrator. Hysterical and scorned as she is. The important thing is, we’re solid co-parents! Equal in that only-one-of-us-has-a-story-worth-believing kind of way.
Did you want to know about dad’s affairs, kids? No details!
He can use his judgment on what is or isn’t an appropriate level of detail, keeping in mind that sometimes the question the kids are asking might not be what they’re seeking an answer to. For example, questions like, “Who was the affair with?” or “Where did the affair take place?” might be their way of understanding core questions like “Didn’t you feel guilty that you were lying to Mom?” “Did you ever lie to us?” and “How do we know you’ll be honest from now on?” He might help them parse this difference by asking, “Do you know what you’re hoping to gain from knowing these details, or are you wondering more about how I could have done what I did and whether you can trust me?”
Dad is the only proper judge of what’s appropriate to tell you. I would poison you with my lived experience. Which cannot be trusted.
Silent suffering is the path to healing.
At the same time, be sure to reflect on the intention behind any marital information you share, either now or when your kids are adults. While your friends insist that disclosing the infidelity would help your children know their father and understand their own lives, I’d suggest a different framing: One motivation behind sharing the infidelity might be to fulfill a wish for you to have your suffering acknowledged. There may be a righteous part of you (or the friends who love you) that wants the kids to know that their dad was the bad guy who caused this mess and that you were the injured party who took the high road for the stability of the family, which you believe their father didn’t when he chose to have an affair. But this serves neither the children nor your own healing — and healing is your task, not your children’s, to manage.
God forbid your children know you took the high road. You know what says I took the high road? Shutting up. You only BELIEVE you’re the injured party because of dad’s affair. That’s an erroneous belief. Madness. Affairs are destabilizing to the family?! It would be embarrassing to utter such a moronic thing. So, really, shut up. It’s for your own healing. And best for your children.
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Your Friday Challenge is to leave a comment at the NYT or tell CN how you told the kids about a parent’s cheating. Or share your story if you’re the child of a cheater. How did secrecy improve your life?
Thankfully I didn’t have to break the news to our 3 kids (then 11, 16 and 18), because it was them – thanks to an iPad synched to their mother’s iPhone – that discovered the cheating and then told me. Fundamentally though, don’t lie to your kids, keep things age-appropriate and remember that you aren’t responsible for your Ex’s PR.
Winston Churchill used to say something along the lines of secrets (AKA the truth that you are trying to withhold) being accompanied by a “bodyguard of lies.” He wasn’t talking about the effects of infidelity, but he had a point.
LFTT
I admit I was a little relieved that, like you, the decision about how to inform the kids and what to tell them was taken out of my hands because my daughter figured it out a short time after D-Day. Of course I’m not happy there was anything to know since it was awful for the kids but it foiled any potential attempt on FW’s part to accuse me of “alienation.” He and the greedy AP get all the credit for that (the emails were mostly her plying to be taken to overpriced bars and bistros and on expensive dirty weekends).
After I explained how my daughter smelled a rat and, on her own and before I told her anything, sleuthed out online evidence of dad’s affair, a therapist told me that, in her experience and her colleagues’ experiences, teen girls often sniff out parental affairs, sometimes even before the chumped parent does.
At first I assumed that my daughter was just taking after her grandmother and great-grandmother in terms of having uncanny “prescience.” Seriously, my mother– who was never one of those finger-pointing “Karen” types– once helped police catch a rapist and murderer because she saw someone at a gas station who gave her chills about a half hour before he committed the crime and immediately made a sketch of the guy from memory. I never even heard the story until twenty years later when a police detective called in order to return the sketch they used to identify the killer who had just died in prison. My grandmother also awoke in the middle of the night screaming about a sinking ship at the very moment the Andrea Doria collided with the Stockholm off the New England coast.
But, nope, turns out the cheater-intuition isn’t particular to my daughter or especially unique. But it certainly is interesting and makes a certain amount of sense from the “maternal instinct” perspective. Because I tend to lean to Richard Wrangham’s theory that monogamy (or at least the hypocritical preference that partners be monogamous) is hardwired in humans, I can see an evolutionary advantage to girls developing sensitive “f*ckery” radars from a young age that, in adulthood, might be expressed as parental protection against threats to family survival, including so-called “mate guarding.” Except, unlike adult chumps, I imagine daughters’ love for their parents, even if powerful, isn’t blinded by romantic feelings so they might not have such a strong tendency to go into denial about what their intuitions are telling them.
I also remember how a high school friend was the one who busted her mother for cheating. Then the twelve year old niece of my cousin’s evil FW stepmother was the one who busted the latter and reported it to my cousin who blew the whistle to his dad. Definitely a “thing.”
Another possibility: the culture. Hypervigilance is a common survival strategy in disadvantaged groups. Like women. Like POC. Because we operate from an (unfairly) power-down position, we must pay more attention to behavior of the “ruling class” or risk damage. The ruling class (men, whites, whatever) don’t need to pay attention to us as we are (allegedly! grin!) not a threat.
My poor daughter told me after D day that years ago she had unexplained thought daddy was cheating. She was only in elementary school!
Several of my adult children later told me they thought there was something wrong with me, because I was being kind of passive aggressive with FW. My oldest son apologized to me after FW confessed because he felt so bad thinking I was being kind of mean to him, but after we talked and I explained I had a feeling he was cheating and he just kept lying and denying it, and that is why I was acting all pissed off with FW. My son told me he’d never forgive himself for that and I told him “NO! This is all on the FW for lying and deceiving us. Gaslighting us for months. In NO WAY are any of us responsible for our reactions to something we didn’t even know was going on. You forgive yourself right now, because I do! You have nothing to feel shame or guilt over. Nothing!”
See the damage infidelity causes.
It sure does. In my case, by being unable to trust any man enough to marry. I was afraid I’d pick a cheater and an alcoholic.
Well, if I’ve learned anything from this site, it’s that there are worse things than being alone.
Those budding, brilliant, supra-rational protective instincts. On the one hand I’m sorry this made her suffer. On the other hand, I think this is a fortuitous sign that she’ll always have an extra layer of protection.
Many years ago I heard something on NPR about a lesser known theory of Nobel prize-winning physicist Roger Penrose. I can totally understand why this was a “lesser known” theory because it was really out there and perhaps his publicists were worried it made Penrose sound like a nut.
But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t onto something. Penrose surmised that there are cells in our brains that have quantum function– specifically microtubules– that act like subatomic singularities or space-time “wormholes” through which information from the past, present or future might “leak.” He used this to explain the sense of “deja-vu” or prescience that some people experience.
Maternal instincts in a nutshell, right? Maybe it’s not Psychic Network voodoo mystical bs but plain old physics? 😉
Yeah, a therapist told me the same.
Did your daughter ever say why she got suspicious?
I actually have had experiences like your grandmother did- two cases of knowing instantly that a complete stranger was a pedophile or a rapist and finding out later that I was right. I have had that feeling a number of times but it was only confirmed in those two cases.
That one about the Andrea Doria gave me chills. I only had one dream that upon awaking I knew to have shown me something real, and again, it was about a predator. The dream gave me the name of the predator, but I was never able to find him or verify if he existed. I still wonder about it. If I could have found him, could I have prevented something terrible? I’ll never know.
One time, I was in my college’s library, and I was waiting for the elevator to go up to my favorite study area (on the theory that elevators are safer than stairwells.) There was a man standing there waiting too, and when the elevator came, I looked at him and had a strong feeling that I shouldn’t get in the elevator with him. And I didn’t.
Would something bad have happened if I had? Probably not, but I always trust strong feelings like that.
I totally believe you! See my comment above about physicist Roger Penrose’s quantum brain theory regarding prescience and “uncanny” instinct.
HoaC,
Out of all of us, it was my youngest daughter (then 11) who first felt that something was “off” about Ex-Mrs LFTT’s behaviour.
LFTT
Our daughters have very sensitive antennae.
I filed after D Day and we tried reconciling while the motion slowly moved through Covid-delayed court calendars. It was awful: I thought I was being all noble, protecting the ex in order to shield my 3 daughters, late teens. But they DID know: my youngest overheard a late night conversation, and kept it to herself for 18 months.
After D Day number 3, he moved out and I told my daughters the truth, but by that time all 3 of them already knew. They were so relieved to stop carrying on their OWN secret that they knew all along. We could finally talk about it and they could tell me how proud they were for my divorcing him. The secrecy caused damage we are still working to undo, but the truth brought us so much closer. It also reaffirmed their handle on reality everytime he gaslights and lies to them.
It was so freeing to stop telling lies to protect a liar. There is so much strength in the truth.
“…I feel like if I told them about their father’s infidelity, it would cause them to lose a trusted parent.”
I want to scream.
HE IS NOT TRUSTWORTHY. They SHOULDN’T trust him. That is HIS doing.
Telling children to trust someone they should not is disabling their ability to discern, a critical tool in the life skill toolbox that needs to be in top working order.
Animals HONE their instincts. Too many humans teach their young to DENY them.
And keeping secrets about the FACTS of infidelity is a prime and tragic example of that.
If I promote someone as safe and trustworthy who is not, that makes ME unsafe and untrustworthy, and then my daughter would have NO parent she can trust.
See how that works, idiot cheaters and side pieces? No? Well, I’m not surprised. Because if you understood how healthy relationships work, you wouldn’t be cheaters and side pieces.
Children need parents, caregivers, and adults around them who are safe and trustworthy. Cheaters and side pieces are neither.
TRUST AND SAFETY are the essential elements of a healthy relationship of ANY kind.
What my daughter knows she was told through our family therapist, who advocates telling the truth and not lying to her. She asked me at ten years old if he had an affair and I said yes.
“Don’t do things you don’t want other people to know about” is a great thing to teach children. Got that, cheaters and side pieces?
Sick families keep secrets and pretend things are fine when they are not, and I’ve learned not to do that with the help of excellent therapists.
“If I promote someone as safe and trustworthy who is not, that makes ME unsafe and untrustworthy, and then my daughter would have NO parent she can trust.”
I laid out my long story above. But yes, this part is important to remember. My daughter askerd me about the AP, and I was so stunned and unpreared that I didn’t give the best answer. I waffled “I dont want to lie to you, but that means we shouldn’t discuss this topic becase it is between adults”. Thing is, I would later find out that she already knew. So had I tried to cover for him? I would have let her down. She already didn’t trust him, and now she wouldn’t trust me either. And to be fair to me, the only reason I would have wanted to cover for him was to avoid HIS anger, I was still so afraid of him. By then, I had found CL/CN and knew that not lying to your kids was the right way to go.
Cheaters and side pieces think what they’ve done is no one’s business. They are completely oblivious to the fact that infidelity forces ungodly irreconcilable loyalty issues and baffling situations that create bayonet wounds that can’t be closed.
BTW, the cheaters and side pieces are the idiots….NOT their victims and others affected, who are forced into figuring out how to handle the mind-bending complications and ungodly issues created by their stunning self-centeredness.
Correct-that parent has done things that are not trustworthy. They have already lost that person.
Thank you. A cheating parent is not a trustworthy adult, and a child should not trust them. I learned that to my detriment when I accidentally discovered my photographer father taking illicit photographs of my high school classmates. (Just the females, of course.) His first reaction was to try to blackmail me into keeping quiet with, “I know a secret of yours you wouldn’t want getting out.” I very quickly figured out that any secret of mine was one I was willing to accept responsibility for if it came out. So Dear Old Dad escalated. He bought out a Smith & Wesson, and while not exactly pointing it right at me, he told me he’d kill himself if I told anyone and it would be my fault, that I would have ruined my mother’s and sisters’ lives. I caved. I have carried that for the last 50 years, while my father just carried on as usual.
A parent who will cheat on his partner will also cheat in other ways. He’ll cheat the IRS, he’ll embezzle his child’s college fund (ask me how I know that) and he’ll raid his child’s bank accounts to finance those affairs.
I know my mother knew about one of the affairs; with a classmate of mine who had just turned 18. But I don’t know if she ever knew about the other stuff, and I was afraid to tell her.
Secrets don’t benefit the children. My mother was always angry, and I thought it was because I was such a awful kid. Years later, I understand that my parents were always angry at each other; they just took it out on me. For the love of fuck, please tell you children — in an age-appropriate way of course.
Yours is the most powerful argument for telling kids the truth. What horrifying coercion.
🙁
Oh Ruby, that is an awful story and I’m so glad you shared it. And that your survived your childhood, a cheating fuckwit, and are here bravely telling the truth of your life. I am in the middle of a divorce and your story gives me courage. God bless the truth-tellers.
I’ve been very careful with what I tell our daughter. Everything I say to her I run by our family therapist first, who has been our family counselor since I was pregnant. She is the living custodian and guardian of the truth. She fired Traitor Ex as client not long after DDay. I still see her on my own and also with my daughter.
We are in our eighth year post DDay. Though the so-called marriage did not survive our living-custodian-of-the- truth family therapist has proven to be even more invaluable in a way I could not foresee.
Cheaters like to rewrite history and blame the victim. Traitor Ex does no professionally guided screening of what he tells our daughter and tells her a lot things which are not even close to the truth factually. Lying about where he lives. Denying we were getting divorced when she asked him directly, more than once. Lots of justifying, blaming, and history revision. Whenever my daughter comes to me with things she heard from him which I know are complete horseshit, we discuss and correct it in counseling with our beloved trusted family therapist, who knows THE truth. In this process, he has only dug his grave deeper and deeper, on his own with his own words and actions, all by himself solidifying his status as a profoundly dishonest person.
indeed, in the very last session with the very expensive and very good co-parenting therapist he badgered me into going to with him said to him, “Your dishonesty is profound.”
The same co-parenting therapist praised Daughter, the child, in a session with Traitor Ex for being “straightforward, direct, and not sugar-coating”. While he, the adult, again got
called out for lying lying lying.
(I don’t like the currently popular usage “my” truth. It sounds like “opinion.” I say “the” truth, which means a statement of facts not subject to interpretation.)
My FW also continues to lie post divorce and tries to play victim with the kids especially the girl! However they know he’s a liar so his gaslighting does not work as well on them now. No regrets here that I told them the truth.
“I want to scream.
HE IS NOT TRUSTWORTHY. They SHOULDN’T trust him. That is HIS doing.”
THIS. Cheaters construct their whole LIVES around lies, so their gaslighting doesn’t just affect the spouse—it’s a whole family shit-show. While I inched slowly away to achieve total no-contact, he’s still an active part of my 3 daughters lives. (now 28,26,24 years old). He pretends to them he never cheated, pretends he doesn’t have multiple girlfriends, pretends he isn’t seeing a 35 year old. He lies to them about EVVVVVVERYTHING. And he’s stupid and sloppy about his lies.
There is strength that THEY draw from knowing the truth and being able to discuss his lies amongst themselves. Knowing the truth allows them to recognize the lies. They’ve set lower expectations now. They don’t believe anything he says, and as a defense mechanism, they’ve turned him into a joke. “Okay, sure Dad, whatever you say, Dad (eye roll).”
It’s a hell of a lot healthier when you can shield yourself from manipulation because you know the full deal.
This woman is getting paid to spew utter misogynist nonsense. I had never heard of her before. I am enrage ! HAHA. “Help your husband with his image management!” Utter crap. I did that for so long and I miss it not at all. Our whole marriage I had to spackle and help him seem like a decent human to the world. He is not. And I don’t have to care anymore! One of the aspects of freedom. But my kids were introduced to her as “friend” and I screamed “that’s his girlfriend” and he got angry at me.. anyway. That was all a long time ago but YES secrets cause severe anxiety. And other health problems. This poor woman has been working for her ex for long enough, making him look like a good guy. I hope someone directs her here. That buried truth inside her can finally be set free. She’ll probably gain years to her life.
I have my suspicions about why this woman is getting paid to spew this particular nonsense and I think it’s the same reason that Times, New Yorker and New York Mag reviewers did a big bully pile up on CL and novelist Sarah Manguso for daring to suggest that cheating (and coercive control, which is graphically described in Manguso’s Liars) are “real” domestic abuse.
In any event, it’s been a trend at the Times since at least 2014 when the Gallup poll came out showing that, of a list including 19 major social and political controversies in the US, most of the public listed adultery/infidelity as more “unacceptable” than anything else, including abortion and human cloning. In fact, that years poll showed that approval for infidelity had signifantly decreased in the past few decades.
The NY Times’ editorial reaction to the poll was hilarious and nearly frothing in outrage (very much like the Times, NY Mag and New Yorker responses to Liars). Whatever editor wrote this bit of swill quite falsely tried to argue that the public response was proof that dangerously puritanical religious fundamentalism (dog whistle for “domestic terrorism”) was afoot in the US. But this was bs proven by the fact that the same respondents were showing greatly increased approval for things like gay marriage and unwed cohabitation.
So why were the Times and other mainstream media sources trying to “wag the dog” about infidelity and artificially sway public opinion? I did a bit of a rant about it yesterday that seems appropriate to repeat (there were some other comments in response to the remarks below that are also interesting so check the thread):
Compared to the Times’ increasing apologism towards cheating and retreat from past feeble and infrequent acknowledgements that coercive control might kinda sorta be “real” abuse, this bland eight year old series on marriage and divorce seems quaintly reasonable. I mean, gee, one guy even says something about cheating being grounds for divorce.
Personally I think the openly pro-cheating tone shift in the Times in the last decade or so isn’t surprising because, rather than being an actually liberal “paper of record,” according to Noam Chomsky and others, it’s always been a gatekeeper for corporate and oligarchic power which is really more about herding mainstream progressives towards the most lame, ineffective and self-sabotaging political positions and expressions of liberalism possible in order to keep them from upsetting the corporate/oligarchic apple cart.
It’s a long argument but I think this reflects an extreme shift of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands in the last few decades to the extent that feudal hierarchy is pretty precisely equivalent to ape social hierarchy and ape rule = rape rule.
In that sense, promoting cheater apologism has the weird strategic value of appearing “liberal” on the surface while being the reverse in practice. In other words, it looks like a groovy departure from traditional “family values” moralism but, if you think about what actual “traditional” marriages were in the past, it’s about men doing whatever they want (departing from “family values”) and women remaining chaste and silent or else.
Because cheater apologism is currently being promoted as “equal opportunity” in Western countries– as if women are being encouraged to cheat equally to men– I think a lot of progressives are confused. But that seeming egalitarianism smacks of typical authoritarian “incrementalist” strategy– a sex-pozzy, faux-feminist opening wedge to get the idea past the shallow mainstream liberal radar. Then, once securely in power and in control of the judiciary, authoritarians would unleash the usual two-tier system where any and all expressions of women’s “sexual liberty”– even the good, egalitarian kind– would be sanctioned while men would enjoy far more latitude.
At the moment the next “increment” in the two tier trajectory is clearly happening through defunding all government advocacy and protection of women’s rights and things like, say, pardoning domestic violence convictions for celebrities like Mel Gibson. Simply making it easier for men to shrug off rape and domestic violence charges goes a long way towards creating conditions under which men are freer to enforce one-sided monogamy– basically police against women cheating or leaving bad marriages to form better relationships while doing whatever they want themselves.
I’m not making an argument that women should be able to cheat as an expression of liberation but actually the opposite. I think a major thing standing in the way of this “incrementalism” is defining most cheating as domestic abuse regardless of who’s doing it.
All of us kids were well aware of our mom’s affair.
Mainly because she was sleeping with our live-in (male) nanny 😳😳😳
Ouch!
My kids were already young adults after D-Day 2 when I separated and flew out of state for a little while. But they needed to know where I was and why I was not with their dad.
Since it was their dad who royally messed things up by continuing and intensifying an affair I had caught him in the year before (when I *hadn’t* told our kids), I asked him to be the one to break the news to them. He spoke to both of them on the phone as they were both long distance from him.
Then, because I couldn’t trust him to tell the truth I followed up with a letter explaining why I left as soon as I learned he had spoken with them.
Since we were all adults by then I am glad it went down this way. The kids were shocked and saddened but very supportive of me. It would have been so unfair to them to not hear from both of us, right away.
If you love your kids, you will not lie to them. Like the FW did. Of course, it has to be age-appropriate. My kids’ dad cheated their entire lives. They never had a responsible, respectable dad. They grew up with a terrible role model, but did not know. I discovered the lifetime of cheating once they had all finished college, in their 30s, had careers and were all adults, so I didn’t have to mince words. It helped explain the long history of childhood and adolescent depression and anxiety, why mom (workng professional) was always there for them, but not dad, etc. So, yes, of course they need to know. I chose to not be complicit in lies and have never regretted it. So I do not lie to anyone. I do not give everyone the whole, long tale of his countless years of betrayal or how he cheated with the wives of friends, or purchsed the servces of prostitutes, or his penchant for criminals and alcoholics. Only a few close friends know that level of detail–not everyone needs to know that level of detail. Adult kids will find out or ask if they want more detail. I answer all the questions truthfully. For me, and I know it is different with young kids–they were horrified at seeing who he had cheated with. The low-class, unattractive drunks, and so on. They were just disgusted at who their dad had gotten drunk with, took to his hotel room, etc. They saw photos or videos online and were ashamed their dad had done all of these things with all of these patheticpeole. I didn’t need to go into detail. Don’t lie to your kids. Be a good role model. Teach them by example to do the right thing.
The letter writer probably rationalizes that lies of omission are not “real” lies, which of course they are.
Absolutely. Spot on. Lies of omission are lies. The FW was master at lies of omission…some of my faves were…”I just took her to the aquarium.”
Omitted: It was part of a 3-state road trip.
Or: “We just watched CNN on the TV togther.”
Omitted: We were both drunk, and in my hotel room.” (It is possible the TV was on at the time, yes)
Lies of omission to kids are real, abusive lies. You are so right. Please love your kids and do not lie to them.
When kids are suddenly cast into a heaving ocean of uncertainty and lies and secrets, the kind and ethical thing is to be a person they can trust to tell them the truth, so at least they have one rock they can rely on.
I only recently found out, long after they both had passed away, that my dad had affairs. I never knew! I wish my mother had told me. Perhaps I wouldn’t have unconsciously reenacted their dynamic in my own life if she hadn’t “protected” me. She actually did a disservice to herself by not telling me, and also set me up to meet the same fate by not telling me the truth. I think about my mom and her silence a lot these days.
My mom was a first class “eggshell walker”. I don’t blame her for my fate, as I know I could have left. But maybe if that hadn’t been modeled for me I might have left at the first sign of shittiness from the FW. Well, my kids saw me walk on eggshells for years, but at least I eventually left. They hopefully will not normalize it like I did.
Chumpty Dumpty said: “I only recently found out, long after they both had passed away, that my dad had affairs. I never knew! I wish my mother had told me. Perhaps I wouldn’t have unconsciously reenacted their dynamic in my own life if she hadn’t “protected” me. She actually did a disservice to herself by not telling me, and also set me up to meet the same fate by not telling me the truth. I think about my mom and her silence a lot these days.”
I second this. My mother told me my father was not faithful when I was driving across country, and I cried for 2,000 miles. Many things that did not make sense suddenly clicked into place. My father was the fun father and Mom was the taskmaster and often stressed and angry, so to us Dad was good and Mom was always mad. The perspective of a child. When Mom told me what happened, I had to go back and re-write my childhood with this perspective. It was very painful.
Please tell your children the truth. Telling a child that the fading of romantic love is why the marriage ended seems like something that will terrify children. What happens to them if parental love just fades one day?
After Dday the thing I longed for more than anything else was the truth. Because the truth is your compass as you navigate life. OP: your children need to understand their own lives in order to navigate them and they need the truth to do that. Just as you wouldn’t send your kids out into the world with a faulty compass that would get them lost, they need to know what constitutes true north and what does not. Also, when their father lies to them, they will think it is because they are somehow unworthy and not because he is a liar and just doing what liars do.
This buried stuff rears its ugly head generations later. ex MIL bought into this line of victim blaming faux therapy BS and never disclosed the serial cheating, and final affair that led FW exFIL to abandon the family for good.
Guess how this played out? FW was always uncomfortable around the crap dad but turned into a serial cheat himself, and the elder FW continues to gaslight HIS AARP age son! Ex FIL now denying he ever cheated and paint me as a harpy shrew who deserves nothing which is disturbing advice because FW needs to pay me child support!
Gross and avoidable if his mother actually told the truth years ago. Don’t lie to your own kids, chumps
Things have a way of coming out, one way or another. Phone calls or conversations get overheard, texts are sent to the wrong numbers, unknown relatives show up via DNA testing, etc.
I won’t be surprised if someday, a half brother or sister shows up. My dad died in 2009, and it hasn’t happened yet, but it could.
My Ex-FIL also apparently cheated for years, and most likely so did ex-MIL. FW didn’t find out until long after the fact (her parents separated when she was in high school and completed divorce a few years later.) When she found out she at least acted disgusted. I don’t know if she was already cheating on me by that point; no proof, but suspicions. Sometime after Dday and things were blowing up and looking like she was going to lose her job, she actually complained to me that her Dad got to have an affair with no consequences! But in the end she didn’t suffer any consequences. Somehow she wasn’t fired (despite the affair taking place at work), didn’t lose a single friend, divorce was her idea, and we live in a no-fault state so she walked away with half our retirement accounts and gets a hefty check from me every month. I know part of the reason I want to tell my kids is so that she might finally suffer some consequence for her actions, which makes me really question whether the good motivations are suspect.
They should know if for no better reason than they need to know who they’re dealing with.
When my brother and I were in middle school, my mom didn’t tell my dad we were staying home that day. He came home during his lunch break, and my brother and I quickly hid in the nearest room to avoid getting yelled at for not being at school. We stayed silent as we overheard everything happening outside. After it was over, I was shaking and in tears, while my brother was visibly upset and began investigating the situation.
When my mother got home, we told her everything. She explained that it’s just something men sometimes do and mentioned how my grandfather similarly treated my grandmother, adding that they are still together. Unfortunately, the evidence my brother uncovered led to him getting blamed and beaten, marking the start of a rift in our family relationship. My mom said she would talk to Dad about it. I believed her then, but in hindsight, I don’t think she ever did.
After that incident, I could never look at my dad the same way again. Whenever he came home late from work, I felt anger towards him. Every female coworker he introduced us to I hated with a passion. My mom and dad began sleeping in different bedrooms, and when everyone was home, our family spent most of the time separated. I moved out the minute I turned 18 with FW. Life lessons were learned.
My dad failed to understand my hostility while my mom kept her head in the sand. In the end, I wrote his obituary a few years ago, and my mom instructed me to use the words “loyal” and “stoic” to describe him. I still don’t agree with the loyal part.
What a terrible experience for you and your brother. I’m so glad I didn’t find out that way, as a witness.
There’s no such thing as “one” lie. There may be such a thing as the “first” lie, but there’s no such thing as “one” lie. All lies are born pregnant.
You’re absolutely right. You then have to tell more lies to help support the first lie. If that goes on long enough, lying becomes a way of life, of dealing with anything difficult. Curb Your Enthusiasm made the snowball effect of lies seem funny, but IRL it’s pretty tragic.
The therapist said that we should sit down together and discuss how “we” were going to tell our adult children that we are divorcing. I found it to be surreal that the therapist expected me to sit down with a certified liar and cooperatively craft a narrative.
For once I decided to save myself from further trauma. So instead of stating my opinion or pushing back in any way, I nodded along in agreement and then told our children why I was divorcing their father.
Of course it was spun into one of my countless betrayals… of him!
I believe in telling the truth from the start — age appropriately. This isn’t quite the Friday challenge… but I wish the advice asked could read this. If I felt compelled to share that news 9 years later and after my son was in his teens, I might say “look, I know you’ve asked me a lot of questions through the years about your dad and me and why we divorced. I’ve decided to let you know the whole truth. And the reason is that I want you to understand that this happens and can happen to anyone — personally, I wasn’t prepared for it and was naive. Your dad chose to have an affair with his coworker. He was unapologetic and left me for her. It wasn’t that we “fell out of love.” I didn’t do anything to cause this. And it took a lot of lying on his part to get away with cheating — I wasn’t aware and when I finally discovered it, that’s what ended our marriage. I’m telling you now because cheating is not a behavior in a vacuum. If you are in a relationship with someone who cheats on you, be aware it takes a series of lies and deliberate actions. Someone cheating on you is not your fault and you are in no way required to accept the behavior, feel obligated to trust them again or forgive them. I also want you to know that cheating is devastating to the other person. I was devastated. I trusted your dad. I hope you will never do this to anyone either. It is perfectly ok to want out of a relationship. But if that happens, then you end the relationship first, before moving on to anyone else. I know you must have a lot of questions, please know I’ll answer all of them as best I can and you are welcome to ask anything. I love you.”
Amen regarding counseling children not to cheat or accept cheating as adults. Frankly I think cheating is a prescription for misery for everyone involved, even cheaters and even if they don’t perceive it.
The thing about living a double life is that true “zero empathy” psychopathy– if it even exists– is pretty rare which means that most people who double deal will end up developing a self-exculpating system of rationalization (called “neutralization” in forensic psychology) that, over time, will send them further and further adrift from reality to the point that many end up batsh*t crazy even if still marginally able to function.
To quote the Churchill quote of another commenter, “Every lie requires a bodyguard of lies.” Furthermore, the snowballing crop of lies to cover for the lies before and before have to take up massive amounts of mental bandwidth.
I’ve never been an Ayn Rand fan but one book she wrote after a decade caring for a disabled husband (in case that ameliorated her somewhat wobbly humanism), “Philosophy: Who Needs It?,” makes some interesting points. Rand posits that the human mind operates on the GIGO principle– old computer slang for “garbage in/garbage out.” She argues that those who program their brains with either false or contradictory precepts– say, an “eye for an eye” one day and “turn the other cheek” the next according to whatever best serves their interests– will quickly start to spew out “garbage” in the sense of misery and emotional instability.
I believe this is true because every double-life-living, self-justifying, victim-blaming liar I’ve ever known, no matter how materially successful they might be on paper, was a walking abortion– prone to violent rages, bouts of psychotic despair, etc. And this had the expected effect on their relationships if not health (some really dark characters like Rupert Murdoch seem live long lives but end up looking like the portrait of Dorian Gray and can hardly be enjoying their dotage). Their kids often end up hating them and they often die emotionally alone even if surrounded by greedy beneficiaries.
It is not an enviable way to live and I would never want this for my children.
I believe I am witnessing (at a distance since I am nearly NC) this with FW. He’s successful in keeping jobs in spite of sneaking out. Been lying for decades so the narc is exceedingly good at it! His lies during false reconciliation became outrageous and even friends noticed the convoluted nonsensical BS he was spewing about his work. During the divorce he lied to attorneys and to the mediator. His lies to the kids nowadays are sloppy and obviously he’s spinning lies to GF and whatever other side pieces. It sounds exhausting to lie so much and I suspect he’s mentally unravelling
It’s what makes me question the popular theory that all mental illness is genetic because some people manage to drive themselves stark raving.
Did you ever see the old Coen brothers film Barton Fink? The film features several epic meltdowns by all sorts of characters who range from genuine master of the universe types to completely delusional and there’s really little difference between any of them (which I suspect might be one of the points of the film). Anyway, here’s one of the classic fraudster unraveling scenes (by a pretentious, plagiaristic screenwriter character): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVTqeesKKmw
This is a great dialog and voices all the points that need to be made very well. I am going to make sure I touch on these things when it comes time to talk to my daughter. I have not directly said that her father has cheated but we listen to podcasts and hear news items and when the subject comes up, I have made statements about cheating in general and how it is harmful to the other person and how one should act ethically in breaking off a relationship. She was a toddler when I got divorced and is very touchy about anything that could be construed as speaking against her dad, even something as objectively and factually as “your father has moved further away over the years” (and that I think is because that fact does hurt her when said out loud). She is 9 going on 10. I have done the age appropriate explanation about her father acting/doing things that were harmful and beyond being able to forgive/move past. This actually came up when she said something about how her dad said *I* didn’t want to stand by/help him through his unnamed issues — as if! He had also at one point used the gross euphemism of “dancing with other ladies” {gag}, and although sadly I thought she was too young at that point to hear the real deal, I did make a point of saying that was not what happened or that it was not that mild. I think at this point, I will have the above, more straightforward discussion when she is older and directly asks. For now, I don’t want to cross her personal boundary. From the more generalized discussions we’ve had (which can come in handy as friendship advice too), she knows that you should be able to leave a relationship that is not working for any reason, particularly when it is taking its toll on you, and can do so kindly and with the least amount of harm done.
I wonder if certain FWs are especially effective at grooming kids because they were always active cheaters and so therefore always knew that one day there might be a showdown where they’d have to weaponize their kids to control their chumped partners. The reason I think this is because FW in my case only flailingly attempted to groom (or really even pay much attention to them) after he started cheating which turned out to be way too late in the game to be successful at it. The kids– then tweens and a young teen– were simply annoyed and turned off by the antics.
But I have a close friend whose ex falls in the first camp. Her evil attorney ex had hidden his hooker habit from the start of the marriage and so I think sought to “groom” and weaponize their daughter from day one. Consequently my friend was forced to walk on eggshells with her daughter for several years after separation and divorce and couldn’t mention anything negative about her ex even to explain and contextualize his putdowns against my friend because her daughter would become very defensive. When her daughter was around eleven, my friend had to hide in the bathroom when telling me about what was going on because of the risk her daughter would run back to dad and report what she was saying. And since the ex is a skeavy, high-powered attorney, she always had to be very careful to avoid “parental alienation” accusations which her ex would have happily weaponized to wrest custody from her to punish her for leaving.
Coercive control expert Dr. Christine Cocchiola tells a very similar story about her ex– how he groomed, weaponized and tried to erode the maternal bond by putting mom down in front of the kids, playing victim, etc. Even reading about it makes me sweat and reminds me of how kids would be turned into informants against their parents in the former East German Republic.
But something started happening when my friend’s daughter turned about fourteen and dad’s pedestal started to crack. The daughter started hearing from her school friends how her dad was “kind of weird” and made them uncomfortable. She noticed how he childishly and selfishly collected expensive toys and then complained about money. She also started catching on to how churlish his putdowns towards mom were and how, as the daughter grew more assertive, he began trying to silence her with the same misogynist slings and arrows.
But by then the daughter had begun to understand what misogyny is and develop defenses against it. Basically the thing that began weakening dad’s weaponization and grooming and insidious psychological control (aside from his own functional alcoholism and pill habit making him more and more boring and spooky) was that my friend has always naturally been a big “sociopolitical skein untangler” and, furthermore, she’s incredibly apt, original and witty in how she analyzes everything.
So, like you, my friend was gradually arming her daughter with abstract wisdom about how the world works and how people operate that eventually exposed dad’s malarkey without my friend saying a negative word about him. But, knowing my friend, this was simply how she was always going to raise her daughter because that’s who she is. Consequently when the daughter started going sour against dad, the evil ex had zero grounds to make an alienation case and was helpless to do anything about it– other than completely overhaul his own character which he was never going to do.
In the end, I think what “wins” against abusive grooming of children isn’t just being the hand that rocks the cradle but whether the “rocking” is done with truth, a realistic perspective and healthy, non-hypocritical role modeling. The truth is just more interesting and her daughter developed a taste and a nose for it on her own.
I hope some of us are able to post comments on there calling out the BS
Thank you, CL, for taking this on. I clicked on the column thinking it was Philip Galanes’s column (I don’t read Gottlieb) and despite realizing it was Gottlieb’s, I started reading–but stopped when I got to the victim blaming “he has his own narrative” garbage.
I was browbeat into the “we grew apart” story by my ex, although I later told my son that people don’t get divorced after 35 years for such frivolous reasons, and that his father’s behavior was responsible for my divorcing him, and that I would tell him what it was if he wanted to know. He chose not to know, and I honored that, although I felt that I was enabling a relationship between my son and ex under false pretenses.
When my ex got involved with yet another woman, I told her what she could expect from him (he is a fetish crossdresser who fell down the trans rabbit hole), because I would have wanted to know. My ex must have thought that if I’d tell her, I’d tell my son, so he finally fessed up to that truth, although what he had to say about the divorce I have no idea.
Eating the shit sandwich of silence in order to protect one’s ex is never a good idea. Whatever the “narrative” of the husband and wife in Gottlieb’s column, the irrefutable fact is that the husband cheated on the wife, and the children deserve to know that’s why their mother divorced their father.
I couldn’t agree more that it’s much better for children to be faced with a clear line of cause and effect, one they can control in their own lives, than a nebulous “things go wrong” that will hang ominously over their own relationships.
“Eating the shit sandwich of silence in order to protect one’s ex is never a good idea. Whatever the ‘narrative’ of the husband and wife in Gottlieb’s column, the irrefutable fact is that the husband cheated on the wife, and the children deserve to know that’s why their mother divorced their father.”
👏 👏 👏 Well said!
Memorable words from Soviet dissident poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko:
Lying to the young is wrong… afterwards our pupils will not forgive in us what we forgave.
You should post that great quote at the NYT.
😉 Of course.
I agree with CL that kids should be told of the overarching betrayal that fueled the family being reconstructed (even if you reconstruct a better one which most chumps do). The kids do deserve the truth.
I guarded my Cheaters secret too well and too long and after he died, I learned it was SO MUCH WORSE than I knew before. Because I never told the kids that he moved away to be with Susan of Seattle, I got to a place where the only way I could tell them any of it was to drop a big ugly truth bomb when their dad was there to explain or defend himself – it would not have been a good look for me or a good way to help them in their grief.
I now wish I had told them more before he died.
Young adults (including mine) are, however rather smart and they may eventually put the pieces together. My daughter adored her dad and does not want to discuss his shortcomings but I think she did eventually discern where my silent contempt for him comes from. She is engaged and has brought up the issue of cheating with me and we discussed it in theoretical terms. It took everything in my mot to dump it was not the time/place.
So true…I hate the “falling in / falling out” language where love is concerned…it makes it sound like the most pivotal relationships of our lives are controlled by a Garden Fairy with a wand of magic dust. Yes, there is a “je ne said quoi” of limerence that lures us in, but at some point, our personality & intellect takes over.
I think the most important elements of faithfulness are the narrative we tell ourselves in our minds. Do we blame them? Do we value them? If I blamed my now husband everytime something went wrong, I would likely now have as much contempt for him as my dead husband had for me. My deceased Cheater was a very weak person who needed a scapegoat in life and I was it. I choose to not make my beloved a scapegoat for what annoys me.
oops, their dad is NOT here to defend himself
If I recall, you have a mountain of evidence right? To show your kids if you do tell the truth? I would not cover for FW even a dead one.
the truth is always better than not knowing – these issues could come back later in life – you should try to just state the case and not be over emotional to the kids – so maybe wait until you are past it enough to be able to talk about it without panic attacks but- your right as a chump is to be able to say the truth of what happened and not have to lie for your ex anymore
My kids too found out about it before i did – their dad tried to use them as accomplices- it was very obvious they caught on really fast….it just is what it is
Gottlieb has an agenda – either she is a cheater herself – and/or she caters to cheaters in her audience and thats what they want to hear.
She cheated on her first husband. She has written about her liberation from a bad marriage ad nauseum.
I wondered about that when I read the column.
I think they need to know because one way or another it’s going to come out. It’s impressive when it makes it all the way to the funeral but my experience of that population is that their character impairments bring it out into the light long before cremation options are ever discussed.
I grew up under that. I was definitely presented the “your father and I aren’t in love anymore” narrative any of the 20 or so times it looked like they were going to split up before they finally did. When later I found out that she had cheated on him with at least 3 different men (and that’s just who she copped to because there was evidence), it completely blew her narrative as full of half-truths and spin(the day she said “there is no truth” was a singular point in my development). My dad was not the perfect partner but he did not deserve that.
And he was never going to be. My mother is somebody that is nearly impossible to please with a significant history of untreated trauma, mental health, and substance abuse issues. She is an expert in spinning narratives and playing the victim. If my dumb ass was paying attention I would have learned all about the fruits of the Pick-Me Dance long before I ever got dropped off at the Discotheque in Fuckwitia.
Like I said, I grew up under the “I did nothing wrong-it was your father’s fault”, the spackle, followed by “I did cheat but it was his fault” deflection. And someone that to this day continues to take great pains to be PR for somebody that abused him. I personally have next to nothing to do with her. I need to protect myself because she sure as hell never did.
This is why I keep saying “A reckoning is coming for these people.” Even if this Gottlieb idiot is right (and really she should go back to making pinball machines and not shilling misogynist marriage advice), that day is coming for fuckwits with children. If you are putting huge spin on even bigger things, that becomes the expected response. They are going to notice how often that they play the victim-particularly as they get further into the world and realize how “not right” their upbringing or homelife are.
Speaking for myself, and Gods help me if I ever get cheated on again after getting to have kids…I’d want my kids to understand. Granted, I also have a very arcane need to be understood(for better or for worse.)
Have a Fuckwit Free Friday!
My 6 year old was a witness and was never the same. My daughter was born into it. I always talked openly ..My X was a bully and 37 years later, he still won the narrative with his money and bully tactics. Regardless of my truth telling, he “won”. I have not joined his cheering team and remain No Contact. So the truth was for me that my children know who I am and do not have to choose to stay with an abuser.Perhaps it will help them in their lives to honor vows and to be honest caring people. I don’t know anything except I saved myself from more harm so I could stay safe for my children…and my children will have to figure things out for themselves…
I’m constantly struggling about this. I have already decided that, if they ask, I will not lie to my kids on her behalf. They are entitled to know about her affair, how long it went on, and her behavior after Dday. They are entitled to know that their mother is a selfish, dishonest, and manipulative person. And I don’t consider that editorializing or name-calling; those are factual traits that must be present in a person capable of carrying on an affair. I hope that with forewarning, maybe they can recognize when they’re being lied to and manipulated better than I did.
I don’t know if telling them who the AP was is a good idea or not. They know him, but as far as I can tell he dumped her as soon as things came to light, and he got fired and left the church where everything happened, so there is not much chance of their encountering him in the future. I lean toward not, if only to spare them unwanted imagery.
My problem is that all of this is dependent on them asking. I was still pick-me dancing when she filed. I’ll never know if I would have found the spine and self-awareness to pull the trigger myself. So when they asked why we were getting divorced, the answer that felt most true and appropriate was “I don’t know. Your mother is doing it against my wishes, and I don’t know why.” They deserve to know, but does that mean it would be right to tell them, unasked? Learning this will hurt them, but so will learning that I kept it from them. Even though I have not and will not lie to them about it, they will probably feel as though I did anyway. As with all things in this mess, there are no good options, and I can’t tell when is the least bad.
You wouldn’t be informing your kids “unasked” because they did ask and you gave them an expurgated answer. Because shell shock makes your reaction understandable, I wouldn’t say you “lied” (certainly not regarding the bit of not knowing why cheaters do the weird things they do since no normal person can really understand disordered people) but instead “omitted.” In any case, their question remains unanswered to this day and it would be justifiable to revisit the initial question and answer truthfully this time.
I’m sure doing this would trigger more questions but there are age appropriate ways to answer all of them, including the identity of the AP.
In the case the AP held some important post in the church, is your concern about sharing the identity of the AP that it might damage your children’s sense of faith? I remember reading a quote from a Dominican priest that everyone’s image of God is based on their own fathers. So there’s an argument to be made that being stringently honest yourself– modeling the “light of truth”– could actually contribute to a rather positive idea of faith that cancels out the icky shenanigans of some hypocritical church figure.
Also if anyone endeavored to do some social research on depression and anxiety in children of divorce related to cheating or other forms of abuse, I’m pretty sure it would turn out that those who learned the real truth from a protective parent fare far better in the long run in terms of emotional stability and health than those who were kept in the dark or were only fed lies and distortions by an abusive parent. At least that’s what a lot of chumps here report.
Of course the first reaction is usually tears and heartbreak but this is the first step on a path to real healing. I always say I’m a “pain now” person rather than a “pain later” person and frankly I think my kids are the same. Lies would have destroyed them because this would have clashed with their very strong gut intuitions. And why would I want to make them doubt their intuition when this is the thing that will help keep them safer throughout their lives?
Personally, I believe a lot of chronic depression (if not caused by poor nutrition or lead poisoning or the wake of trauma) is when people fall into the chasm between the lies they’re told and what their guts sense is the actual truth.
If it helps, here’s the entire poem from Yevtushenko who probably knows what he’s talking about since he managed to not only physically but emotionally survive as a prolific dissident poet in the Soviet Union at a time when artists were being terrorized into silence and suicide.
Lies
Lying to the young is wrong.
Proving to them that lies are true is wrong.
Telling them
that God’s in his heaven
and all’s well with the world
is wrong.
They know what you mean.
They are people too.
Tell them the difficulties
can’t be counted,
and let them see
not only
what will be
but see
with clarity
these present times.
Say obstacles exist they must encounter,
sorrow comes,
hardship happens.
The hell with it.
Who never knew
the price of happiness
will not be happy.
Forgive no error
you recognize,
it will repeat itself,
a hundredfold
and afterward
our pupils
will not forgive in us
what we forgave.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko 1952
my daughter was living with us during covid, so she knew right away. i told her that i’d discovered X lying about who he was having dinner with (he presented the dinner as a work dinner) and that i also found a text from his AP stating “almost home. can i just say that i love you?”
i confronted X immediately and he admitted to the dinner and how they “shared their feelings for one another” and how he was “confused”. BTW he wasn’t wearing his wedding ring, so that was premeditated meet and greet, and he lies about everything. so i have no clue how far along the affair was in its trajectory, but it was an established affair. i mean, come on. workplace affairs involve a lot of small decisions and micro-moves and fucking in the bathroom.
next morning, i told my daughter that we had immediately separated then i called my divorce lawyer for the first consult. i told her the reason why immediately, and, because my son was away at uni, i just told him we had separated and were trying to figure out what to do next. i quickly told my son the reasons why when he returned from his school year.
but they were in their 20s.
both kids at met AP through work events, so they were shocked. AP was married and has young kids, and both my kids had also met AP’s husband at work events, too.
both kids live with me and are fully aware of X and his moves. he lies and withholds and tries to change the terms of the divorce, etc. etc. i’m open about it. the kids know.
FACTS.
This topic has caused me so much turmoil. There is so much talk out there in the world abouyt what kids should be told, and about things like parental alienation and I swear, sometimes it seems like Tracy is the only one that is spouting out sensible advice on these things.
I’ve explained my situation so many times, but the cliff’s notes version is that there was D-Day, and for “reasons”, he didn’t move out for 3 years. There was an epic pick me dance situation, but also I was frozen in terror to do anything. His affair had gone on for years BEFORE D-Day, but I was unaware at that point.
We told the kids the BS version of why we were divorcing. We”still love each other but we are no longer romanticaly in love. ” Blah blah blah.
Cut to a few months post his move out. AP is gone. He’s been on the dating aps, seeing lots of women. The kids know he dates. They’ve been told that is fine, that we aren’t together anymore and that is ok. One day I am out at a restaurant with my kid and they ask “Does Daddy have a friend named Samantha?” The air rushed out of my lungs, and tears sprang to my eyes, but I did my best to hide my shock. I asked why. They said that a long time ago, they saw him texting Samantha and whem they asked out loud “who is Samantha” he angrily SHUSHED them. And then left it at that.
I had not anticipated this question. And I had to think on my feet. I said something along ther lines of “Sometimes there are things that are between adults that kids should not really be part of. And this was one. And that I didn’t ever want to lie to her, and because I didn’t want to lie, and this was adult stuff, we probably shouldn’t talk about this further”.
Look..that was not perfect. But damn, I was not expecting it.
Later I would be twisted about that answer. Was that parental alienation? Should I have lied and said that Samantha was his cousin? A coworker? A wife of his frend? Should I have found some way to better cover for him?
But see, kids aren’t stupid. She knew there was a problem the minute he “shushed” her. And lter I would find out that she asked me tha qwuestion but she already knew the answer.
After he “shushed” her? She started spyin over his shoulder when she could. She caught all the pink heart emojis, and the “I love yous”. And that tween went to bed for I don’t know how long wondering what SHE should DO. Did I know? Should she tell me? Was she right about what she saw? What would he do if she told me? What if she was wrong?” Eventually she heard us having a fight at night, and she decided I must know. Then eventually she got the speech about him moving out nad that we “grew apart”.
But she knew. She knew the minute he “shushed” her for asking out loud “who is Samantha”? And if I had tried to cover for him in that restaurant, when she asked “Does he have a friend Samantha?” then I wold have been lying to her too.
That child will not speak to him now. And he pretends not to know why. And to be far, it isn’t entirely about Samantha. It is more about all his screaming/lack of emotional regulation. But sure, it is also about Samantha. Maybe she is angry that he betrayed her mother. But I also think most of it comes from the fact that as a tween, she laid in bed wonderinbg what to do about catching her father cheating. And what did HE do about that? Nothing. He knew he got caught, and he didn’t worry about what that did to her. Because addressing it would be admitting to what he was doing and he cared more about keeping his secrets.
So I am off the hook when it comes to “should you tell them?” HE told her. He just doesn’t realize it. (I truly think he forgt that happened? Or just thought that the “shushing” was enough and that his kid forgot all about that name on his screen?)
Also, based on her recollection, I think it is very possible she knew about Samantha before I did. She may have been alone wuith that secret for actual YEARS.
This makes me so sad. I feel like I can relate to your daughter because I took on way too much responsibility as a child. I can imagine how she must have felt carrying that secret and wondering what she should do to help her family. And he didn’t even care. Never thought to even have a talk with her about it, at the very least, or worry how it might be affecting her. That is heartbreaking. That’s just evil.
And that is the WORST. Sheeshus — your own child!
Comments made as instructed. I was pleased to see a lot of people were giving Gottlieb hell. What a vile response. The letter writer is being incredibly chumpy, but even that is not enough for these RIC scammers. She still has to be taken down a peg. This is a good case in point that your sacrifices will never be enough for cheaters and they’re apologists, so don’t even bother. If you step out of line even so much as to ask a question, you will be punished. Don’t do it, chumps. The truth hurts in the short run, but gaslighting your kids
hurts them longterm.
Exactly. It’s never enough. I saw comments over there about “but WHY did he cheat?” Of course, it must be her fault. That’s something I realized while going through my divorce, there was absolutely nothing I could have done right. There’s no point in interacting with them, might as well just drop the rope and let them fight amongst themselves while I move on with my life and look for better people to associate with.
My initial reaction on finding out about my (by then deceased) spouse’s infidelity was that I would limit disclosure to my mum, two trusted friends and a therapist and that my kids did not need to know. My eldest got it out of me within 24 hours (“something’s wrong, please tell me what’s going on”). I held onto the secret for a few weeks more but then told my youngest because I just didn’t want there to be anymore secrets in the household and also I had reached a point where I needed to share this with my wider friend group and did not want him hearing it elsewhere. Eldest talked to me a bit about his own sense of betrayal and youngest just gave me a hug when I told him and said he didn’t want to talk about it. Eighteen months on though and I think the three of us are in a better place as a family than we would have been had I tried to bottle it up as I had originally thought I could – principally because by not allowing it to be this toxic secret/shame, they get a sane, happy parent. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Oh boy, this article… I’ve been divorced for six years now. Whilst I was going through it all, I went to stay with my mother. She told me, (nice, tasty time to pick for it) that she had an affair whilst my brother and I were children, in Africa, and that he, the OM, was the “love of her life.” I’d had no idea, I was utterly shocked. She said my father hadn’t known, and both of them had decided it must end, because they didn’t want to break up two families. She told me she didn’t want me telling anyone else, including my brother. Who wasn’t born at the time. I’m six years older. Of course I did, and he and I had a long discussion, both of us remembering all sorts of things from our childhoods that had a bearing, both of us saying, of course, that was why… etc etc. My father was a fairly remote figure to both of us, and neither of us remember him ever standing up for either of us, he deferred to her in everything, including packing me off to boarding school when I was nine. I’ve always had this vivid memory of just me and her being driven a long journey, and ending up in a bungalow in the bush, and me mooching about alone in the garden. I’d thought it was a dream. But when I asked her if she’d been going to see the OM, taking me with her, she said, “fancy you remembering that. Yes”. Looking back over all my disastrous relationships, I can’t help but wonder if it’s linked, in conjunction with my father’s apathy towards his children. Even though I didn’t know it at the time. Perhaps I did, subconsciously?
The timing of telling you that seems so bizarre but I had that experience multiple times while going through it all. For some reason, everybody wanted to tell me about the affair they had or how their dad cheated on and abused their mom. Like it was supposed to make me feel better. It didn’t, it made me feel much worse and lowered my faith in humanity considerably. There were people I respected and liked that I could no longer stomach the sight of.
Your father was likely emotionally distressed even if he did not know exactly why and children pick up on it.
I was actually going to do this. I was going to eat the shit sandwich, say nothing bad about my ex, accept half the blame for the marriage just not working out, etc. because I didn’t want to damage my son’s relationship with his father. This was before I knew how creepy his secret sexual life was.
Then, I come home one day after going to the park to cry so my son wouldn’t see me and find he told our son that we were getting divorced, that my son had to understand how miserable he was and how miserable I had made him, and that he needed the chance to be happy, finally.
It was such a kick in the teeth. I couldn’t even have the normal dignity of sitting down with the kid to tell him we were getting divorced. I went and laid down on my bedroom floor and cried. I stopped eating at that point. But I also started telling my son everything I found out about his father. Why would I lie to preserve my ex’s dignity? He didn’t give a damn about mine. I was such an accommodating, private person but he took everything way too far, even for someone like me. Everybody has their limits.
I am so grateful to have found CL and this community early on. I’ve been very pro-honesty with my kid since he was born. And have continued post d-day in a way that is true and authentic to my parenting style. I know not everyone agrees, but other mum chumps have told me that they have seen my example and now feel they have permission to stop covering for their FWs too.
Every question my son has asked I have answered honestly and age appropriately. A few times I’ve said that the answer is a bit sad – and give him the option to hear the answer now or maybe when he’s older. Sometimes he chooses later and I respect that. But I always let him lead how much he wants to know and when. FW has continued the psychological abuse of his son, so I make sure my kid knows that everything his father does is what his father has chosen. No room for sad sausage victims here. I believe that it keeps the earth firm under my son’s feet as he is lied to and gaslighted on a regular basis.
I didn’t however, know about this option before the final D-Day. Instead, I made FW tell our 4 year old that he was moving out. But he effed it up so royally that my sweet baby started crying because he thought he was going to have to go live on his own in his own house. Ffs. That man screwed up everything he ever did.
So one of my big regrets after D-Day with FW#2 was that I hid his dirty secret…for a few days. It was super hard to do of course because not only did I feel like I was dying inside, but I was bruised head to toe after he attacked me over his phone. I just couldn’t hide all of the bruises, especially around the face, neck, arms and hands. Our kids were young adult children and several of them still lived with us (paid rent and utilities of course, but so they could save more money to buy a home for themselves (and they have!). One of our daughters freaked out when she saw them, asked me what happened? I lied to her and said I fell down on my morning walk. She looked like she didn’t believe me but just said, “okay”. I still feel such guilt and shame over that. Lying to anyone, but especially my children, is just totally unacceptable and something before that moment, I would never do.
But I was in DEEP DENIAL the first couple of days. And then, like a wave of a magic wand, I woke up a few days later (and yes, I was pick me dancing, doing the RIC BS, etc.) and told him “I will no longer cover for you, YOU are going to tell our children what you did because I will no longer lie to the kids. Or you can pack your shit and leave right now.” And he agreed to tell them and did. I was shocked that he did that, but he didn’t want to leave of course, as I still had some sort of value to him I guess.
After he told them, I apologized to them for lying to them about the bruises and how I got them, explained my temporary insanity because of the trauma of finding out about his cheating and his attack had caused, and promised I would never lie to them again, no matter what the circumstances. They all instantly forgave me and my oldest son (from my previous marriage to FW#1) wanted to kill FW husband #2. Thankfully he didn’t, but he was furious and I totally understand. I really was too, had just been suppressing the rage.
The kids deserved to know because #1) it’s the truth and telling them anything else is a lie or at the very least, a lie by omission and #2) It’s too hard to pretend and act normal. I was acting so bizarrely for a few days, I’m sure they all thought I had lost my mind. And really, I had. Infidelity betrayal causes a specific sort of trauma and shock that is down right unbearable.
My kids are wonderful and totally forgave me but I still feel guilt and shame from lying to them, even thought it was years ago, but I do give myself some slack in that I know it wasn’t a situation created by me, just a very bad reaction to something that was DONE to me. But I am so glad that time period is over and behind us (me and the kids) now.
But I fully believe in what Tracy says about telling the kids in age appropriate ways. These cheater FW’s don’t deserver to be protected and have us do their impression management for them. And this stupid bitch from the article needs to crawl back under the rock she came out from under!
This was terrible advice, and I’ve commented saying that (I subscribe to the NYT.) Sure, let’s lie to kids about a major trauma in their lives! I’m 100% with our leader Chump Lady on this. Tell the truth in an age appropriate fashion!
In my case, I was in my senior year of high school when my mother became aware of my dad’s cheating through one of his side pieces calling our house and telling her. She didn’t try to keep it from me. My parents’ marriage was already under considerable strain because of my father’s drinking and his arrest and trial for public lewdness. (He was acquitted. I think something happened, all right, but my father and his attorney were able to refute the police officer’s testimony on factual grounds. But I digress.)
Anyway, there was no secrecy, but I think I might have known anyway even if my mom had attempted it because of a couple of later incidents. Or if not known, at least been suspicious.
I left a comment right away. I recognize victim-blaming when I see it and when I read terrible advice about infidelity. That said, I didn’t pick up on the columnist’s name, but if I had, I’d probably have said something about cheater apologists.