How Do Affairs Affect Children? Part I
In this post I will address how children are effected by affairs. In subsequent posts I will discuss the effects on adult children of affairs and offer suggestions for parents involved in affairs on how to best support their children through this difficult time.
Unfortunately, it is frequently true that when caught up in an affair your relationship with your children is altered in the direction of disconnectedness.
In other posts I have talked about the trancelike state of consciousness that one inhabits during an affair. In this altered state links between actions and consequences dissolve; in the euphoric bubble you inhabit you believe you can pursue an illicit relationship and no one will be hurt because you believe that you can control everything and so prevent this from happening. However, this is a grandiose assumption that more and more requires you to lie to, manipulate and avoid intimate contact with your family, sometimes with irrevocable results.
Many couples I see who are trying to work on healing from an affair are devastated not only by how destroyed their own relationship feels, but also by their children’s reactions. Other couples are in complete denial that the children are effected at all; since the children are showing a lot of support and understanding. In fact, children can get pulled in and become the source of comfort for either spouse. They can be manipulated into taking sides and vilifying one or the other parent. In many of these cases, the long-term effects on these children are not considered and the couple may be surprised years down the road with the amount of rage that the child has about what happened and how they were drawn in, and treated as another adult rather than the vulnerable child that they actually were.
There are reactions that occur while the affair is going on, but before it is disclosed, and reactions once an affair has been disclosed.
If you think back to when you were a child it is easy to remember how much more you knew about what was going on in your family than the adults around you thought you knew. Children are tuned into the nuances of their parent’s relationships in ways that might be surprising to adults. I have heard more than once about a 2 or 3 year old becoming alarmed when mommy and daddy aren’t talking and actually trying to physically pull them together, while urgently pleading “daddy talk mommy.” Many betrayed partners, when looking back, can recount exactly when the affair started, even though there wasn’t “disclosure” until much later. The change in their partner’s affect; “you were acting like you were on acid” “you just turned off to me, overnight” was obvious, but the meaning could not yet be expressed. Children feel these changes too, and for them they have suddenly lost the parent they always knew, someone else has taken their place and this is very frightening. An anxiety with no name sets in, this anxiety can follow children throughout their entire life time and leave them with not being able to feel safe in their most intimate relationships.
Catherine Ford Sori has delineated children’s reactions to affairs according to age.
Younger children might not fully understand what has happened, but nevertheless can be traumatized by the change in the emotional climate in the home. There is a sense that something that was whole that was the foundation for everything else has been severely damaged if not destroyed. These younger children cannot put this into words very easily, but instead usually develop regressive problems such as physical illness, clinging, bed-wetting, thumb-sucking, fire setting, temper tantrums or night terrors – in fact, anything that seems an appropriate response to the fear that the family is about to be wiped out. Conversely, the child may start trying to be perfect, completely hiding the intense anxiety that is eating away at them on the inside; if the parents are preoccupied with the fallout from disclosure the child can feel abandoned and no longer loved. When thinking about young children It is important to keep in mind that the younger a child is, the more the family is experienced as if it is the whole world.
Older children may also regress, but they also have more access to language for what they are thinking and feeling. The older a child is, the more capable he or she is of abstract thinking, so worries about what is going to happen to the family and how their lives will change or who they will lose if there is a divorce can surface. They may withdraw or act out in an effort to get their parent’s attention, stop the affair, or prevent a divorce. Shoplifting, vandalizing, getting into fights, running away from home, acting hyper, setting fires, and even threatening suicide are common reactions. “My parents will realize they have to stay together if they see how disturbed I am.”
Preadolescent and adolescent children: The older a child is, the more apt he or she is to get drawn into the conflict surrounding the affair by one or both parents. They may be asked to keep secrets and/or expected to chose sides. Asking a child, overtly or covertly, to take a side is like asking a child to lose that parent. This always has severe consequences. Keeping secrets from one or both parents can create a terrible guilt and sense of self as destructive.
Adolescents continue to develop their capacity for abstract thinking. They are highly aware that they are preparing to enter the adult world and therefore questions of values become paramount. They are extremely sensitive to hypocrisy; when a parent’s actions are exposed as opposed to his or her stated values that parent falls off a pedestal. And when a parent falls off of the pedestal it changes the child’s whole conception of who their family is and thus, their sense of who they are. Identity and moral development are impacted negatively. Frequently, up until this happened, there was an unconscious assumption that one behaves with integrity as a matter of course. Suddenly, the very people who have ingrained this in you have demonstrated this is not the case.
Adolescents are also developing sexually, they are entering their first relationships and struggling with their own experiences of infatuation, falling in love, physical intimacy, boundaries and trust. They look to their parents to demonstrate how all of this is handled. They want their parents to behave as adults, as role models, not as peers. If there is no ideal to strive for, it is very easy to fall into dysfunctional relational patterns that can become entrenched such as promiscuity, dishonesty, insensitivity, self-devaluation and an inability to trust. Furthermore, the experience of real love can become intertwined with the expectation of abandonment. Relationships can feel doomed, what’s the point of trying?
Adolescents can also act out in other ways, such as substance abuse, truancy, apathy, low achievement, or running away. They can become emotionally unstable; anxious, rage-prone, reckless, depressed, and/ or extremely disrespectful. They can engage in self-injurious behaviors to try to get the parent to chose them over the affair. If the parent refuses to end the affair the adolescent can become truly suicidal.
As adolescents move farther out into the world they need to know that their parents will be okay without them, otherwise, they can remain in a regressed guilty state their entire lives. It is natural for parents to feel sad as an adolescent becomes more and more involved in their own lives, with their peers and is around the house less and less. An adolescent who cannot do this because their parents are too injured by the separation will carry guilt about normal experiences of separateness into other relationships and may never feel truly free to develop their own unique life.
I believe that an impact on the child(ren) is inevitable in the case of an affair, but you make it sound like there’s absolutely no hope for your child following a split due to this. I think your article was very negative and should concentrate more on solutions than scaring parents to death!
January 21st, 2009 at 6:23 amThank you for your comment. I will soon be writing on ways to help children through this difficult time to minimize their distress.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:08 amMy step-daughter was forced to be invovled in the lies her mother told her father. She is now 16 and seems to be secretive about what she does. I would appreciate more ideas of how to handle the after affects.
January 21st, 2009 at 11:26 amWhat if one of the children involved is the child who was conceived as a result of the affair? How is this child going to be protected? In this case, mine, my child is the result of the affair. He has two with his spouse. She does not know, yet everyone else does. How can my daughter be protected as well as her siblings. I am contemplating on how to end the affair now. I do not now how to do this without harming the relationship he is trying to build with our daughter. All of the kids are less than two years old. He is a wonderful father, but obviously a questionable man. I never thought I would be in this position in my life. My exhusband passed away, and our daughter is now 10. I need to be a better person for her. She is one reason why I am suffering with my actions now.
February 7th, 2009 at 10:02 pmMy wife had an affair with a married doctor with four children. One of his kids was suicidal in the hospital when they started the affair, another was either in rehab or about to enter it. The affair has precipitated the break up of two families and caused immeasurable pain and suffering to me and my two children. I cannot imagine how this must have effected his kids considering their conditions prior to the disclosure of the affair.
February 10th, 2009 at 4:10 pmMy six year old daughter is having a difficult time with it all. She is not aware that we will likely lose the family home and she will have to change schools and daycare.
Adultery is an extremely selfish act, especially when children are involved, as it clearly has life long effects.
Please don’t overlook adult children. I am 37 years old, and my father’s repeated affairs have ripped our family apart. He refuses to accept any responsibility for any pain he has caused me. Even though we are adults, we are still their children.
July 16th, 2009 at 1:42 pmI was looking for writings about the effects an affair would have on children, who are forced to keep and cloak the affair from their Father. From my own experience I can tell you…the children get pretty messed up and they stay messed up. Unless they find someone to talk to. I am not a therapist, I lived this personally. It is selfish for a parent to force children to keep secrets. It is cruel. It is controlling. Which that my Mother was. Myself and my siblings all have had lasting lifeling grief from this I am sure.
July 19th, 2009 at 8:32 pmI am currently having an affair and it is the best time for our marriage in a long time. I am much less frusterated with it, and we are happier partners.
October 14th, 2009 at 12:06 pmMy father had an affair when I was 13, and the effect it had on me was so profound and huge that now, at 20 years old, I still don’t regard him as my dad. He and my mother patched things up and are together now, and live with my 2 younger siblings while I study away from home, but that period in my life was a rude awakening. My younger siblings were too young to understand, and the way I found out was, the first time, by overhearing a conversation and the second by receiving a text my dad had meant for the woman he was having the affair with. Needless to say, I play men for all they’re worth, feel guilty for moving away to college everyday and have no intention of getting married and ending up miserable like my parents. In my opinion, it affects children more than the adults involved.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:57 pmMy dad brought the mom of my best friend into the hotel room that i was staying in when i was in grade 5, i am now grade 11 and have kept it a secret and i feel like im using this as an excuse to make myself feel better when i know i am under achieving. Any suggestions?
November 8th, 2009 at 1:58 pmMy father started having an affair with a co-worker, who is now my step-mother, when I was about 1 1/2 years old. My mother did not find out until I was about 6 years old. Now I am 24 years old and in a serious relationship that feels like it is about to end. I am so afraid of being cheated on, and my self-esteem is so low; I just don’t feel like I am good enough for my partner and am fearful that because I am not the prettiest he will find someone better than me. The very thought of him wanting another women more than me, gives me a panic attack. I have actually turned into a maniac, and have realized that he actually prefers women w/ a different hair color then mine. It sounds so silly when I type it, but the feelings are real, especially because my father cheated on my mom with a woman who was a different ethnicity and hair color than my mother. Actually, my boyfriend is slightly more attracted to the type of woman my father had an affair with than girls that look like me. How can I get past this? Because my father cheated on my mother, I feel like I don’t know what love really is. It is not enough for him to tell me that he loves me with all his heart, instead I would prefer to be sexually idolized like the women he really fanatisizes about. Is there any hope for me?
November 9th, 2009 at 6:07 pmI am so glad someone is addressing this. I was 22 when I and my sister discovered that our father was having an affair. It was 2 am in the morning and we heard him in the kitchen saying sweetheart to someone else on the phone. I remember saying “Please God not that, let it be drugs or gambling, but not that”. My mom was clueless until he confessed to all of us a week later. I remember screaming and saying I can’t believe you put your___ in another woman’s ____, you are only supposed to do that to mommy! I was enraged! I can still feel the adreneline rushing. My mom just sat there quietly sobbing then she started yelling. But I was the one going off! I thought my parents were perfect! They told me they were both virgins when they were married, so that was my goal. Unfortunately, 2 years later I lost my virginity. If that hadn’t happened I know I would have remained a virgin. I felt as though my dad had died. He looked so different. My mom kicked him out for a month or two. I even had the locks changed. My hair started falling out. I was scratching my scalp and totally unaware of my scratching until one day I parted my hair and their was a bald spot about the size of a CD. I had to get steroid shots. My dad did not believe that I could be that upset. When my parents reconciled I was not ready to forgive. I became very disrespectful, I just didnt care, I would come home late at night and sometimes the very next day, I just didnt care. When I lost my virginity (23)I felt like crap. The guy told me he would marry me so I gave in. Then he told my that I didn’t bleed when we had intercourse (my first time) and he ended it with me. At that moment, more of my hair fell out. It finally grew back(after more shots) and my family and I are all reconciled. We also went to counseling,all of us. Thank God for counseling!I am even a happily married newlwed of 2 yrs. But those events almost caused me to call of the engagement when I believed my fiance would do the same thing to me that my dad did to my mom. I did not want to tell my dad’s business, but I had to tell my fiance the reason why I would not trust him. It was like a lightbulb went on when I told him. I’m so glad I did.
December 5th, 2009 at 4:27 pmThank you for allowing for these posts and continue to do research on the effects of adultery on children and adult children. People seem to think we are invisible, but it affects us throughout our lives too. If you know of an adulterer who has kids, please make them read my post. Maybe then they will get a clue!
- Female, 30 yrs old, MD
My 44 year old husband is having an on line affair with a woman from Oregon, he met her in a chat room in July, she met him at a business meeeting in September, and she flew to town in December for a 4 day tryst. He moved out in November. My children are overwhelmed and afraid to ask him why? His father did the same thing to him. He is acting like a 17 year old and my 13 year old son knows it is wrong and wonders why his father does not think it is wrong. How can he give up his kids and think only of himself. He thinks that seeing the kids 1 day a week and daily texting is a relationship. My father left my mom when i was 40 and i still am dealing with it. What is wrong with men in this era??? How can they just walk away from a 16 year marriage and 2 kids 15 and 13???
December 15th, 2009 at 8:02 am45 yo female, MN
Thank you for this article. I wish I could have read it years ago to use as a road map for my life. I never realized that what I felt and how I reacted were completely normal considering the circumstances. At 5 years old, instead of confronting the situation, I ignored it until my father forced me to condone his affair with a woman who hated my mother. Because his affair lasted until his death when I was 15, my issues with him have never been resolved. It has now been 4 years since his death and I still pretend like everything is fine and will stop at nothing to protect my mother. I can only wonder that if I had seen this article earlier I could have steered my reactions into a better direction. Instead I am now consumed by regret and anger and incapable of trust. I still just want to know why?
December 25th, 2009 at 10:08 pmWell i am going through a tough time this may not be on the subject but my nan is having an affair and i dont know what to say to er i want to but i will just get very angry at her and i dont know how to put it across to her??
December 29th, 2009 at 4:20 pmmy husband had on and off again affair with a marriage and family therapist. She knew he was married and selfishly they both continued the affair. My children found out and my son wanted me to never for forgive him. He wanted to move and face whatever hardships we had to. He has had a hard time forgiving his dad. He says he can’t wait to graduate and leave home. My daughter idealizes her father. This woman was of a different nationality and I wonder the affects of that on her self image like the above post said. When you cheat it is not only on the spouse,but on the whole family. Everyone is robbed of time, affection,finances,and trust.
January 15th, 2010 at 8:17 pmthis is very cool to do this for the parrents
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:27 amAll good stuff and thanks to everyone,,,, my thoughts whe it first happened it was like a vacume cleaner trying to suck me over, and out of who i am,,, some months have past,, it shocked my world,,, but to the kids it was a earth quake,,, i hope if any reads this please,,, be there for the kids,, they need the stable one,, and no one gave us this job to be the stable one,,, but we own it,,, i was told to move on,,, after some thought and long talks,,, being the best parent i can be is moveing on,,, the kids and i are now moveing on together,, even planing our first Christmas,, well really theire Christmas,, yes i am actually letting them decide,, what and how it will be,,, so yes move on with them,,they need you and youre time,, thanks from Colorado
February 26th, 2010 at 12:49 pmwell i am currently going through crisis and finding my families current affair to be so overwhelming. I am 22 years old and still living with my parents. My older sister and support has moved out so I feel very alone. I was 13 when i found out about my fathers affair with my mothers best friend. My father is a very emotional man and my mom is completely opposite. I grew up being told to toughen up and never cry. I have never heared my mother say i love you and never heard my mother say those words to my father either. For these reasons i understand why my father would look elsewhere. Its inevideable, everyone wants to be loved. I still cant forgive him though. I am extremely close with my dad so I am stuck in a hard spot. After about 5 years of knowing about his affair, with my moms best friend whom always comes to my house and family functions, i finally had the courage to tell my sister. We suspect that my mother knew of this affair because she would make allegations to him but she has not done anything to stop it. She may be in denial, not have sufficient eveidence or feel to dependent to leave. After about 9 yrs of holding in this secret, we have recently found out that mother is beginning to have an affair aswell. This angers me beyond no end, more than my father and i dont know why. I think it is because I heard my mom tell this man she loved him over the phone, and those are words she was never able to say to me. She is so nieve in thinking that i dont know about her affair. She talks on the phone in another room, asks me how to delete messages on the phone, etc. She has even asked my how to spell i miss u. (My mom is portuguese and not very good at spelling english). What do i do??? I cant take it anymore. Everyone in the house knows about the affairs and walks around pretending it doesnt happen. My sister and I have approached my father and he denied everything. He said the marriage is fine and that this women is just a family friend. After i told him i know everything, have seen emails, heard conversations he continues to lie. I told him that i hate this women and no longer want her in coming to the home. Rather than respect his daughters emotional plea and wishes, he brought her over 4 weeks later and has since come three times in the past 2 weeks. Please help me I cant take the constant reminder and tonight im loosing my mind. My boyfreind and sister tell me to ignore it since they have made their choices in life but i cant go on. I live with my parents and hears conversations EVERYDAY. Im reminded and asked by my mother to help cheat although she conceals her actions. I cant imagine forgiving and forgeting. I just want my family back and feel like noone understands what i am feeling. I am currently graduating University and rather than being happy i am more depressed than ever. I have begun having physical signs of anxiety and fear my relationship wiith my current boyfriend of four years. I cant trust him and feel like im scared to marry him out of fear that he will do the same later on in life. Please offfer me advice. I dont think talking to them will no longer help because they deny everything, my mother is so unemotional and would dis-own me. what else can i do for my own sanity?
February 28th, 2010 at 9:48 pmMy family has broken up due to an affair and my parents didn’t force their arguements upon me, make me chose sides, tell me secrets etc. They acted in my best possible interest as best they could. Yet still i went through three years of minor depression (, receded to act immature, closed myself off, was sullen and felt horrible most of the time). I now have a huge mistrust in people and find it truely hard to open up to people, to the extent that for those three years i chose not to go out or have friends over (,luckily now out of the depression i am in a more capable position to deal with my emotions and the situation). My mistrust is that that this is the first real time ihave taked of how the affair affected me. I am putting this post on here as i believe it paramount that parents should know that what they do in an affair will be devastating beyond believe, and what is visible to them once the child knows of the affair and split is only the tip of the ice burg to what is running through their adolecent mind. (I was thirteen at the time). I found the description of the affect on the adolescent near perfect. As i luckily had parents that did not use and abuse me in the battle of the affair. Yet i still had many issues, so an adolescent who is abused by the parents, like telling secrets by parents to them etc. will cause huge implications in the adolescence development for their entire child hood till 18 and maybe beyond that. It will affect their personality and their friends. The only way i got out of my depression was the complete cut off from my dad who had the affair,as this was the poisonous parent, which had made me question morality, trust and friendship.
A childs/adolescents trust is strong in their parents but so fragile that once broken it shatters to a million pieces and will never be fixed to look brand new, but will always be fregmented and chiped if rebuilt.
March 4th, 2010 at 4:51 pmI need an answer I just just did something that I might of screwed up, I told my daughters of my affairs I have had and not sure if that was right. I told my 13 year old daughter and she was understanding and she told me she is not mad. But I have been reading responses from other people who have been through it and im worried. My other daughter is 15 and she was upset but told me she is not mad at me. My husband knows of these affairs and tells me that he cannot stop me and so I have continued a little more. He does not give me the right attention to help our situation so thats why I have continued a little. But now im worried that screwed up by telling my daughters about my affairs. Please answer me if I screwed up my daughters.
April 19th, 2010 at 12:19 amMy dad 36 met a girl 22 on Twitter. He talked and texted her and called her his spoulmate. In the months since it has been better. I read this article because he is going to a concert out of state alone this week. It scares me that this isn’t what he is really doing. I am 18 and even though my parents are working on it, my mom went on happy pills, I’ve already experienced EVERYTHING except suicidal underneath the adolecence section. I withdrew, began acting immaturely, i’ve been contemplating doing sexual activites with a guy friend, I’ve drank, I tried cutting even though I’ve always been vehemetly against it, I even get panic attacks from anxiety. I’ve always been very close with my parents, I’m the oldest, and I’ve always been affected by their arguements even when I was 3 or 4. I can’t descibe the hurt and pain this kind of mistrust puts on a child
April 25th, 2010 at 7:35 pmI am in a relationship with a man (45) who is from a family who’s mother had an affair with one of his fathers friends. He was about 12 when all this happened in his family. The friend was also married. They both left their spouses for each other. Now you have to remember what era this behavior was occurring. The shame and secrecy of something like this was monumental in society. (b His father then went on to remarry a woman 15 years his junior only to end up in yet another divorce…but not before producing yet another child…(the step-brother).
April 28th, 2010 at 10:10 amWe have spent 8 difficult years together.
I come from a background of parent’s preparing to celebrate 50 years of marriage and they still are close to the same friends I knew as a child.
Our backgrounds are polar opposite.
I have only recently been able to come to terms with knowing I may have to leave inorder to protect my own emotional happiness and well being. I have tried to help him recognize that the anger, distrust, blame, and lies he projects toward me is not because of me or my life.
I am seeing first hand what his parent’s choices have done to his emotional health and intimacies. I have chosen not to gather with his “families” at all….. only to again be attacked with anger, blame, and
insults to my family. I know where this pain comes from. It is very sad to see….and as a woman of compassion I feel for his pain. However, I also know that if he continues not to hear my concerns and chooses denial over accountability, I will need to move away from the relationship….and that means allowing him to again feel abandoned.
If anyone is in a similar situation, I suggest you first ….DO NOT threaten to leave if things don’t change…..find a way to say first…you are not leaving…Otherwise, they hear abandonment. Tell them you know they are in pain and are angry because of things in their past……If you can reach them with calm and loving understanding, they might be able to not only respect you but,feel trust for you. They first need to know they will not be abandoned. Intimacy has become their enemy…. Intimacy is pain for them, it’s distrust, it’s abandonment….are you following me on this?
If I do leave this relationship, I will know I had tried to show compassion,trust,love, and all other healthy emotions you can offer to the most intimate person in your life.
Good Luck to all those hurt by situations like this…If I can offer advice with a great sense of compassion for those who hurt…..let someone in that truly wants to be there. Find out first of there own childhood. Did the same things happen? This IS NOT a reason for relating and falling in love…on the contrary, this could become toxic for you both!
Look beyond any yearnings to have someone/anyone in your life. Look long and hard at their ways of handling emotional issues of intimacy.
and most importantly yourself….Know if you betray the trust, begin to blame,develope secrets,….you are not recognizing the pain within yourself.
my dad died the day i found out he has been cheating on my mom for the past ten years. He was my hero, but now he is only a zero. That hurts
May 11th, 2010 at 2:34 ami just found this out today,i am 16 and i dont even know who i am any more
June 11th, 2010 at 9:15 amWhen I was 10 I found out that my mother had an affair with my pastor. I am 19 now and I haven’t believed in anything in 9 years. I have never had a boyfriend because any time a guy i like gets close to me I become physically ill and have to end things before they even start. I mean, who wants a girlfriend who has to run to the bathroom to have diarrhea every 10 minutes they are with them. I have never let my parents know that I know about the affair and I fear it would destroy them if they ever found out. The day I found the letter in my dads sock drawer was the last day i ever believed in love, God, or truth. I became a machine, and barely spoke a word until high school when destructive drug use finally allowed me to stop feeling so hurt. Numbness was better than constant pain. I held state records for cross country running before the age of ten, however once the apathy set in I never cared enough to run again. I was the smartest kid in all of my classes but I stopped caring about school and did just enough to squeak by. I didn’t brush my teeth or hair for six years. I am a poster girl for what a careless affair can do to a potentially wonderful human being. Never have an affair- you are essentially murdering your child. I will never be normal. I only stay alive now because I love my younger brothers (who do not know of the affair and are too young to remember the fights) more than anything in the world and unlike my mother I can foresee the consequences of rash actions.
June 29th, 2010 at 7:26 pmI was a young girl (10 or 11 years-old) when I found out/sensed that something was amiss with my mom and that she was having an affair. The worst part was that no one else in my family knew…neither my dad, nor my sister, so I had to hold on to this secret all by myself. In my 20’s I confronted my mom and she admitted to me that she did have an affair, and it wasn’t until I went to therapy in my mid/late 30’s that I realized how traumatic this secret was. My parents are still together, and a few years ago my mom told my father. He was hurt and shocked, and although they’re still married, he’s “checked out”, and my mother basically loathes herself. I rarely come across information from the child’s point of view, specifically the child who knew of the affair when the other spouse didn’t know. I’m shocked at how blase so many married couples are when exposing their children to their affairs. My dating relationships have suffered greatly, yet I am determined that this trauma will not stop me from having a great marriage myself one day.
July 11th, 2010 at 10:00 amI am currently involved with a man and have been for 5m…I am divorced and his divorce is final next week…we did not get involved until after we were seperatate…but we were all friends before (me and my ex and him and his soon to be ex)…we each have 2 children (7yr, 6yrs, 3yrs, 2yrs)….We have just let the kids know that we are “dating” in the past month…we havent seen any backlash from the situation but his ex wife is certain that us being together is going to scar the children forever and we are all going to hell…any suggestions as to how and ease the transition for the kids…I know they will have questions but I feel if we are strong and happy and support them we can get them thru this feeling happy and secure. This man and I are planning to marry and have a future together. I dont want to hurt my kids but I love this man deeply. Any advice would be very helpful
July 14th, 2010 at 9:31 amMy father had an affair with his secretary, who also was a babysitter for my sister and I. The affair went on for appx 2 years before it was disclosed. I was 14 when the divorce was final. A few months later my father married his mistress and I was basically forced to accept it and act like nothing was wrong. Nothing was ever discussed about the incident with my father. They are still married and I am 27 years old now. I have suppressed many memories from that time. It’s almost like there is a span of a few years that I almost have no memory of. I have now been having many emotional issues with this that I have never really had. I am suddenly very angry and upset. I have dreams about it and wake up crying. I can hardly look my father or her in the eyes now. I do not know what to do about this. Do you have any advise about what is going on with me and how to fix it? Thanks.
July 28th, 2010 at 2:26 pmThe impact never ends. I am a 55 year-old woman and I am dreading attending my high school reunion because of my mother. She had a long running affair with the father of one of my classmates. This affair, never admitted at the time, destroyed my homelife and turned my house into a battleground. My parents were always fighting and my mother was always sneaking around. We kids suspected the affair but my mother did not admit it until a few years ago when my sister suffered a mental breakdown of sorts. Even then, she was not repentant. She is an extremely arrogant person who thinks her refusal to “care about what other people think” is a strength not a weakness. When my sister and I finally confronted her about the affair, she told us we had no room to talk because we had dated losers. We were single, we told her when we dated “the losers”. It was hardly the same thing. Both my mother and the other man have been involved in politics and have an extremely high profile in my small town which makes the sordid mess even more humiliating because we have to deal with the hypocricy of my mother acting holier than now all the time in public. I escaped all of this for many years but now it seems that the resentment and embarrassment are coming back. When my mother had surgery a few years ago, this man had the nerve to phone my house and leave a message asking how she was doing. It is as though we are now — after decades of lies — supposed to “know.” I am so ashamed and I really do not wasnt to see my old classmate, who also, I suspect, has been traumatized by this. She moved to another country but is back for this.
July 31st, 2010 at 3:16 am