Knowledge of my dead parent's long-term affair is incredibly painful

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Etc me guess you were always a bit smug about having the perfect family and parents with the perfect relationship.
And now you have to be an adult and realize perfect doesn't exist.
Time to grow the hell up.
This really doesn't concern you at all.
Yet you've decided to make it your personal tragedy that suggests a degree of narcissism and inappropriate levels of codependency.

I wouldn't have been so harsh, but this is true. There's enough emoting and hand-wringing about posters' own betrayals by their spouses that seem completely over the top on this board, but feeling that way about parental affairs? This isn't the end of the world. Your surviving parent may have been fine with it. There might have been reasons for this situation. You can start hating your deceased parent's guts now, but I think you should accept that you will never know the full picture, and therefore cannot judge.

+1

And affair has nothing to do with parent’s love for you. Your reaction is over the top.

An affair actually has a lot to do with how much you love your children. If you love your children, you’re not selfish and do things that can hurt them deeply, which include addiction, abuse, and affairs.

The reality is this parent cared more about themselves than they did anybody else in the family, including the children.

Yeah, can someone please think of adult children!

It's not about you. Not everything in this world is about you.

How young does a person have to be for a cheating parent to be a source of pain? At what age do we say, "your childhood trauma is now irrelevant, suck it up"? Also, are spouses allowed to feel sad about affairs, and are their offspring allowed to feel sorry for them, or is that age limited as well?

TIA

It depends. Are we talking about your parents or you?

If we are talking about your parents, their childhood trauma becomes irrelevant the moment they conceive you. From that time on they should suck it up and concentrate on making your life the best it can be.

If we are talking about you, it never becomes irrelevant. You'll nurse it until you die, and dump on your spouse, your kids and their kids because everyone needs to understand TRAUMA.

Did I satisfy your curiosity?

We are talking about the OP. How long does she have to feel bad about this? And since she came here to dump on strangers, is this an acceptable forum for her to express her feelings? Wouldn't want her dumping on her family members.

OP has the right to have feeling and she should work with a therapist to understand her feeling. How long does have to feel bad? You want to put a clock on that?

You seem really disordered in your thinking about this.

Dump on strangers? Are you okay?

How did this thread turn so personal? Do these people recognize themselves in this scenario? Bizarre.

The “dump on strangers” needs therapy and probably more significant intervention. This is a social chat site, right?

[Anonymous]

I mean the person who wrote “dump on strangers”, not OP.

OP, I’m not an expert on this topic, but I have a friend who has been unable to develop trust as a result of this trauma from her father’s affair and the fallout.

A regular normal therapist can offer ways to help you work through this if that’s what you want.

My friend is happy as a single person and this trauma doesn’t really affect her life. It’s more upsetting to her mother than to her.

[Anonymous]

OP here.

I spoke with a therapist and the experience was tremendously helpful. I feel like I have the emotional and intellectual tools to think clearly and constructively about the life my family and I spent with my DP. I now also feel like I can properly grieve.

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry. Please consider that your parent was not fulfilled in the marriage. It seems that he/she tried hard to be "normal" despite the affair.

[Anonymous]

I found out terrible things about my dad after he fied about he treated my mom. My mom died 7 years earlier. They always had a strained, abusive relationship. Well, according to my aunt, he beat my mom. I never knew about it. It’s possible my aunt is lying, or delusional. Or it’s possible my mom kept it a secret. She was nasty to my dad too. Constant nagging and name calling, picking on his family. He was very loving to her as she died, but she was cold to him. We had happy times as a family, but now those are in doubt.

My brother has completely gone mad. He is bipolar and schizophrenic. In hindsight, my family was deeply troubled. My parents loved us, if not each other (though i do believe my dad loved her but mistreated her, i dont thibk she loved him.)