Anonymous wrote:I’m the poster whose DH learned about his father’s affair from a middle school bully in the middle of the cafeteria. I have a question for those of you who believe in not telling kids: do you think how he learned (which was painful and traumatic) is preferable to a quiet conversation with a loving parent?? I cannot understand that world view whatsoever. It seems phenomenally cruel.
The pp who did it at the psychologist did the right thing.
Loving parent or not, it's difficult to have a "quiet' conversation when you are angry, hurt , betrayed and bitter( and rightfully so if your spouse cheated on you and destroyed your mutual vision for the family).
And people really overlook the selfishness of cheaters. While the non- cheating spouse is telling the child what happened, the cheater will tell a very different story to defend themselves. If they are capable of cheating and all the lying and gaslighting thst comes with it, they are more than capable of trying to defend themselves to the children. This too will be cruel and confusing to the child.
With both parents and a professional present, an appropriate conversation is more likely to happen.
Sure, tell them with a psychologist, but you are still recommending telling them. What I am wondering about is the view of the people in favor of hiding affairs. Do those people think it is better to learn about cheating from a middle school bully or proactively from parents or in a therapist’s office? Because my impression of the “never tell” people is that they actually think it’s better for a child to learn from his middle school bully than to hear it proactively, which I find astonishing.
I think you are misunderstanding their opinion. They are not necessarily in favor of hiding affairs. They think that the chances of messing up in the process of telling the kids is much higher than the chances of the kid being messed up by finding out elsewhere.
You might disagree with their assessment, but claiming that they are in favor of hiding affairs is an misunderstanding of their position.
I don' t tell my kids about my sex life with their dad. It dies not mean that DH and I are hiding our sex lives. It's just not an appropriate conversation to have with them.
Okay, but that still doesn’t answer my question, which I think the pro-not-telling contingent is avoiding at this point: for those of you who do not think that children should be proactively told about the truth of parental affairs: do you think that it was better for my DH to learn about his father’s affair from a bully in the middle school cafeteria as opposed to proactively learning the truth from his parents or in a therapist’s office?
Because my impression from the not-telling posters is that hiding the affair — and I’m really not sure what else it is if you are not telling the kids what happened — is more important than protecting the kids from learning about the truth of the affair in ways like my DH did. I find that viewpoint unfathomable. I cannot imagine, seeing the fallout my DH went through, leaving a child unprotected that way. It is incomprehensible to me.
I have specifically said if you feel like there is a more than likely scenario where a kid will be told in an environment like school (because of the players involved or the scope of people in the middle of the conflict) then you should find a healthy and safe way to proactively tell them, with the help of a therapist and if possible the cheating spouse telling them not the other spouse because then it becomes about the cheating spouse confessing to the kid what they did and it is between the two of them. It doesn't place the kid in a position of choosing sides in a conflict, it becomes a conflict between the kid and the cheating spouse directly. But if the middle school bully knows then one or both parents are running their mouths, and THAT is not what any of us are suggesting. Don't tell your kid but do spread it all over town is not what anyone is advocating. The parents know if it is OUT THERE or not, or they should.
But I would also challenge you and your DH to think more critically about what happened to him. Because what most people are saying is that you should tell your kids what they need to know in a healthy way that is focused on THEIR continuing to believe that their life is stable, that their parents love them, that they know what to expect etc. I think situations like your DH it is likely not THAT but parents failing on these other marks and then the finding out in a bad way is just a symptom of other bad things happening.
So like, keeping it from a kid, then having mom talk about it all over town until everyone knows, then continuing not to tell the kid knowing they will be humiliated, and then not admitting it when they are humiliated and ask about it. The crime there was not neglecting to proactively tell the kid on day 1. The crime there is not assessing the kid's experience of the situation, not keeping it within an appropriate circle, not understanding when it escaped that circle, not then proactively telling the kid to protect them from that.
You are making it all about the first decision when in reality it is about a LOT of bad decisions, all of which point to bad parenting.
Sure, I’m not going to disagree that there was a full cluster of bad parenting from my cheating FIL (not from my MIL). Among other bad decisions, he asked my MIL not to tell the kids (using the reasoning the don’t-tell people here have promoted) and she agreed, which she of course deeply regretted after my poor DH came home from that day in the cafeteria. My DH was (as a teen) angry with her for not telling him the truth, and it took years for him to realize the awful position her DH had put her in. She thought she was doing the right thing and didn’t know that FIL had been open about the affair in their social circles.
And really, that’s the thing I don’t get here. You seem to think that cheaters are sober, good decision-makers who make good parenting decisions for the benefit of their kids. That really doesn’t track at all with my experience. In my experience, I’ve yet to see a cheater who put their kids first. And the kids know it. They know their mom or dad doesn’t really care about them. Certainly my DH knew that. And so I’m extremely skeptical that cheating parents can somehow cheat yet also be a caring advocate for their kids and be able to soberly assess whether their kids will learn about the truth of the affair in situations like the one my DH endured. I just don’t see cheaters suddenly becoming the kind of parent who care about protecting their kids from harm, when there is concrete evidence that they are pretty delusional. Maybe there are cheaters out there that can soberly assess whether their kids are more likely to be hurt by being told by their parents or not, but when I look around at the cheating parents I’ve known, they are pretty universally incapable of that level of self-reflection.
And I would assume your DH correctly holds his dad accountable then? Not his mom? It took awhile but he got there. There was no avoiding the terrible conclusion that his dad sucks. But he got there because of things his dad did to HIM. He didn't have to get there by feeling like he took his mom's side over his dad's because she wanted him to.
And regardless of how he feels about it now, he cannot actually speak to the inverse situation where the mom in that case tells the kid and hates the dad and the kid lives with the specter of hate and discord and feeling like they are a pawn in a war. Lots of us are speaking to that being just as crappy.
Just because you have yet to see a cheater put their kids first doesn't mean they don't exist. I have a friend who cheated on her husband for a lot of bad reasons. They did therapy, stayed together, have three wonderful kids and I can't speak to their marriage honestly but she is a WONDERFUL mother. You are using a really narrow personal experience to extrapolate something about all cheaters. Just like every other kind of person there is a LOT of people on that spectrum. And they are not all terrible people and they are not all terrible parents.
Basically my entire position is that the needs of the kids need to be paramount and parents need to soberly evaluate the situation and make decisions based on the kid's need not their own. There are situations where that means telling them, and situations where that means not telling them. IMO I will continue to believe that if they CAN be protected from that, they should be.
I agree with you on the bolded, but I disagree that in general the default rule should be to not tell, largely because I simply don’t think it’s realistic if you want to protect your kids from being told by someone who wants to hurt them (like the middle school bully). The cheating happened. Unless it was kept deeply secret such that only the cheater, the AP, and the ex will ever know (unusual), the kids will eventually find out. It’s only a question of when and how, and I think it’s delusional to pretend otherwise.
I am also skeptical that cheating parents are capable of the bolded, generally speaking. You are basing your idea of the “good cheater” on your one friend, but that’s a pretty narrow and IMO unusual situation. Certainly that doesn’t track my lived experience (not just my FIL) nor that of most people I know.
My DH had a good relationship with his mom eventually, but it was harmed for years because he felt she had deceived him (which she had, to be blunt). Of course finding out the way he did was traumatic and he (as a hurt teen) lashed out at both parents, not just the one who was really at fault.
I am one of the pps you are responding to above. There are at least two of us. lol
You argue that PP is basing their response on the one "good cheater" then let me add my dad as the second.
My dad was a wonderful father. He was arguably the best in our entire extended family on both sides. He was very involved in our activities: school, playing, emotional development, etc.
But he was an awful husband. My mother told us about some of the stuff he had done, and we confronted him. He had his own version of the story. We never took sides, but we never thought that he was wrong and she was right. I only came to that realization as a young adult. My siblings came to it much later. We did not have the capacity to process some of things. It just felt like two broken human beings bickering and telling on each other.
So there is no way that I am assuming that all cheaters are bad parents. And my parents loved us more than anything in the world. And my dad cheating or being a horrible husband does not change that.
Because you want to believe he's a good parent. Particularly girls. All of them want their love from their daddy and in turn to know that they are lovable. It's a survival mechanism. Doesn't make him a good person.
Is the argument for keeping a secret basically that you then can't expand on it and bring the other spouse down? If so, can you just say something more serious such as "Dad did something that went against Mom's beliefs for the marriage so we split but this is an adult issue and so I don't want to talk about it while you are still a child?" We didn't get along sounds like basic arguments. That's my main issue with that phrase. We didn't divorce because of an argument. Neither one of us wanted to divorce for that reason.
Anonymous wrote:It really depends on how it's framed.
Your dad slept with another woman and it hurt me so I am leaving him. But we are both still your parents and love you very much.
Or
Your dad slept with another woman, which proves he is a bad person and he doesn't love you like a dad should so I kicked him out and we are divorcing.
Plus so many other variations and circumstances.
Your dad did something in the marriage that went against my marriage principles and it hurt me so I am divorcing him. Marriage issues are for adults and so I don't want to discuss the divorce in more detail. We are both still your parents and love you.
Are the detractors from telling kids ok with this statement? I can live with a statement like this. The whole we didn't get along bullshit no way. And I have no idea if he loves them very much, so no need to embellish other people's thoughts for them.
Anonymous wrote:I’m the poster whose DH learned about his father’s affair from a middle school bully in the middle of the cafeteria. I have a question for those of you who believe in not telling kids: do you think how he learned (which was painful and traumatic) is preferable to a quiet conversation with a loving parent?? I cannot understand that world view whatsoever. It seems phenomenally cruel.
The pp who did it at the psychologist did the right thing.
Loving parent or not, it's difficult to have a "quiet' conversation when you are angry, hurt , betrayed and bitter( and rightfully so if your spouse cheated on you and destroyed your mutual vision for the family).
And people really overlook the selfishness of cheaters. While the non- cheating spouse is telling the child what happened, the cheater will tell a very different story to defend themselves. If they are capable of cheating and all the lying and gaslighting thst comes with it, they are more than capable of trying to defend themselves to the children. This too will be cruel and confusing to the child.
With both parents and a professional present, an appropriate conversation is more likely to happen.
Sure, tell them with a psychologist, but you are still recommending telling them. What I am wondering about is the view of the people in favor of hiding affairs. Do those people think it is better to learn about cheating from a middle school bully or proactively from parents or in a therapist’s office? Because my impression of the “never tell” people is that they actually think it’s better for a child to learn from his middle school bully than to hear it proactively, which I find astonishing.
I think you are misunderstanding their opinion. They are not necessarily in favor of hiding affairs. They think that the chances of messing up in the process of telling the kids is much higher than the chances of the kid being messed up by finding out elsewhere.
You might disagree with their assessment, but claiming that they are in favor of hiding affairs is an misunderstanding of their position.
I don' t tell my kids about my sex life with their dad. It dies not mean that DH and I are hiding our sex lives. It's just not an appropriate conversation to have with them.
Okay, but that still doesn’t answer my question, which I think the pro-not-telling contingent is avoiding at this point: for those of you who do not think that children should be proactively told about the truth of parental affairs: do you think that it was better for my DH to learn about his father’s affair from a bully in the middle school cafeteria as opposed to proactively learning the truth from his parents or in a therapist’s office?
Because my impression from the not-telling posters is that hiding the affair — and I’m really not sure what else it is if you are not telling the kids what happened — is more important than protecting the kids from learning about the truth of the affair in ways like my DH did. I find that viewpoint unfathomable. I cannot imagine, seeing the fallout my DH went through, leaving a child unprotected that way. It is incomprehensible to me.
I have specifically said if you feel like there is a more than likely scenario where a kid will be told in an environment like school (because of the players involved or the scope of people in the middle of the conflict) then you should find a healthy and safe way to proactively tell them, with the help of a therapist and if possible the cheating spouse telling them not the other spouse because then it becomes about the cheating spouse confessing to the kid what they did and it is between the two of them. It doesn't place the kid in a position of choosing sides in a conflict, it becomes a conflict between the kid and the cheating spouse directly. But if the middle school bully knows then one or both parents are running their mouths, and THAT is not what any of us are suggesting. Don't tell your kid but do spread it all over town is not what anyone is advocating. The parents know if it is OUT THERE or not, or they should.
But I would also challenge you and your DH to think more critically about what happened to him. Because what most people are saying is that you should tell your kids what they need to know in a healthy way that is focused on THEIR continuing to believe that their life is stable, that their parents love them, that they know what to expect etc. I think situations like your DH it is likely not THAT but parents failing on these other marks and then the finding out in a bad way is just a symptom of other bad things happening.
So like, keeping it from a kid, then having mom talk about it all over town until everyone knows, then continuing not to tell the kid knowing they will be humiliated, and then not admitting it when they are humiliated and ask about it. The crime there was not neglecting to proactively tell the kid on day 1. The crime there is not assessing the kid's experience of the situation, not keeping it within an appropriate circle, not understanding when it escaped that circle, not then proactively telling the kid to protect them from that.
You are making it all about the first decision when in reality it is about a LOT of bad decisions, all of which point to bad parenting.
Sure, I’m not going to disagree that there was a full cluster of bad parenting from my cheating FIL (not from my MIL). Among other bad decisions, he asked my MIL not to tell the kids (using the reasoning the don’t-tell people here have promoted) and she agreed, which she of course deeply regretted after my poor DH came home from that day in the cafeteria. My DH was (as a teen) angry with her for not telling him the truth, and it took years for him to realize the awful position her DH had put her in. She thought she was doing the right thing and didn’t know that FIL had been open about the affair in their social circles.
And really, that’s the thing I don’t get here. You seem to think that cheaters are sober, good decision-makers who make good parenting decisions for the benefit of their kids. That really doesn’t track at all with my experience. In my experience, I’ve yet to see a cheater who put their kids first. And the kids know it. They know their mom or dad doesn’t really care about them. Certainly my DH knew that. And so I’m extremely skeptical that cheating parents can somehow cheat yet also be a caring advocate for their kids and be able to soberly assess whether their kids will learn about the truth of the affair in situations like the one my DH endured. I just don’t see cheaters suddenly becoming the kind of parent who care about protecting their kids from harm, when there is concrete evidence that they are pretty delusional. Maybe there are cheaters out there that can soberly assess whether their kids are more likely to be hurt by being told by their parents or not, but when I look around at the cheating parents I’ve known, they are pretty universally incapable of that level of self-reflection.
And I would assume your DH correctly holds his dad accountable then? Not his mom? It took awhile but he got there. There was no avoiding the terrible conclusion that his dad sucks. But he got there because of things his dad did to HIM. He didn't have to get there by feeling like he took his mom's side over his dad's because she wanted him to.
And regardless of how he feels about it now, he cannot actually speak to the inverse situation where the mom in that case tells the kid and hates the dad and the kid lives with the specter of hate and discord and feeling like they are a pawn in a war. Lots of us are speaking to that being just as crappy.
Just because you have yet to see a cheater put their kids first doesn't mean they don't exist. I have a friend who cheated on her husband for a lot of bad reasons. They did therapy, stayed together, have three wonderful kids and I can't speak to their marriage honestly but she is a WONDERFUL mother. You are using a really narrow personal experience to extrapolate something about all cheaters. Just like every other kind of person there is a LOT of people on that spectrum. And they are not all terrible people and they are not all terrible parents.
Basically my entire position is that the needs of the kids need to be paramount and parents need to soberly evaluate the situation and make decisions based on the kid's need not their own. There are situations where that means telling them, and situations where that means not telling them. IMO I will continue to believe that if they CAN be protected from that, they should be.
I agree with you on the bolded, but I disagree that in general the default rule should be to not tell, largely because I simply don’t think it’s realistic if you want to protect your kids from being told by someone who wants to hurt them (like the middle school bully). The cheating happened. Unless it was kept deeply secret such that only the cheater, the AP, and the ex will ever know (unusual), the kids will eventually find out. It’s only a question of when and how, and I think it’s delusional to pretend otherwise.
I am also skeptical that cheating parents are capable of the bolded, generally speaking. You are basing your idea of the “good cheater” on your one friend, but that’s a pretty narrow and IMO unusual situation. Certainly that doesn’t track my lived experience (not just my FIL) nor that of most people I know.
My DH had a good relationship with his mom eventually, but it was harmed for years because he felt she had deceived him (which she had, to be blunt). Of course finding out the way he did was traumatic and he (as a hurt teen) lashed out at both parents, not just the one who was really at fault.
I am one of the pps you are responding to above. There are at least two of us. lol
You argue that PP is basing their response on the one "good cheater" then let me add my dad as the second.
My dad was a wonderful father. He was arguably the best in our entire extended family on both sides. He was very involved in our activities: school, playing, emotional development, etc.
But he was an awful husband. My mother told us about some of the stuff he had done, and we confronted him. He had his own version of the story. We never took sides, but we never thought that he was wrong and she was right. I only came to that realization as a young adult. My siblings came to it much later. We did not have the capacity to process some of things. It just felt like two broken human beings bickering and telling on each other.
So there is no way that I am assuming that all cheaters are bad parents. And my parents loved us more than anything in the world. And my dad cheating or being a horrible husband does not change that.
Because you want to believe he's a good parent. Particularly girls. All of them want their love from their daddy and in turn to know that they are lovable. It's a survival mechanism. Doesn't make him a good person.
Interesting. He has 2 sons who actually "love" him more than his daughters do. They were actually the last ones to come to the realization that my dad was wrong.
It did not change their love for him though. It's sad that you cannot distinguish between a parent's love for their child and that for their spouse.
Anonymous wrote:I’m the poster whose DH learned about his father’s affair from a middle school bully in the middle of the cafeteria. I have a question for those of you who believe in not telling kids: do you think how he learned (which was painful and traumatic) is preferable to a quiet conversation with a loving parent?? I cannot understand that world view whatsoever. It seems phenomenally cruel.
The pp who did it at the psychologist did the right thing.
Loving parent or not, it's difficult to have a "quiet' conversation when you are angry, hurt , betrayed and bitter( and rightfully so if your spouse cheated on you and destroyed your mutual vision for the family).
And people really overlook the selfishness of cheaters. While the non- cheating spouse is telling the child what happened, the cheater will tell a very different story to defend themselves. If they are capable of cheating and all the lying and gaslighting thst comes with it, they are more than capable of trying to defend themselves to the children. This too will be cruel and confusing to the child.
With both parents and a professional present, an appropriate conversation is more likely to happen.
Sure, tell them with a psychologist, but you are still recommending telling them. What I am wondering about is the view of the people in favor of hiding affairs. Do those people think it is better to learn about cheating from a middle school bully or proactively from parents or in a therapist’s office? Because my impression of the “never tell” people is that they actually think it’s better for a child to learn from his middle school bully than to hear it proactively, which I find astonishing.
I think you are misunderstanding their opinion. They are not necessarily in favor of hiding affairs. They think that the chances of messing up in the process of telling the kids is much higher than the chances of the kid being messed up by finding out elsewhere.
You might disagree with their assessment, but claiming that they are in favor of hiding affairs is an misunderstanding of their position.
I don' t tell my kids about my sex life with their dad. It dies not mean that DH and I are hiding our sex lives. It's just not an appropriate conversation to have with them.
Okay, but that still doesn’t answer my question, which I think the pro-not-telling contingent is avoiding at this point: for those of you who do not think that children should be proactively told about the truth of parental affairs: do you think that it was better for my DH to learn about his father’s affair from a bully in the middle school cafeteria as opposed to proactively learning the truth from his parents or in a therapist’s office?
Because my impression from the not-telling posters is that hiding the affair — and I’m really not sure what else it is if you are not telling the kids what happened — is more important than protecting the kids from learning about the truth of the affair in ways like my DH did. I find that viewpoint unfathomable. I cannot imagine, seeing the fallout my DH went through, leaving a child unprotected that way. It is incomprehensible to me.
I have specifically said if you feel like there is a more than likely scenario where a kid will be told in an environment like school (because of the players involved or the scope of people in the middle of the conflict) then you should find a healthy and safe way to proactively tell them, with the help of a therapist and if possible the cheating spouse telling them not the other spouse because then it becomes about the cheating spouse confessing to the kid what they did and it is between the two of them. It doesn't place the kid in a position of choosing sides in a conflict, it becomes a conflict between the kid and the cheating spouse directly. But if the middle school bully knows then one or both parents are running their mouths, and THAT is not what any of us are suggesting. Don't tell your kid but do spread it all over town is not what anyone is advocating. The parents know if it is OUT THERE or not, or they should.
But I would also challenge you and your DH to think more critically about what happened to him. Because what most people are saying is that you should tell your kids what they need to know in a healthy way that is focused on THEIR continuing to believe that their life is stable, that their parents love them, that they know what to expect etc. I think situations like your DH it is likely not THAT but parents failing on these other marks and then the finding out in a bad way is just a symptom of other bad things happening.
So like, keeping it from a kid, then having mom talk about it all over town until everyone knows, then continuing not to tell the kid knowing they will be humiliated, and then not admitting it when they are humiliated and ask about it. The crime there was not neglecting to proactively tell the kid on day 1. The crime there is not assessing the kid's experience of the situation, not keeping it within an appropriate circle, not understanding when it escaped that circle, not then proactively telling the kid to protect them from that.
You are making it all about the first decision when in reality it is about a LOT of bad decisions, all of which point to bad parenting.
Sure, I’m not going to disagree that there was a full cluster of bad parenting from my cheating FIL (not from my MIL). Among other bad decisions, he asked my MIL not to tell the kids (using the reasoning the don’t-tell people here have promoted) and she agreed, which she of course deeply regretted after my poor DH came home from that day in the cafeteria. My DH was (as a teen) angry with her for not telling him the truth, and it took years for him to realize the awful position her DH had put her in. She thought she was doing the right thing and didn’t know that FIL had been open about the affair in their social circles.
And really, that’s the thing I don’t get here. You seem to think that cheaters are sober, good decision-makers who make good parenting decisions for the benefit of their kids. That really doesn’t track at all with my experience. In my experience, I’ve yet to see a cheater who put their kids first. And the kids know it. They know their mom or dad doesn’t really care about them. Certainly my DH knew that. And so I’m extremely skeptical that cheating parents can somehow cheat yet also be a caring advocate for their kids and be able to soberly assess whether their kids will learn about the truth of the affair in situations like the one my DH endured. I just don’t see cheaters suddenly becoming the kind of parent who care about protecting their kids from harm, when there is concrete evidence that they are pretty delusional. Maybe there are cheaters out there that can soberly assess whether their kids are more likely to be hurt by being told by their parents or not, but when I look around at the cheating parents I’ve known, they are pretty universally incapable of that level of self-reflection.
And I would assume your DH correctly holds his dad accountable then? Not his mom? It took awhile but he got there. There was no avoiding the terrible conclusion that his dad sucks. But he got there because of things his dad did to HIM. He didn't have to get there by feeling like he took his mom's side over his dad's because she wanted him to.
And regardless of how he feels about it now, he cannot actually speak to the inverse situation where the mom in that case tells the kid and hates the dad and the kid lives with the specter of hate and discord and feeling like they are a pawn in a war. Lots of us are speaking to that being just as crappy.
Just because you have yet to see a cheater put their kids first doesn't mean they don't exist. I have a friend who cheated on her husband for a lot of bad reasons. They did therapy, stayed together, have three wonderful kids and I can't speak to their marriage honestly but she is a WONDERFUL mother. You are using a really narrow personal experience to extrapolate something about all cheaters. Just like every other kind of person there is a LOT of people on that spectrum. And they are not all terrible people and they are not all terrible parents.
Basically my entire position is that the needs of the kids need to be paramount and parents need to soberly evaluate the situation and make decisions based on the kid's need not their own. There are situations where that means telling them, and situations where that means not telling them. IMO I will continue to believe that if they CAN be protected from that, they should be.
I agree with you on the bolded, but I disagree that in general the default rule should be to not tell, largely because I simply don’t think it’s realistic if you want to protect your kids from being told by someone who wants to hurt them (like the middle school bully). The cheating happened. Unless it was kept deeply secret such that only the cheater, the AP, and the ex will ever know (unusual), the kids will eventually find out. It’s only a question of when and how, and I think it’s delusional to pretend otherwise.
I am also skeptical that cheating parents are capable of the bolded, generally speaking. You are basing your idea of the “good cheater” on your one friend, but that’s a pretty narrow and IMO unusual situation. Certainly that doesn’t track my lived experience (not just my FIL) nor that of most people I know.
My DH had a good relationship with his mom eventually, but it was harmed for years because he felt she had deceived him (which she had, to be blunt). Of course finding out the way he did was traumatic and he (as a hurt teen) lashed out at both parents, not just the one who was really at fault.
I am one of the pps you are responding to above. There are at least two of us. lol
You argue that PP is basing their response on the one "good cheater" then let me add my dad as the second.
My dad was a wonderful father. He was arguably the best in our entire extended family on both sides. He was very involved in our activities: school, playing, emotional development, etc.
But he was an awful husband. My mother told us about some of the stuff he had done, and we confronted him. He had his own version of the story. We never took sides, but we never thought that he was wrong and she was right. I only came to that realization as a young adult. My siblings came to it much later. We did not have the capacity to process some of things. It just felt like two broken human beings bickering and telling on each other.
So there is no way that I am assuming that all cheaters are bad parents. And my parents loved us more than anything in the world. And my dad cheating or being a horrible husband does not change that.
Because you want to believe he's a good parent. Particularly girls. All of them want their love from their daddy and in turn to know that they are lovable. It's a survival mechanism. Doesn't make him a good person.
Interesting. He has 2 sons who actually "love" him more than his daughters do. They were actually the last ones to come to the realization that my dad was wrong.
It did not change their love for him though. It's sad that you cannot distinguish between a parent's love for their child and that for their spouse.
The love is self-serving typically with a cheater. So it's not always healthy. And the child needs their dad's love because you can't just get another dad like you can a boyfriend. So often children are desperate to still love their cheating dad or mom because they aren't going to get another one. And that relationship determines their self worth.
Anonymous wrote:I’m the poster whose DH learned about his father’s affair from a middle school bully in the middle of the cafeteria. I have a question for those of you who believe in not telling kids: do you think how he learned (which was painful and traumatic) is preferable to a quiet conversation with a loving parent?? I cannot understand that world view whatsoever. It seems phenomenally cruel.
The pp who did it at the psychologist did the right thing.
Loving parent or not, it's difficult to have a "quiet' conversation when you are angry, hurt , betrayed and bitter( and rightfully so if your spouse cheated on you and destroyed your mutual vision for the family).
And people really overlook the selfishness of cheaters. While the non- cheating spouse is telling the child what happened, the cheater will tell a very different story to defend themselves. If they are capable of cheating and all the lying and gaslighting thst comes with it, they are more than capable of trying to defend themselves to the children. This too will be cruel and confusing to the child.
With both parents and a professional present, an appropriate conversation is more likely to happen.
Sure, tell them with a psychologist, but you are still recommending telling them. What I am wondering about is the view of the people in favor of hiding affairs. Do those people think it is better to learn about cheating from a middle school bully or proactively from parents or in a therapist’s office? Because my impression of the “never tell” people is that they actually think it’s better for a child to learn from his middle school bully than to hear it proactively, which I find astonishing.
I think you are misunderstanding their opinion. They are not necessarily in favor of hiding affairs. They think that the chances of messing up in the process of telling the kids is much higher than the chances of the kid being messed up by finding out elsewhere.
You might disagree with their assessment, but claiming that they are in favor of hiding affairs is an misunderstanding of their position.
I don' t tell my kids about my sex life with their dad. It dies not mean that DH and I are hiding our sex lives. It's just not an appropriate conversation to have with them.
Okay, but that still doesn’t answer my question, which I think the pro-not-telling contingent is avoiding at this point: for those of you who do not think that children should be proactively told about the truth of parental affairs: do you think that it was better for my DH to learn about his father’s affair from a bully in the middle school cafeteria as opposed to proactively learning the truth from his parents or in a therapist’s office?
Because my impression from the not-telling posters is that hiding the affair — and I’m really not sure what else it is if you are not telling the kids what happened — is more important than protecting the kids from learning about the truth of the affair in ways like my DH did. I find that viewpoint unfathomable. I cannot imagine, seeing the fallout my DH went through, leaving a child unprotected that way. It is incomprehensible to me.
I have specifically said if you feel like there is a more than likely scenario where a kid will be told in an environment like school (because of the players involved or the scope of people in the middle of the conflict) then you should find a healthy and safe way to proactively tell them, with the help of a therapist and if possible the cheating spouse telling them not the other spouse because then it becomes about the cheating spouse confessing to the kid what they did and it is between the two of them. It doesn't place the kid in a position of choosing sides in a conflict, it becomes a conflict between the kid and the cheating spouse directly. But if the middle school bully knows then one or both parents are running their mouths, and THAT is not what any of us are suggesting. Don't tell your kid but do spread it all over town is not what anyone is advocating. The parents know if it is OUT THERE or not, or they should.
But I would also challenge you and your DH to think more critically about what happened to him. Because what most people are saying is that you should tell your kids what they need to know in a healthy way that is focused on THEIR continuing to believe that their life is stable, that their parents love them, that they know what to expect etc. I think situations like your DH it is likely not THAT but parents failing on these other marks and then the finding out in a bad way is just a symptom of other bad things happening.
So like, keeping it from a kid, then having mom talk about it all over town until everyone knows, then continuing not to tell the kid knowing they will be humiliated, and then not admitting it when they are humiliated and ask about it. The crime there was not neglecting to proactively tell the kid on day 1. The crime there is not assessing the kid's experience of the situation, not keeping it within an appropriate circle, not understanding when it escaped that circle, not then proactively telling the kid to protect them from that.
You are making it all about the first decision when in reality it is about a LOT of bad decisions, all of which point to bad parenting.
Sure, I’m not going to disagree that there was a full cluster of bad parenting from my cheating FIL (not from my MIL). Among other bad decisions, he asked my MIL not to tell the kids (using the reasoning the don’t-tell people here have promoted) and she agreed, which she of course deeply regretted after my poor DH came home from that day in the cafeteria. My DH was (as a teen) angry with her for not telling him the truth, and it took years for him to realize the awful position her DH had put her in. She thought she was doing the right thing and didn’t know that FIL had been open about the affair in their social circles.
And really, that’s the thing I don’t get here. You seem to think that cheaters are sober, good decision-makers who make good parenting decisions for the benefit of their kids. That really doesn’t track at all with my experience. In my experience, I’ve yet to see a cheater who put their kids first. And the kids know it. They know their mom or dad doesn’t really care about them. Certainly my DH knew that. And so I’m extremely skeptical that cheating parents can somehow cheat yet also be a caring advocate for their kids and be able to soberly assess whether their kids will learn about the truth of the affair in situations like the one my DH endured. I just don’t see cheaters suddenly becoming the kind of parent who care about protecting their kids from harm, when there is concrete evidence that they are pretty delusional. Maybe there are cheaters out there that can soberly assess whether their kids are more likely to be hurt by being told by their parents or not, but when I look around at the cheating parents I’ve known, they are pretty universally incapable of that level of self-reflection.
And I would assume your DH correctly holds his dad accountable then? Not his mom? It took awhile but he got there. There was no avoiding the terrible conclusion that his dad sucks. But he got there because of things his dad did to HIM. He didn't have to get there by feeling like he took his mom's side over his dad's because she wanted him to.
And regardless of how he feels about it now, he cannot actually speak to the inverse situation where the mom in that case tells the kid and hates the dad and the kid lives with the specter of hate and discord and feeling like they are a pawn in a war. Lots of us are speaking to that being just as crappy.
Just because you have yet to see a cheater put their kids first doesn't mean they don't exist. I have a friend who cheated on her husband for a lot of bad reasons. They did therapy, stayed together, have three wonderful kids and I can't speak to their marriage honestly but she is a WONDERFUL mother. You are using a really narrow personal experience to extrapolate something about all cheaters. Just like every other kind of person there is a LOT of people on that spectrum. And they are not all terrible people and they are not all terrible parents.
Basically my entire position is that the needs of the kids need to be paramount and parents need to soberly evaluate the situation and make decisions based on the kid's need not their own. There are situations where that means telling them, and situations where that means not telling them. IMO I will continue to believe that if they CAN be protected from that, they should be.
I agree with you on the bolded, but I disagree that in general the default rule should be to not tell, largely because I simply don’t think it’s realistic if you want to protect your kids from being told by someone who wants to hurt them (like the middle school bully). The cheating happened. Unless it was kept deeply secret such that only the cheater, the AP, and the ex will ever know (unusual), the kids will eventually find out. It’s only a question of when and how, and I think it’s delusional to pretend otherwise.
I am also skeptical that cheating parents are capable of the bolded, generally speaking. You are basing your idea of the “good cheater” on your one friend, but that’s a pretty narrow and IMO unusual situation. Certainly that doesn’t track my lived experience (not just my FIL) nor that of most people I know.
My DH had a good relationship with his mom eventually, but it was harmed for years because he felt she had deceived him (which she had, to be blunt). Of course finding out the way he did was traumatic and he (as a hurt teen) lashed out at both parents, not just the one who was really at fault.
I am one of the pps you are responding to above. There are at least two of us. lol
You argue that PP is basing their response on the one "good cheater" then let me add my dad as the second.
My dad was a wonderful father. He was arguably the best in our entire extended family on both sides. He was very involved in our activities: school, playing, emotional development, etc.
But he was an awful husband. My mother told us about some of the stuff he had done, and we confronted him. He had his own version of the story. We never took sides, but we never thought that he was wrong and she was right. I only came to that realization as a young adult. My siblings came to it much later. We did not have the capacity to process some of things. It just felt like two broken human beings bickering and telling on each other.
So there is no way that I am assuming that all cheaters are bad parents. And my parents loved us more than anything in the world. And my dad cheating or being a horrible husband does not change that.
Because you want to believe he's a good parent. Particularly girls. All of them want their love from their daddy and in turn to know that they are lovable. It's a survival mechanism. Doesn't make him a good person.
Interesting. He has 2 sons who actually "love" him more than his daughters do. They were actually the last ones to come to the realization that my dad was wrong.
It did not change their love for him though. It's sad that you cannot distinguish between a parent's love for their child and that for their spouse.
The love is self-serving typically with a cheater. So it's not always healthy. And the child needs their dad's love because you can't just get another dad like you can a boyfriend. So often children are desperate to still love their cheating dad or mom because they aren't going to get another one. And that relationship determines their self worth.
A child does need their dad's love. It does not matter that their dad is imperfect. It might matter to a spouse, but it does not matter to the child.
Anonymous wrote:I’m the poster whose DH learned about his father’s affair from a middle school bully in the middle of the cafeteria. I have a question for those of you who believe in not telling kids: do you think how he learned (which was painful and traumatic) is preferable to a quiet conversation with a loving parent?? I cannot understand that world view whatsoever. It seems phenomenally cruel.
The pp who did it at the psychologist did the right thing.
Loving parent or not, it's difficult to have a "quiet' conversation when you are angry, hurt , betrayed and bitter( and rightfully so if your spouse cheated on you and destroyed your mutual vision for the family).
And people really overlook the selfishness of cheaters. While the non- cheating spouse is telling the child what happened, the cheater will tell a very different story to defend themselves. If they are capable of cheating and all the lying and gaslighting thst comes with it, they are more than capable of trying to defend themselves to the children. This too will be cruel and confusing to the child.
With both parents and a professional present, an appropriate conversation is more likely to happen.
Sure, tell them with a psychologist, but you are still recommending telling them. What I am wondering about is the view of the people in favor of hiding affairs. Do those people think it is better to learn about cheating from a middle school bully or proactively from parents or in a therapist’s office? Because my impression of the “never tell” people is that they actually think it’s better for a child to learn from his middle school bully than to hear it proactively, which I find astonishing.
I think you are misunderstanding their opinion. They are not necessarily in favor of hiding affairs. They think that the chances of messing up in the process of telling the kids is much higher than the chances of the kid being messed up by finding out elsewhere.
You might disagree with their assessment, but claiming that they are in favor of hiding affairs is an misunderstanding of their position.
I don' t tell my kids about my sex life with their dad. It dies not mean that DH and I are hiding our sex lives. It's just not an appropriate conversation to have with them.
Okay, but that still doesn’t answer my question, which I think the pro-not-telling contingent is avoiding at this point: for those of you who do not think that children should be proactively told about the truth of parental affairs: do you think that it was better for my DH to learn about his father’s affair from a bully in the middle school cafeteria as opposed to proactively learning the truth from his parents or in a therapist’s office?
Because my impression from the not-telling posters is that hiding the affair — and I’m really not sure what else it is if you are not telling the kids what happened — is more important than protecting the kids from learning about the truth of the affair in ways like my DH did. I find that viewpoint unfathomable. I cannot imagine, seeing the fallout my DH went through, leaving a child unprotected that way. It is incomprehensible to me.
I have specifically said if you feel like there is a more than likely scenario where a kid will be told in an environment like school (because of the players involved or the scope of people in the middle of the conflict) then you should find a healthy and safe way to proactively tell them, with the help of a therapist and if possible the cheating spouse telling them not the other spouse because then it becomes about the cheating spouse confessing to the kid what they did and it is between the two of them. It doesn't place the kid in a position of choosing sides in a conflict, it becomes a conflict between the kid and the cheating spouse directly. But if the middle school bully knows then one or both parents are running their mouths, and THAT is not what any of us are suggesting. Don't tell your kid but do spread it all over town is not what anyone is advocating. The parents know if it is OUT THERE or not, or they should.
But I would also challenge you and your DH to think more critically about what happened to him. Because what most people are saying is that you should tell your kids what they need to know in a healthy way that is focused on THEIR continuing to believe that their life is stable, that their parents love them, that they know what to expect etc. I think situations like your DH it is likely not THAT but parents failing on these other marks and then the finding out in a bad way is just a symptom of other bad things happening.
So like, keeping it from a kid, then having mom talk about it all over town until everyone knows, then continuing not to tell the kid knowing they will be humiliated, and then not admitting it when they are humiliated and ask about it. The crime there was not neglecting to proactively tell the kid on day 1. The crime there is not assessing the kid's experience of the situation, not keeping it within an appropriate circle, not understanding when it escaped that circle, not then proactively telling the kid to protect them from that.
You are making it all about the first decision when in reality it is about a LOT of bad decisions, all of which point to bad parenting.
Sure, I’m not going to disagree that there was a full cluster of bad parenting from my cheating FIL (not from my MIL). Among other bad decisions, he asked my MIL not to tell the kids (using the reasoning the don’t-tell people here have promoted) and she agreed, which she of course deeply regretted after my poor DH came home from that day in the cafeteria. My DH was (as a teen) angry with her for not telling him the truth, and it took years for him to realize the awful position her DH had put her in. She thought she was doing the right thing and didn’t know that FIL had been open about the affair in their social circles.
And really, that’s the thing I don’t get here. You seem to think that cheaters are sober, good decision-makers who make good parenting decisions for the benefit of their kids. That really doesn’t track at all with my experience. In my experience, I’ve yet to see a cheater who put their kids first. And the kids know it. They know their mom or dad doesn’t really care about them. Certainly my DH knew that. And so I’m extremely skeptical that cheating parents can somehow cheat yet also be a caring advocate for their kids and be able to soberly assess whether their kids will learn about the truth of the affair in situations like the one my DH endured. I just don’t see cheaters suddenly becoming the kind of parent who care about protecting their kids from harm, when there is concrete evidence that they are pretty delusional. Maybe there are cheaters out there that can soberly assess whether their kids are more likely to be hurt by being told by their parents or not, but when I look around at the cheating parents I’ve known, they are pretty universally incapable of that level of self-reflection.
And I would assume your DH correctly holds his dad accountable then? Not his mom? It took awhile but he got there. There was no avoiding the terrible conclusion that his dad sucks. But he got there because of things his dad did to HIM. He didn't have to get there by feeling like he took his mom's side over his dad's because she wanted him to.
And regardless of how he feels about it now, he cannot actually speak to the inverse situation where the mom in that case tells the kid and hates the dad and the kid lives with the specter of hate and discord and feeling like they are a pawn in a war. Lots of us are speaking to that being just as crappy.
Just because you have yet to see a cheater put their kids first doesn't mean they don't exist. I have a friend who cheated on her husband for a lot of bad reasons. They did therapy, stayed together, have three wonderful kids and I can't speak to their marriage honestly but she is a WONDERFUL mother. You are using a really narrow personal experience to extrapolate something about all cheaters. Just like every other kind of person there is a LOT of people on that spectrum. And they are not all terrible people and they are not all terrible parents.
Basically my entire position is that the needs of the kids need to be paramount and parents need to soberly evaluate the situation and make decisions based on the kid's need not their own. There are situations where that means telling them, and situations where that means not telling them. IMO I will continue to believe that if they CAN be protected from that, they should be.
I agree with you on the bolded, but I disagree that in general the default rule should be to not tell, largely because I simply don’t think it’s realistic if you want to protect your kids from being told by someone who wants to hurt them (like the middle school bully). The cheating happened. Unless it was kept deeply secret such that only the cheater, the AP, and the ex will ever know (unusual), the kids will eventually find out. It’s only a question of when and how, and I think it’s delusional to pretend otherwise.
I am also skeptical that cheating parents are capable of the bolded, generally speaking. You are basing your idea of the “good cheater” on your one friend, but that’s a pretty narrow and IMO unusual situation. Certainly that doesn’t track my lived experience (not just my FIL) nor that of most people I know.
My DH had a good relationship with his mom eventually, but it was harmed for years because he felt she had deceived him (which she had, to be blunt). Of course finding out the way he did was traumatic and he (as a hurt teen) lashed out at both parents, not just the one who was really at fault.
I am one of the pps you are responding to above. There are at least two of us. lol
You argue that PP is basing their response on the one "good cheater" then let me add my dad as the second.
My dad was a wonderful father. He was arguably the best in our entire extended family on both sides. He was very involved in our activities: school, playing, emotional development, etc.
But he was an awful husband. My mother told us about some of the stuff he had done, and we confronted him. He had his own version of the story. We never took sides, but we never thought that he was wrong and she was right. I only came to that realization as a young adult. My siblings came to it much later. We did not have the capacity to process some of things. It just felt like two broken human beings bickering and telling on each other.
So there is no way that I am assuming that all cheaters are bad parents. And my parents loved us more than anything in the world. And my dad cheating or being a horrible husband does not change that.
Because you want to believe he's a good parent. Particularly girls. All of them want their love from their daddy and in turn to know that they are lovable. It's a survival mechanism. Doesn't make him a good person.
Interesting. He has 2 sons who actually "love" him more than his daughters do. They were actually the last ones to come to the realization that my dad was wrong.
It did not change their love for him though. It's sad that you cannot distinguish between a parent's love for their child and that for their spouse.
The love is self-serving typically with a cheater. So it's not always healthy. And the child needs their dad's love because you can't just get another dad like you can a boyfriend. So often children are desperate to still love their cheating dad or mom because they aren't going to get another one. And that relationship determines their self worth.
A child does need their dad's love. It does not matter that their dad is imperfect. It might matter to a spouse, but it does not matter to the child.
Thank goodness my mother understood that!
I'm not disagreeing. I'm simply saying that a lot of narcissistic people experience love as a taking not a give and take relationship. So a lot of times children mistake their parent's love as in they will love them no matter what when in reality the parent loves their cuteness or the carefree activities they get to do with them or the praise other people give to the kids as their own. Or just the hugs they get from their kids. There isn't a lot of giving from the narcissist to the child.
Anonymous wrote:I’m the poster whose DH learned about his father’s affair from a middle school bully in the middle of the cafeteria. I have a question for those of you who believe in not telling kids: do you think how he learned (which was painful and traumatic) is preferable to a quiet conversation with a loving parent?? I cannot understand that world view whatsoever. It seems phenomenally cruel.
The pp who did it at the psychologist did the right thing.
Loving parent or not, it's difficult to have a "quiet' conversation when you are angry, hurt , betrayed and bitter( and rightfully so if your spouse cheated on you and destroyed your mutual vision for the family).
And people really overlook the selfishness of cheaters. While the non- cheating spouse is telling the child what happened, the cheater will tell a very different story to defend themselves. If they are capable of cheating and all the lying and gaslighting thst comes with it, they are more than capable of trying to defend themselves to the children. This too will be cruel and confusing to the child.
With both parents and a professional present, an appropriate conversation is more likely to happen.
Sure, tell them with a psychologist, but you are still recommending telling them. What I am wondering about is the view of the people in favor of hiding affairs. Do those people think it is better to learn about cheating from a middle school bully or proactively from parents or in a therapist’s office? Because my impression of the “never tell” people is that they actually think it’s better for a child to learn from his middle school bully than to hear it proactively, which I find astonishing.
I think you are misunderstanding their opinion. They are not necessarily in favor of hiding affairs. They think that the chances of messing up in the process of telling the kids is much higher than the chances of the kid being messed up by finding out elsewhere.
You might disagree with their assessment, but claiming that they are in favor of hiding affairs is an misunderstanding of their position.
I don' t tell my kids about my sex life with their dad. It dies not mean that DH and I are hiding our sex lives. It's just not an appropriate conversation to have with them.
Okay, but that still doesn’t answer my question, which I think the pro-not-telling contingent is avoiding at this point: for those of you who do not think that children should be proactively told about the truth of parental affairs: do you think that it was better for my DH to learn about his father’s affair from a bully in the middle school cafeteria as opposed to proactively learning the truth from his parents or in a therapist’s office?
Because my impression from the not-telling posters is that hiding the affair — and I’m really not sure what else it is if you are not telling the kids what happened — is more important than protecting the kids from learning about the truth of the affair in ways like my DH did. I find that viewpoint unfathomable. I cannot imagine, seeing the fallout my DH went through, leaving a child unprotected that way. It is incomprehensible to me.
I have specifically said if you feel like there is a more than likely scenario where a kid will be told in an environment like school (because of the players involved or the scope of people in the middle of the conflict) then you should find a healthy and safe way to proactively tell them, with the help of a therapist and if possible the cheating spouse telling them not the other spouse because then it becomes about the cheating spouse confessing to the kid what they did and it is between the two of them. It doesn't place the kid in a position of choosing sides in a conflict, it becomes a conflict between the kid and the cheating spouse directly. But if the middle school bully knows then one or both parents are running their mouths, and THAT is not what any of us are suggesting. Don't tell your kid but do spread it all over town is not what anyone is advocating. The parents know if it is OUT THERE or not, or they should.
But I would also challenge you and your DH to think more critically about what happened to him. Because what most people are saying is that you should tell your kids what they need to know in a healthy way that is focused on THEIR continuing to believe that their life is stable, that their parents love them, that they know what to expect etc. I think situations like your DH it is likely not THAT but parents failing on these other marks and then the finding out in a bad way is just a symptom of other bad things happening.
So like, keeping it from a kid, then having mom talk about it all over town until everyone knows, then continuing not to tell the kid knowing they will be humiliated, and then not admitting it when they are humiliated and ask about it. The crime there was not neglecting to proactively tell the kid on day 1. The crime there is not assessing the kid's experience of the situation, not keeping it within an appropriate circle, not understanding when it escaped that circle, not then proactively telling the kid to protect them from that.
You are making it all about the first decision when in reality it is about a LOT of bad decisions, all of which point to bad parenting.
Sure, I’m not going to disagree that there was a full cluster of bad parenting from my cheating FIL (not from my MIL). Among other bad decisions, he asked my MIL not to tell the kids (using the reasoning the don’t-tell people here have promoted) and she agreed, which she of course deeply regretted after my poor DH came home from that day in the cafeteria. My DH was (as a teen) angry with her for not telling him the truth, and it took years for him to realize the awful position her DH had put her in. She thought she was doing the right thing and didn’t know that FIL had been open about the affair in their social circles.
And really, that’s the thing I don’t get here. You seem to think that cheaters are sober, good decision-makers who make good parenting decisions for the benefit of their kids. That really doesn’t track at all with my experience. In my experience, I’ve yet to see a cheater who put their kids first. And the kids know it. They know their mom or dad doesn’t really care about them. Certainly my DH knew that. And so I’m extremely skeptical that cheating parents can somehow cheat yet also be a caring advocate for their kids and be able to soberly assess whether their kids will learn about the truth of the affair in situations like the one my DH endured. I just don’t see cheaters suddenly becoming the kind of parent who care about protecting their kids from harm, when there is concrete evidence that they are pretty delusional. Maybe there are cheaters out there that can soberly assess whether their kids are more likely to be hurt by being told by their parents or not, but when I look around at the cheating parents I’ve known, they are pretty universally incapable of that level of self-reflection.
And I would assume your DH correctly holds his dad accountable then? Not his mom? It took awhile but he got there. There was no avoiding the terrible conclusion that his dad sucks. But he got there because of things his dad did to HIM. He didn't have to get there by feeling like he took his mom's side over his dad's because she wanted him to.
And regardless of how he feels about it now, he cannot actually speak to the inverse situation where the mom in that case tells the kid and hates the dad and the kid lives with the specter of hate and discord and feeling like they are a pawn in a war. Lots of us are speaking to that being just as crappy.
Just because you have yet to see a cheater put their kids first doesn't mean they don't exist. I have a friend who cheated on her husband for a lot of bad reasons. They did therapy, stayed together, have three wonderful kids and I can't speak to their marriage honestly but she is a WONDERFUL mother. You are using a really narrow personal experience to extrapolate something about all cheaters. Just like every other kind of person there is a LOT of people on that spectrum. And they are not all terrible people and they are not all terrible parents.
Basically my entire position is that the needs of the kids need to be paramount and parents need to soberly evaluate the situation and make decisions based on the kid's need not their own. There are situations where that means telling them, and situations where that means not telling them. IMO I will continue to believe that if they CAN be protected from that, they should be.
I agree with you on the bolded, but I disagree that in general the default rule should be to not tell, largely because I simply don’t think it’s realistic if you want to protect your kids from being told by someone who wants to hurt them (like the middle school bully). The cheating happened. Unless it was kept deeply secret such that only the cheater, the AP, and the ex will ever know (unusual), the kids will eventually find out. It’s only a question of when and how, and I think it’s delusional to pretend otherwise.
I am also skeptical that cheating parents are capable of the bolded, generally speaking. You are basing your idea of the “good cheater” on your one friend, but that’s a pretty narrow and IMO unusual situation. Certainly that doesn’t track my lived experience (not just my FIL) nor that of most people I know.
My DH had a good relationship with his mom eventually, but it was harmed for years because he felt she had deceived him (which she had, to be blunt). Of course finding out the way he did was traumatic and he (as a hurt teen) lashed out at both parents, not just the one who was really at fault.
I am one of the pps you are responding to above. There are at least two of us. lol
You argue that PP is basing their response on the one "good cheater" then let me add my dad as the second.
My dad was a wonderful father. He was arguably the best in our entire extended family on both sides. He was very involved in our activities: school, playing, emotional development, etc.
But he was an awful husband. My mother told us about some of the stuff he had done, and we confronted him. He had his own version of the story. We never took sides, but we never thought that he was wrong and she was right. I only came to that realization as a young adult. My siblings came to it much later. We did not have the capacity to process some of things. It just felt like two broken human beings bickering and telling on each other.
So there is no way that I am assuming that all cheaters are bad parents. And my parents loved us more than anything in the world. And my dad cheating or being a horrible husband does not change that.
Because you want to believe he's a good parent. Particularly girls. All of them want their love from their daddy and in turn to know that they are lovable. It's a survival mechanism. Doesn't make him a good person.
Interesting. He has 2 sons who actually "love" him more than his daughters do. They were actually the last ones to come to the realization that my dad was wrong.
It did not change their love for him though. It's sad that you cannot distinguish between a parent's love for their child and that for their spouse.
The love is self-serving typically with a cheater. So it's not always healthy. And the child needs their dad's love because you can't just get another dad like you can a boyfriend. So often children are desperate to still love their cheating dad or mom because they aren't going to get another one. And that relationship determines their self worth.
A child does need their dad's love. It does not matter that their dad is imperfect. It might matter to a spouse, but it does not matter to the child.
Thank goodness my mother understood that!
I wish my narcissist mother had. Her telling me she thought my father was having an affair when I was 12 really messed me up.
The thing that bothers me about my dad's adultery is, he didn't love me enough to keep our family together. He chose his AP over my mom - and me, and my sibling.
Now that I'm an adult, sure I understand, marriage is hard, people fall in and out of love, etc. But it still doesn't help me feel better about my dad's betrayal. And this was like 30 or 40 years ago.
I'll always love him but he is tarnished in my eyes. Affair havers, be warned.
Anonymous wrote:I’m the poster whose DH learned about his father’s affair from a middle school bully in the middle of the cafeteria. I have a question for those of you who believe in not telling kids: do you think how he learned (which was painful and traumatic) is preferable to a quiet conversation with a loving parent?? I cannot understand that world view whatsoever. It seems phenomenally cruel.
The pp who did it at the psychologist did the right thing.
Loving parent or not, it's difficult to have a "quiet' conversation when you are angry, hurt , betrayed and bitter( and rightfully so if your spouse cheated on you and destroyed your mutual vision for the family).
And people really overlook the selfishness of cheaters. While the non- cheating spouse is telling the child what happened, the cheater will tell a very different story to defend themselves. If they are capable of cheating and all the lying and gaslighting thst comes with it, they are more than capable of trying to defend themselves to the children. This too will be cruel and confusing to the child.
With both parents and a professional present, an appropriate conversation is more likely to happen.
Sure, tell them with a psychologist, but you are still recommending telling them. What I am wondering about is the view of the people in favor of hiding affairs. Do those people think it is better to learn about cheating from a middle school bully or proactively from parents or in a therapist’s office? Because my impression of the “never tell” people is that they actually think it’s better for a child to learn from his middle school bully than to hear it proactively, which I find astonishing.
I think you are misunderstanding their opinion. They are not necessarily in favor of hiding affairs. They think that the chances of messing up in the process of telling the kids is much higher than the chances of the kid being messed up by finding out elsewhere.
You might disagree with their assessment, but claiming that they are in favor of hiding affairs is an misunderstanding of their position.
I don' t tell my kids about my sex life with their dad. It dies not mean that DH and I are hiding our sex lives. It's just not an appropriate conversation to have with them.
Okay, but that still doesn’t answer my question, which I think the pro-not-telling contingent is avoiding at this point: for those of you who do not think that children should be proactively told about the truth of parental affairs: do you think that it was better for my DH to learn about his father’s affair from a bully in the middle school cafeteria as opposed to proactively learning the truth from his parents or in a therapist’s office?
Because my impression from the not-telling posters is that hiding the affair — and I’m really not sure what else it is if you are not telling the kids what happened — is more important than protecting the kids from learning about the truth of the affair in ways like my DH did. I find that viewpoint unfathomable. I cannot imagine, seeing the fallout my DH went through, leaving a child unprotected that way. It is incomprehensible to me.
I have specifically said if you feel like there is a more than likely scenario where a kid will be told in an environment like school (because of the players involved or the scope of people in the middle of the conflict) then you should find a healthy and safe way to proactively tell them, with the help of a therapist and if possible the cheating spouse telling them not the other spouse because then it becomes about the cheating spouse confessing to the kid what they did and it is between the two of them. It doesn't place the kid in a position of choosing sides in a conflict, it becomes a conflict between the kid and the cheating spouse directly. But if the middle school bully knows then one or both parents are running their mouths, and THAT is not what any of us are suggesting. Don't tell your kid but do spread it all over town is not what anyone is advocating. The parents know if it is OUT THERE or not, or they should.
But I would also challenge you and your DH to think more critically about what happened to him. Because what most people are saying is that you should tell your kids what they need to know in a healthy way that is focused on THEIR continuing to believe that their life is stable, that their parents love them, that they know what to expect etc. I think situations like your DH it is likely not THAT but parents failing on these other marks and then the finding out in a bad way is just a symptom of other bad things happening.
So like, keeping it from a kid, then having mom talk about it all over town until everyone knows, then continuing not to tell the kid knowing they will be humiliated, and then not admitting it when they are humiliated and ask about it. The crime there was not neglecting to proactively tell the kid on day 1. The crime there is not assessing the kid's experience of the situation, not keeping it within an appropriate circle, not understanding when it escaped that circle, not then proactively telling the kid to protect them from that.
You are making it all about the first decision when in reality it is about a LOT of bad decisions, all of which point to bad parenting.
Sure, I’m not going to disagree that there was a full cluster of bad parenting from my cheating FIL (not from my MIL). Among other bad decisions, he asked my MIL not to tell the kids (using the reasoning the don’t-tell people here have promoted) and she agreed, which she of course deeply regretted after my poor DH came home from that day in the cafeteria. My DH was (as a teen) angry with her for not telling him the truth, and it took years for him to realize the awful position her DH had put her in. She thought she was doing the right thing and didn’t know that FIL had been open about the affair in their social circles.
And really, that’s the thing I don’t get here. You seem to think that cheaters are sober, good decision-makers who make good parenting decisions for the benefit of their kids. That really doesn’t track at all with my experience. In my experience, I’ve yet to see a cheater who put their kids first. And the kids know it. They know their mom or dad doesn’t really care about them. Certainly my DH knew that. And so I’m extremely skeptical that cheating parents can somehow cheat yet also be a caring advocate for their kids and be able to soberly assess whether their kids will learn about the truth of the affair in situations like the one my DH endured. I just don’t see cheaters suddenly becoming the kind of parent who care about protecting their kids from harm, when there is concrete evidence that they are pretty delusional. Maybe there are cheaters out there that can soberly assess whether their kids are more likely to be hurt by being told by their parents or not, but when I look around at the cheating parents I’ve known, they are pretty universally incapable of that level of self-reflection.
And I would assume your DH correctly holds his dad accountable then? Not his mom? It took awhile but he got there. There was no avoiding the terrible conclusion that his dad sucks. But he got there because of things his dad did to HIM. He didn't have to get there by feeling like he took his mom's side over his dad's because she wanted him to.
And regardless of how he feels about it now, he cannot actually speak to the inverse situation where the mom in that case tells the kid and hates the dad and the kid lives with the specter of hate and discord and feeling like they are a pawn in a war. Lots of us are speaking to that being just as crappy.
Just because you have yet to see a cheater put their kids first doesn't mean they don't exist. I have a friend who cheated on her husband for a lot of bad reasons. They did therapy, stayed together, have three wonderful kids and I can't speak to their marriage honestly but she is a WONDERFUL mother. You are using a really narrow personal experience to extrapolate something about all cheaters. Just like every other kind of person there is a LOT of people on that spectrum. And they are not all terrible people and they are not all terrible parents.
Basically my entire position is that the needs of the kids need to be paramount and parents need to soberly evaluate the situation and make decisions based on the kid's need not their own. There are situations where that means telling them, and situations where that means not telling them. IMO I will continue to believe that if they CAN be protected from that, they should be.
I agree with you on the bolded, but I disagree that in general the default rule should be to not tell, largely because I simply don’t think it’s realistic if you want to protect your kids from being told by someone who wants to hurt them (like the middle school bully). The cheating happened. Unless it was kept deeply secret such that only the cheater, the AP, and the ex will ever know (unusual), the kids will eventually find out. It’s only a question of when and how, and I think it’s delusional to pretend otherwise.
I am also skeptical that cheating parents are capable of the bolded, generally speaking. You are basing your idea of the “good cheater” on your one friend, but that’s a pretty narrow and IMO unusual situation. Certainly that doesn’t track my lived experience (not just my FIL) nor that of most people I know.
My DH had a good relationship with his mom eventually, but it was harmed for years because he felt she had deceived him (which she had, to be blunt). Of course finding out the way he did was traumatic and he (as a hurt teen) lashed out at both parents, not just the one who was really at fault.
I am one of the pps you are responding to above. There are at least two of us. lol
You argue that PP is basing their response on the one "good cheater" then let me add my dad as the second.
My dad was a wonderful father. He was arguably the best in our entire extended family on both sides. He was very involved in our activities: school, playing, emotional development, etc.
But he was an awful husband. My mother told us about some of the stuff he had done, and we confronted him. He had his own version of the story. We never took sides, but we never thought that he was wrong and she was right. I only came to that realization as a young adult. My siblings came to it much later. We did not have the capacity to process some of things. It just felt like two broken human beings bickering and telling on each other.
So there is no way that I am assuming that all cheaters are bad parents. And my parents loved us more than anything in the world. And my dad cheating or being a horrible husband does not change that.
Because you want to believe he's a good parent. Particularly girls. All of them want their love from their daddy and in turn to know that they are lovable. It's a survival mechanism. Doesn't make him a good person.
Interesting. He has 2 sons who actually "love" him more than his daughters do. They were actually the last ones to come to the realization that my dad was wrong.
It did not change their love for him though. It's sad that you cannot distinguish between a parent's love for their child and that for their spouse.
The love is self-serving typically with a cheater. So it's not always healthy. And the child needs their dad's love because you can't just get another dad like you can a boyfriend. So often children are desperate to still love their cheating dad or mom because they aren't going to get another one. And that relationship determines their self worth.
A child does need their dad's love. It does not matter that their dad is imperfect. It might matter to a spouse, but it does not matter to the child.
Thank goodness my mother understood that!
I'm not disagreeing. I'm simply saying that a lot of narcissistic people experience love as a taking not a give and take relationship. So a lot of times children mistake their parent's love as in they will love them no matter what when in reality the parent loves their cuteness or the carefree activities they get to do with them or the praise other people give to the kids as their own. Or just the hugs they get from their kids. There isn't a lot of giving from the narcissist to the child.
Why are we discussing narcissists here? Are all cheaters narcissists? Or where in my above post did you see any signs that my dad was a narcissist? You are displaying the exact reasons why people should not be talking to their children about their spouses' cheating. Most people like yourself have no idea what they are talking about.
I give you examples of how giving my father was, and you ignore them and introduce a discussion on narcissist. You are not even emotionally involved here, and you are reasoning with your ass. Imagine how much worse you would be if you were emotionally involved. How is someone like you supposed to give a child an appropriate explanation of what is going on?
Anonymous wrote:I’m the poster whose DH learned about his father’s affair from a middle school bully in the middle of the cafeteria. I have a question for those of you who believe in not telling kids: do you think how he learned (which was painful and traumatic) is preferable to a quiet conversation with a loving parent?? I cannot understand that world view whatsoever. It seems phenomenally cruel.
The pp who did it at the psychologist did the right thing.
Loving parent or not, it's difficult to have a "quiet' conversation when you are angry, hurt , betrayed and bitter( and rightfully so if your spouse cheated on you and destroyed your mutual vision for the family).
And people really overlook the selfishness of cheaters. While the non- cheating spouse is telling the child what happened, the cheater will tell a very different story to defend themselves. If they are capable of cheating and all the lying and gaslighting thst comes with it, they are more than capable of trying to defend themselves to the children. This too will be cruel and confusing to the child.
With both parents and a professional present, an appropriate conversation is more likely to happen.
Sure, tell them with a psychologist, but you are still recommending telling them. What I am wondering about is the view of the people in favor of hiding affairs. Do those people think it is better to learn about cheating from a middle school bully or proactively from parents or in a therapist’s office? Because my impression of the “never tell” people is that they actually think it’s better for a child to learn from his middle school bully than to hear it proactively, which I find astonishing.
I think you are misunderstanding their opinion. They are not necessarily in favor of hiding affairs. They think that the chances of messing up in the process of telling the kids is much higher than the chances of the kid being messed up by finding out elsewhere.
You might disagree with their assessment, but claiming that they are in favor of hiding affairs is an misunderstanding of their position.
I don' t tell my kids about my sex life with their dad. It dies not mean that DH and I are hiding our sex lives. It's just not an appropriate conversation to have with them.
Okay, but that still doesn’t answer my question, which I think the pro-not-telling contingent is avoiding at this point: for those of you who do not think that children should be proactively told about the truth of parental affairs: do you think that it was better for my DH to learn about his father’s affair from a bully in the middle school cafeteria as opposed to proactively learning the truth from his parents or in a therapist’s office?
Because my impression from the not-telling posters is that hiding the affair — and I’m really not sure what else it is if you are not telling the kids what happened — is more important than protecting the kids from learning about the truth of the affair in ways like my DH did. I find that viewpoint unfathomable. I cannot imagine, seeing the fallout my DH went through, leaving a child unprotected that way. It is incomprehensible to me.
I have specifically said if you feel like there is a more than likely scenario where a kid will be told in an environment like school (because of the players involved or the scope of people in the middle of the conflict) then you should find a healthy and safe way to proactively tell them, with the help of a therapist and if possible the cheating spouse telling them not the other spouse because then it becomes about the cheating spouse confessing to the kid what they did and it is between the two of them. It doesn't place the kid in a position of choosing sides in a conflict, it becomes a conflict between the kid and the cheating spouse directly. But if the middle school bully knows then one or both parents are running their mouths, and THAT is not what any of us are suggesting. Don't tell your kid but do spread it all over town is not what anyone is advocating. The parents know if it is OUT THERE or not, or they should.
But I would also challenge you and your DH to think more critically about what happened to him. Because what most people are saying is that you should tell your kids what they need to know in a healthy way that is focused on THEIR continuing to believe that their life is stable, that their parents love them, that they know what to expect etc. I think situations like your DH it is likely not THAT but parents failing on these other marks and then the finding out in a bad way is just a symptom of other bad things happening.
So like, keeping it from a kid, then having mom talk about it all over town until everyone knows, then continuing not to tell the kid knowing they will be humiliated, and then not admitting it when they are humiliated and ask about it. The crime there was not neglecting to proactively tell the kid on day 1. The crime there is not assessing the kid's experience of the situation, not keeping it within an appropriate circle, not understanding when it escaped that circle, not then proactively telling the kid to protect them from that.
You are making it all about the first decision when in reality it is about a LOT of bad decisions, all of which point to bad parenting.
Sure, I’m not going to disagree that there was a full cluster of bad parenting from my cheating FIL (not from my MIL). Among other bad decisions, he asked my MIL not to tell the kids (using the reasoning the don’t-tell people here have promoted) and she agreed, which she of course deeply regretted after my poor DH came home from that day in the cafeteria. My DH was (as a teen) angry with her for not telling him the truth, and it took years for him to realize the awful position her DH had put her in. She thought she was doing the right thing and didn’t know that FIL had been open about the affair in their social circles.
And really, that’s the thing I don’t get here. You seem to think that cheaters are sober, good decision-makers who make good parenting decisions for the benefit of their kids. That really doesn’t track at all with my experience. In my experience, I’ve yet to see a cheater who put their kids first. And the kids know it. They know their mom or dad doesn’t really care about them. Certainly my DH knew that. And so I’m extremely skeptical that cheating parents can somehow cheat yet also be a caring advocate for their kids and be able to soberly assess whether their kids will learn about the truth of the affair in situations like the one my DH endured. I just don’t see cheaters suddenly becoming the kind of parent who care about protecting their kids from harm, when there is concrete evidence that they are pretty delusional. Maybe there are cheaters out there that can soberly assess whether their kids are more likely to be hurt by being told by their parents or not, but when I look around at the cheating parents I’ve known, they are pretty universally incapable of that level of self-reflection.
And I would assume your DH correctly holds his dad accountable then? Not his mom? It took awhile but he got there. There was no avoiding the terrible conclusion that his dad sucks. But he got there because of things his dad did to HIM. He didn't have to get there by feeling like he took his mom's side over his dad's because she wanted him to.
And regardless of how he feels about it now, he cannot actually speak to the inverse situation where the mom in that case tells the kid and hates the dad and the kid lives with the specter of hate and discord and feeling like they are a pawn in a war. Lots of us are speaking to that being just as crappy.
Just because you have yet to see a cheater put their kids first doesn't mean they don't exist. I have a friend who cheated on her husband for a lot of bad reasons. They did therapy, stayed together, have three wonderful kids and I can't speak to their marriage honestly but she is a WONDERFUL mother. You are using a really narrow personal experience to extrapolate something about all cheaters. Just like every other kind of person there is a LOT of people on that spectrum. And they are not all terrible people and they are not all terrible parents.
Basically my entire position is that the needs of the kids need to be paramount and parents need to soberly evaluate the situation and make decisions based on the kid's need not their own. There are situations where that means telling them, and situations where that means not telling them. IMO I will continue to believe that if they CAN be protected from that, they should be.
I agree with you on the bolded, but I disagree that in general the default rule should be to not tell, largely because I simply don’t think it’s realistic if you want to protect your kids from being told by someone who wants to hurt them (like the middle school bully). The cheating happened. Unless it was kept deeply secret such that only the cheater, the AP, and the ex will ever know (unusual), the kids will eventually find out. It’s only a question of when and how, and I think it’s delusional to pretend otherwise.
I am also skeptical that cheating parents are capable of the bolded, generally speaking. You are basing your idea of the “good cheater” on your one friend, but that’s a pretty narrow and IMO unusual situation. Certainly that doesn’t track my lived experience (not just my FIL) nor that of most people I know.
My DH had a good relationship with his mom eventually, but it was harmed for years because he felt she had deceived him (which she had, to be blunt). Of course finding out the way he did was traumatic and he (as a hurt teen) lashed out at both parents, not just the one who was really at fault.
I am one of the pps you are responding to above. There are at least two of us. lol
You argue that PP is basing their response on the one "good cheater" then let me add my dad as the second.
My dad was a wonderful father. He was arguably the best in our entire extended family on both sides. He was very involved in our activities: school, playing, emotional development, etc.
But he was an awful husband. My mother told us about some of the stuff he had done, and we confronted him. He had his own version of the story. We never took sides, but we never thought that he was wrong and she was right. I only came to that realization as a young adult. My siblings came to it much later. We did not have the capacity to process some of things. It just felt like two broken human beings bickering and telling on each other.
So there is no way that I am assuming that all cheaters are bad parents. And my parents loved us more than anything in the world. And my dad cheating or being a horrible husband does not change that.
Because you want to believe he's a good parent. Particularly girls. All of them want their love from their daddy and in turn to know that they are lovable. It's a survival mechanism. Doesn't make him a good person.
Interesting. He has 2 sons who actually "love" him more than his daughters do. They were actually the last ones to come to the realization that my dad was wrong.
It did not change their love for him though. It's sad that you cannot distinguish between a parent's love for their child and that for their spouse.
The love is self-serving typically with a cheater. So it's not always healthy. And the child needs their dad's love because you can't just get another dad like you can a boyfriend. So often children are desperate to still love their cheating dad or mom because they aren't going to get another one. And that relationship determines their self worth.
A child does need their dad's love. It does not matter that their dad is imperfect. It might matter to a spouse, but it does not matter to the child.
Thank goodness my mother understood that!
I'm not disagreeing. I'm simply saying that a lot of narcissistic people experience love as a taking not a give and take relationship. So a lot of times children mistake their parent's love as in they will love them no matter what when in reality the parent loves their cuteness or the carefree activities they get to do with them or the praise other people give to the kids as their own. Or just the hugs they get from their kids. There isn't a lot of giving from the narcissist to the child.
Why are we discussing narcissists here? Are all cheaters narcissists? Or where in my above post did you see any signs that my dad was a narcissist? You are displaying the exact reasons why people should not be talking to their children about their spouses' cheating. Most people like yourself have no idea what they are talking about.
I give you examples of how giving my father was, and you ignore them and introduce a discussion on narcissist. You are not even emotionally involved here, and you are reasoning with your ass. Imagine how much worse you would be if you were emotionally involved. How is someone like you supposed to give a child an appropriate explanation of what is going on?
I think this is a perfectly reasonable and truthful statement. Your dad did something in the marriage that went against my marriage principles and it hurt me so I am divorcing him. Marriage issues are for adults and so I don't want to discuss the divorce in more detail. We are both still your parents and love you.
Anonymous wrote:It really depends on how it's framed.
Your dad slept with another woman and it hurt me so I am leaving him. But we are both still your parents and love you very much.
Or
Your dad slept with another woman, which proves he is a bad person and he doesn't love you like a dad should so I kicked him out and we are divorcing.
Plus so many other variations and circumstances.
Your dad did something in the marriage that went against my marriage principles and it hurt me so I am divorcing him. Marriage issues are for adults and so I don't want to discuss the divorce in more detail. We are both still your parents and love you.
Are the detractors from telling kids ok with this statement? I can live with a statement like this. The whole we didn't get along bullshit no way. And I have no idea if he loves them very much, so no need to embellish other people's thoughts for them.
The bolded would never have been enough for my siblings and I. lol
It's a nice try but we were nosy kids. We would have asked and asked until somebody told us why.
In our case(they never actually divorced after the cheating - this is just a hypothetical), bringing it up at a therapist would have been the way to go. The therapist would have managed the conversation so that it did not turn into "he said, she said".
Anonymous wrote:It really depends on how it's framed.
Your dad slept with another woman and it hurt me so I am leaving him. But we are both still your parents and love you very much.
Or
Your dad slept with another woman, which proves he is a bad person and he doesn't love you like a dad should so I kicked him out and we are divorcing.
Plus so many other variations and circumstances.
Your dad did something in the marriage that went against my marriage principles and it hurt me so I am divorcing him. Marriage issues are for adults and so I don't want to discuss the divorce in more detail. We are both still your parents and love you.
Are the detractors from telling kids ok with this statement? I can live with a statement like this. The whole we didn't get along bullshit no way. And I have no idea if he loves them very much, so no need to embellish other people's thoughts for them.
The bolded would never have been enough for my siblings and I. lol
It's a nice try but we were nosy kids. We would have asked and asked until somebody told us why.
In our case(they never actually divorced after the cheating - this is just a hypothetical), bringing it up at a therapist would have been the way to go. The therapist would have managed the conversation so that it did not turn into "he said, she said".
But would you have wanted to hear a lie that your parents just didn't get along?
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