When to tell kids the truth about their father’s adultery as reason for divorce

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My best friend's parents got divorced in high school. Her mom left her dad and moved out. She was so furious at her mom for years and wouldn't talk to her. They finally became friends again and she would visit her. We were nearly 30 when she found out that her dad had cheated on her mom for years and that's why she left. My friend was so upset at both her parents for not telling her the truth, for her dad cheating and also letting him pretend that mom was the bad person for leaving the marriage.

I think kids should know. I don't think cheaters get a pass.

+1
Similar story. My friend was 50 before he learned HIS MOTHER was the cheater. People assumed it was his dad. His dad is a great guy. The kids were pretty upset to learn this info that was completely not what they were led to believe or the victim mom portrayed herself to be. The divorce had split the family and it was the cheater (mom) was was flinging nonsense. She divorced again and went through a string of men. Dad found a nice woman and did very very well in life. He had a very close relationship with the kids and grandkids. Mom is still self centered and blameless while blaming everyone else for her problems.

I’m a pretty staunch don’t tell situation but if one of my kids was acting like I was a pariah I would likely correct that assumption. “I know you’re angry but the reality is something happened that your dad and I could not reconcile our marriage with. I did not do anything to cause the incident but the reality is that marriages and relationships are complicated and a lot of history is at play and so you really can’t fully understand this but we both love you and we will both always be there for you. And again if the kid asks directly or implied it repeatedly I would be more frank but I’d hope to make that a joint conversation with the other parent.

God. How verbose and wishy washy. If that’s how my parents explained breaking up our family and their marriage dissolving, I’d be calling their bluff as a teen, especially as a young adult. What bullsh@t. You can see how kids learn to hide, lie and have poor coping skills in their future relationships. Talk about dancing around the elephant in the room. It also undermines a teen’s intelligence.

[Anonymous]

You can see why cheaters can’t understand why cheating is a big deal to everyone else. To them sex is sex. They are easy and give it up on a whim. They use and abuse…so, of course, they can’t see why having sex with someone else without consent in secret behind someone you are supposed to have fidelity and trust with is a big deal. Emotionally immature, sleazy people don’t get it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

It’s only on DCUM that I’ve ever encountered this phenomenon of cheaters who are excellent parents. I’ve literally never encountered one in my real life. I personally don’t think they actually exist. The cheating parents I’ve know have universally been pretty terrible parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

It’s only on DCUM that I’ve ever encountered this phenomenon of cheaters who are excellent parents. I’ve literally never encountered one in my real life. I personally don’t think they actually exist. The cheating parents I’ve know have universally been pretty terrible parents.

You do not know everyone who cheats. Many doctors are others do. Parenting has nothing to do with cheating

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My best friend's parents got divorced in high school. Her mom left her dad and moved out. She was so furious at her mom for years and wouldn't talk to her. They finally became friends again and she would visit her. We were nearly 30 when she found out that her dad had cheated on her mom for years and that's why she left. My friend was so upset at both her parents for not telling her the truth, for her dad cheating and also letting him pretend that mom was the bad person for leaving the marriage.

I think kids should know. I don't think cheaters get a pass.

+1
Similar story. My friend was 50 before he learned HIS MOTHER was the cheater. People assumed it was his dad. His dad is a great guy. The kids were pretty upset to learn this info that was completely not what they were led to believe or the victim mom portrayed herself to be. The divorce had split the family and it was the cheater (mom) was was flinging nonsense. She divorced again and went through a string of men. Dad found a nice woman and did very very well in life. He had a very close relationship with the kids and grandkids. Mom is still self centered and blameless while blaming everyone else for her problems.

I’m a pretty staunch don’t tell situation but if one of my kids was acting like I was a pariah I would likely correct that assumption. “I know you’re angry but the reality is something happened that your dad and I could not reconcile our marriage with. I did not do anything to cause the incident but the reality is that marriages and relationships are complicated and a lot of history is at play and so you really can’t fully understand this but we both love you and we will both always be there for you. And again if the kid asks directly or implied it repeatedly I would be more frank but I’d hope to make that a joint conversation with the other parent.

God. How verbose and wishy washy. If that’s how my parents explained breaking up our family and their marriage dissolving, I’d be calling their bluff as a teen, especially as a young adult. What bullsh@t. You can see how kids learn to hide, lie and have poor coping skills in their future relationships. Talk about dancing around the elephant in the room. It also undermines a teen’s intelligence.

I’m not the PP but that explanation could’ve worked in my marriage and there was no cheating so don’t assume that there’s cheating when somebody has that explanation

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

It’s only on DCUM that I’ve ever encountered this phenomenon of cheaters who are excellent parents. I’ve literally never encountered one in my real life. I personally don’t think they actually exist. The cheating parents I’ve know have universally been pretty terrible parents.

You do not know everyone who cheats. Many doctors are others do. Parenting has nothing to do with cheating

Uh, doctors aren’t automatically good parents. How weird.

Of course I do not know everyone who cheats. But in my life, I’ve never met a cheater who was a good parent. Shrug.

[Anonymous]

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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.

It’s only on DCUM that I’ve ever encountered this phenomenon of cheaters who are excellent parents. I’ve literally never encountered one in my real life. I personally don’t think they actually exist. The cheating parents I’ve know have universally been pretty terrible parents.

You do not know everyone who cheats. Many doctors are others do. Parenting has nothing to do with cheating

Uh, doctors aren’t automatically good parents. How weird.

Of course I do not know everyone who cheats. But in my life, I’ve never met a cheater who was a good parent. Shrug.

Well, I know 3 who are. And all remarried 20+ years to the AP. First marriages were bad matches. None of these people know each other… I just happen to know three of them and two of them are doctors and they are excellent parents. No one would know they are cheaters unless they knew them more than 20 years ago

[Anonymous]

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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.

It’s only on DCUM that I’ve ever encountered this phenomenon of cheaters who are excellent parents. I’ve literally never encountered one in my real life. I personally don’t think they actually exist. The cheating parents I’ve know have universally been pretty terrible parents.

You do not know everyone who cheats. Many doctors are others do. Parenting has nothing to do with cheating

Uh, doctors aren’t automatically good parents. How weird.

Of course I do not know everyone who cheats. But in my life, I’ve never met a cheater who was a good parent. Shrug.

Well, I know 3 who are. And all remarried 20+ years to the AP. First marriages were bad matches. None of these people know each other… I just happen to know three of them and two of them are doctors and they are excellent parents. No one would know they are cheaters unless they knew them more than 20 years ago

I am sorry but your doctor fixation is so weird that I can’t trust your judgment as to how excellent these parents are.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:In cheating, both people usually get along. That's why they are still married and he or she is cheating verses leaving. So it's a complete contradiction of what the child has seen and what actually happened. Which is why I don't think this can be an explanation. It doesn't mesh with the child's reality. What do you mean you didn't love each other anymore? We just went on vacation? What do you mean you don't get along? We just had a fun family night. etc.

I don't necessarily agree with your opinion that both people usually get along.

Both people usually pretend to get along, and many children see through it.

I have friends who tell me that their dads were like a piece of furniture in the house, and the cheating was no surprise.

In our case, my parents had nothing in common: my mother was always bored at acitivities my dad loved and vice versa. They like different foods, people etc. They only thing they had in common was that they loved us. They were happy and laughing when they were with us, but they were like beings from different planets when a discussion was not centered around us. It was such a mismatch of personalities. They were introduced to each other by my dad's cousin. My mom was gorgeous and educated, so my dad fell hard. My dad was incredibly smart and highly educated, so my mom fell hard. They both really wanted children, and that's where the similarities ended.

When I was much younger, I actually wished they got a divorce before the cheating happened(they never divorced ever).

What makes you think they didn't have a successful marriage overall? Sounds like they did have a lot in common and that they weathered some challenging times. It doesn't sound like they faked their way through.

I don't really know for sure, but all my siblings would agree that their connection with each other was at the very least strange. They never really did things together. They never really sat down and laughed together, just the two of them. They had very different hobbies and acted as if they found each other boring. They did not even really share their professional goals with each other. They'd hear things first from the children sometimes even though they slept in the same bed. They hardly ever enjoyed eating the same thing. The only intersection really was the children. When they were around us, you'd hear the laughter, the stories, the interest in what we were doing, the interest in our academic lives. But they never had such deep interest in each other. We were very close to both of them so we could see it.

However, they did something right, that's for sure. They wanted children, and all of their children are doing reasonably well in their personal and professional lives. They have many beautiful grand kids and mostly reasonably sons and daughters in laws. My mom would definitely tell you that their marriage was mostly a success. She will cry with joy when she talks about how well her children turned out. My dad would agree with her.

But I couldn't live like that. I told them that they were not meant to be together when I was 7 or 8, and my opinion on that has not changed much since then. Everyone in my family will say that I have one of the best marriages, and I agree. But my children are very young. If my children turn out to be a mess, my mother would believe than her marriage was better than mine. My children are currently amazing, but they are in elementary school. So maybe I shouldn't be judging other people's marriages just yet. But my DH and I are clearly a much better fit than my parents were. I was very intentional when I was dating because I did not want what my parents had. Fortunately, we have as close of a relationship with our children as my parents had with us. But it's still too early to tell how that relationship will turn out in the long run. My parents may not have had a strong connection with each other, but they did a great job connecting with us.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:In cheating, both people usually get along. That's why they are still married and he or she is cheating verses leaving. So it's a complete contradiction of what the child has seen and what actually happened. Which is why I don't think this can be an explanation. It doesn't mesh with the child's reality. What do you mean you didn't love each other anymore? We just went on vacation? What do you mean you don't get along? We just had a fun family night. etc.

I don't necessarily agree with your opinion that both people usually get along.

Both people usually pretend to get along, and many children see through it.

I have friends who tell me that their dads were like a piece of furniture in the house, and the cheating was no surprise.

In our case, my parents had nothing in common: my mother was always bored at acitivities my dad loved and vice versa. They like different foods, people etc. They only thing they had in common was that they loved us. They were happy and laughing when they were with us, but they were like beings from different planets when a discussion was not centered around us. It was such a mismatch of personalities. They were introduced to each other by my dad's cousin. My mom was gorgeous and educated, so my dad fell hard. My dad was incredibly smart and highly educated, so my mom fell hard. They both really wanted children, and that's where the similarities ended.

When I was much younger, I actually wished they got a divorce before the cheating happened(they never divorced ever).

What makes you think they didn't have a successful marriage overall? Sounds like they did have a lot in common and that they weathered some challenging times. It doesn't sound like they faked their way through.

I don't really know for sure, but all my siblings would agree that their connection with each other was at the very least strange. They never really did things together. They never really sat down and laughed together, just the two of them. They had very different hobbies and acted as if they found each other boring. They did not even really share their professional goals with each other. They'd hear things first from the children sometimes even though they slept in the same bed. They hardly ever enjoyed eating the same thing. The only intersection really was the children. When they were around us, you'd hear the laughter, the stories, the interest in what we were doing, the interest in our academic lives. But they never had such deep interest in each other. We were very close to both of them so we could see it.

However, they did something right, that's for sure. They wanted children, and all of their children are doing reasonably well in their personal and professional lives. They have many beautiful grand kids and mostly reasonably sons and daughters in laws. My mom would definitely tell you that their marriage was mostly a success. She will cry with joy when she talks about how well her children turned out. My dad would agree with her.

But I couldn't live like that. I told them that they were not meant to be together when I was 7 or 8, and my opinion on that has not changed much since then. Everyone in my family will say that I have one of the best marriages, and I agree. But my children are very young. If my children turn out to be a mess, my mother would believe than her marriage was better than mine. My children are currently amazing, but they are in elementary school. So maybe I shouldn't be judging other people's marriages just yet. But my DH and I are clearly a much better fit than my parents were. I was very intentional when I was dating because I did not want what my parents had. Fortunately, we have as close of a relationship with our children as my parents had with us. But it's still too early to tell how that relationship will turn out in the long run. My parents may not have had a strong connection with each other, but they did a great job connecting with us.

I was one of the posters here 5 years back telling everyone my husband would never cheat on me. Lots of traveling together as a couple, date nights, my main business and life partner. He cheated with a colleague of his for 8 years since 2012, until I found out in 2020. Simply had a “work wife” with whom he was equally connected and lived “for her”. My 16 years marriage fell apart out of a sudden, like Shania Twain’s marriage. We never speak to each other except rare messages on a parenting app.

I will never trust a man after this.

[Anonymous]

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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.

It’s only on DCUM that I’ve ever encountered this phenomenon of cheaters who are excellent parents. I’ve literally never encountered one in my real life. I personally don’t think they actually exist. The cheating parents I’ve know have universally been pretty terrible parents.

You do not know everyone who cheats. Many doctors are others do. Parenting has nothing to do with cheating

Uh, doctors aren’t automatically good parents. How weird.

Of course I do not know everyone who cheats. But in my life, I’ve never met a cheater who was a good parent. Shrug.

Well, I know 3 who are. And all remarried 20+ years to the AP. First marriages were bad matches. None of these people know each other… I just happen to know three of them and two of them are doctors and they are excellent parents. No one would know they are cheaters unless they knew them more than 20 years ago

You missed the DCUM edicts that cheaters are the most evil people walking the planet and there is nothing good that can ever come of them. We should scrub MLK from the history books because he cheated on his wife all the time. That's what he should be known for. Pure evil.

[Anonymous]

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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.

It’s only on DCUM that I’ve ever encountered this phenomenon of cheaters who are excellent parents. I’ve literally never encountered one in my real life. I personally don’t think they actually exist. The cheating parents I’ve know have universally been pretty terrible parents.

My sister is a good mom. She cheated on her DH which gave her the courage to leave her physically abusive marriage. I am sure you see her as a monster with no redeeming value and no potential to be a parent. I am glad a man made her feel she had worth after what her ex did to her.

[Anonymous]

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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.

It’s only on DCUM that I’ve ever encountered this phenomenon of cheaters who are excellent parents. I’ve literally never encountered one in my real life. I personally don’t think they actually exist. The cheating parents I’ve know have universally been pretty terrible parents.

You do not know everyone who cheats. Many doctors are others do. Parenting has nothing to do with cheating

Uh, doctors aren’t automatically good parents. How weird.

Of course I do not know everyone who cheats. But in my life, I’ve never met a cheater who was a good parent. Shrug.

Well, I know 3 who are. And all remarried 20+ years to the AP. First marriages were bad matches. None of these people know each other… I just happen to know three of them and two of them are doctors and they are excellent parents. No one would know they are cheaters unless they knew them more than 20 years ago

You missed the DCUM edicts that cheaters are the most evil people walking the planet and there is nothing good that can ever come of them. We should scrub MLK from the history books because he cheated on his wife all the time. That's what he should be known for. Pure evil.

Most famous people have sexually deviant behavior. They are often on spectrum, have unique strengths and this makes them able to contribute to society. It doesn't mean that these behaviors should be normalized and romanticized as a social norm for Joe the Plumber.

[Anonymous]

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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.

It’s only on DCUM that I’ve ever encountered this phenomenon of cheaters who are excellent parents. I’ve literally never encountered one in my real life. I personally don’t think they actually exist. The cheating parents I’ve know have universally been pretty terrible parents.

My sister is a good mom. She cheated on her DH which gave her the courage to leave her physically abusive marriage. I am sure you see her as a monster with no redeeming value and no potential to be a parent. I am glad a man made her feel she had worth after what her ex did to her.

It would have made her even a better mom if she found courage to leave in her children, not some other man. Sorry, I don't believe in these stories. They end poorly in old age

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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.

It’s only on DCUM that I’ve ever encountered this phenomenon of cheaters who are excellent parents. I’ve literally never encountered one in my real life. I personally don’t think they actually exist. The cheating parents I’ve know have universally been pretty terrible parents.

You do not know everyone who cheats. Many doctors are others do. Parenting has nothing to do with cheating

Uh, doctors aren’t automatically good parents. How weird.

Of course I do not know everyone who cheats. But in my life, I’ve never met a cheater who was a good parent. Shrug.

And I have never seen any correlation between a spouse who sleeps around vs their ability to parent. Most of the "cheaters" I know are in sexless marriages, so their extra marital activities in fact is what keeps the family together. Everyone in the house benefits.