if you or your spouse cheated- how did you tell the kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The opposite of telling them isn’t normalcy. It’s the kids intuitively sensing that there is a family secret they aren’t part of; that parents are losing something; that at least one parent had some kind of major issue parents won’t discuss.

This. Not telling them in some way means that there is a secret they sense and they make up answers to fill in those blanks and often those answers are wrong and detrimental to them.

We split when the kids were little, so young that it was inappropriate to answer my 5 y.o. DD’s question about why Daddy and I were splitting up with, “he continues to sleep with work colleagues, strangers and prostitutes despite marital therapy and promises not to and he endangered me by bringing home an STD and not telling me.” But it also wasn’t appropriate to say (as the shitty therapist advised) that we “didn’t love each other anymore”. Because that was a lie. I loved him but was emotionally healthy enough to know that what he was doing to me - the serial infidelity and deep lies/gaslighting about it - was a form of abuse. I didn’t want my daughter to grow up with the idea that you stay in a marriage that’s abusive because you’re in love. But, I also didn’t want her to think that you can just fall out of love and leave someone - because that means he could fall out of love and leave her and that also gives her a skewed idea of marriage.

As the kids got older, their Dad exhibited towards them the same underlying traits that enabled him to cheat - a lack of empathy, breaking promises, lying about stuff, really only caring about his relationship with them to the extent that it made him look good, etc. They both, as is common, drew the conclusion that there is something wrong with them that makes them unlovable to him.

It would have been far better for them to know at a certain point - look, it’s not just you - your Dad has a serious personality deficiency that causes him to have a lack of empathy, to care about appearances more than reality, to refuse to apologize, to refuse to take responsibility, and this is why he’s doing X, Y and Z that seems harmful to you. And there are reasons in his upbringing and mental health why he is like this - it is not you.

It has been helpful to some extent that they have had therapists who have helped them identify his toxic behavior and how to set boundaries. They are young adults now and it is a major unresolved question how much they should know about why we split up. Of course, I am never going to tell the explicit details, but some sort of information would clearly be helpful.

[Anonymous]

You don't tell the kids. This one is a no-brainer and you vindictive people willing to burn down the whole house sound absolutely unhinged.

[Anonymous]

My mom sat me down and told me she thought my DH was cheating because he was showing a lot of the same signs my dad did when he cheated (I had no idea my dad had cheated). She was correct about DH. That was a mindf**k all around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My mom sat me down and told me she thought my DH was cheating because he was showing a lot of the same signs my dad did when he cheated (I had no idea my dad had cheated). She was correct about DH. That was a mindf**k all around.

Are you glad she told you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You don't tell the kids. This one is a no-brainer and you vindictive people willing to burn down the whole house sound absolutely unhinged.

TBH, the one who was willing to burn the house down is the cheater. We, victims of cheating, end up running around with a hose putting out fires for the rest of our lives.

[Anonymous]

I think kids should be told at some point. They need to see that actions have consequences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My mom sat me down and told me she thought my DH was cheating because he was showing a lot of the same signs my dad did when he cheated (I had no idea my dad had cheated). She was correct about DH. That was a mindf**k all around.

Are you glad she told you?

Yes definitely

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You don't tell the kids. This one is a no-brainer and you vindictive people willing to burn down the whole house sound absolutely unhinged.

The house is already burned down, and the kids know that. Older kids are not stupid and aren’t going to believe the platitudes about growing apart etc. Keeping a secret from them isn’t better for their mental health or for rebuilding trust in their parents— and divorce shakes trust in both parents. If you asked a child psychologist what is best you will usually be told not to keep it a secret. If you ask an adulterous spouse you will usually be told to keep it a secret. Only one of those individuals prioritizes the psychological well being of a child over other considerations.

[Anonymous]

The women telling their kids about infidelity are the same ones on DCUM spewing hate at all cheaters. They will not move on so no one can move one. Get some therapy before your bitterness distorts your kids. Being angry 5-10 years later shows you inability to process and heal. Is that what you want for your kids? Because if you weren’t unhinged then you’d never feel the need to tell your kids.

[Anonymous]

The women telling their kids about infidelity are the same ones on DCUM spewing hate at all cheaters. They will not move on so no one can move one. Get some therapy before your bitterness distorts your kids. Being angry 5-10 years later shows you inability to process and heal. Is that what you want for your kids? Because if you weren’t unhinged then you’d never feel the need to tell your kids.

Stop blaming the victim. Just stop. Get therapy to figure out why you completely lack integrity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The women telling their kids about infidelity are the same ones on DCUM spewing hate at all cheaters. They will not move on so no one can move one. Get some therapy before your bitterness distorts your kids. Being angry 5-10 years later shows you inability to process and heal. Is that what you want for your kids? Because if you weren’t unhinged then you’d never feel the need to tell your kids.

I’m the PP at 9:34. I stopped being angry about the infidelity over 18 years ago. I realized that while being the recipient of anger would prompt most of us to self-examine and change behavior, my then DH simply didn’t have the capacity to self-examine or understand other’s feelings. My anger was completely ineffective and when I realized that - it was a lightbulb moment for me, and I instantly lost any anger toward then DH.

My lack of anger has actually caused problems between me and the kids. DH still does ridiculous stuff - to me and to them. My attitude is mostly “meh” because I understand that’s who he has always been and he will never change and it has nothing to do with my behavior or actions or worth. Meanwhile the kids are busy figuring self-examining to see what they did wrong to cause his painful behavior and getting angry at him for not making him stop. They would see all this in a different light if they had access to the truth about him and why we broke up.

BTW, being able to not be angry, to heal, and to forgive is NOT the same as continuing to have a relationship with the perpetrator of abuse, validating his perspective of continuing to allow him access to my life.

I have basically grey-rocked him for the last four years - and it has made my life and the kids’ lives SO much more peaceful.

[Anonymous]

They figure it out

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They figure it out

+1. My father divorced my mom when I was 1 and married the woman who lived across the street when I was 2. When I was little, she was just my step-mom. But eventually I got old enough to do the math. Nobody ever came right out and told me my father was a cheater.

[Anonymous]

My cheating parent definitely messed me up, big time. The only thing worse than the tension and misery that I grew up with for years would have been, feeling crazy because everybody denied what was going on. We all knew and pretended we didn't.

At least I know I wasn't crazy or imagining things. Or blame myself. Although let's be honest, sometimes a kid does wonder, "if parent had loved me more, would they have prioritized keeping our family intacct instead of boinking a co worker?"

[Anonymous]

Certainly, if asked, a parent could say in an age-appropriate way “we got divorced because mommy didn’t want to have sex as much as I wanted to have sex” but I’m not sure that paints the parent in a great light either— you’re basically telling the kids they were less important to you than the regularity of intercourse. Saying things like “frigid wench” gets out of being factual and neutral.

But that’s isn’t why you got divorced. If that was the reason for the divorce, there wouldn’t have been an affair. In the scenario OP is asking about, the divorce is the reality of the discovery of the affair. So your answer would have to be “we got divorced because mommy didn’t want to have sex as much as I wanted to have sex, and so I decided to have sex with someone else without telling her and when she found out, she didn’t want to be married to me anymore.”