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[quote=Anonymous]PP with the cheating dad, I honestly agree with your dad that his and your mom's relationship is between them. It's business for adults, and at least in my opinion, it's irresponsible parenting to bring the kids into that particular war. Fine, it destroyed your family because your mom was angry/hurt/betrayed (all of which is totally legitimate), but unless your dad was abandoning the family in other ways, I don't think that his treatment of your mom says all that much about his relationship with you.

For what it's worth, my mom cheated when I was a kid (maybe 7 or 8). I found out about it when I was 20. She and my dad divorced when I was 10, and I believe that my mom's affair did have plenty to do with why they split. Her reasons for cheating also had a lot to do with the divorce - 10 years later, she told me that she just was not in love with my dad, that it was a stay together for the kids arrangement, and when it became unsustainable and they didn't even like each other anymore, they felt it was better to split up than to stay together. What she told me was that she had felt that way for a long time and that those feelings (or lack of feelings) were pretty much why she cheated. She met someone who she really did love. They did not stay together, because ultimately, she chose her kids. I'm sure that my dad was hurt and angry and felt betrayed. I know from the divorce proceedings that he thought she was an unfit mother who made terrible decisions (we disagreed on that at the time and continue to disagree 20 years later). What he did not do was tell us, as children (I have two younger siblings) all the details about why they were separating. They both made efforts not to demonize each other to us.

I understand why you think that "anything significant a family member does affects the whole family" and I agree that it does affect "the whole family". I also believe that there is a relationship between a husband and wife that is entirely separate from their children - they have to be able to relate to each other as lovers, as friends, in addition to co-parents. There is also a relationship between individual parents and children that is separate from the family unit, or at least there should be, in my opinion. What your father did violated the family relationship. It violated his relationship with your mom. It didn't have to destroy your and your sister's individual relationships with him forever, and I'm sorry that it did.

Disclaimer: I am not a cheater, do not plan to be a cheater, and do not support cheating. I also think that there are reasons that people engage in affairs that point to legitimate reasons. It's not all just slutting about for the hell of it.[/quote]

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