Reply to What should college dc be told about our divorce? DH is cheating and leaving to pursue a relationship with his mistress.

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Reply to "What should college dc be told about our divorce? DH is cheating and leaving to pursue a relationship with his mistress."

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Something like this happened when my parents split and I was the college student. For a long time my mother was incandescent with rage and really hard to be around. I didn’t know about the affair until she moved in with my dad. In the interim he was much easier to be around. Therapy is a good idea. [/quote]

You had absolutely no sympathy for your mom, huh?[/quote]

Kids (and most people) care about how they are treated. No one wants to be around someone who is raging for long. Parents make big exceptions for their kids, but kids aren’t supposed to have to parents their parents.  They aren’t supposed to be doing heavy emotional lifting to manage their parents. I didn’t assume PP lacked sympathy, just that it was difficult to be raged at and around. [/quote]

As much as I am furious right now, I would never rage/trauma dump on my kid. This is not their burden But they also deserve some version of the truth which is that this was not a mutual decision. They can put two and two together and  as I said earlier, it's going to be obvious pretty quickly that Dad has moved on with someone else. I want to protect my kid but this is going to rock their world. But everything we would have done as a family over this break is now not happening. Most of their close HS friends will not be around over Thanksgiving. We've always had some Thanksgiving weekend family rituals that we have done for years that they always look forward to.  I just need to figure when and how this news should be presented. It seems like the two best shitty options are 1. I tell them ahead of time what's going on and let them decide if they want to fly back for break or 2. sit down as a family when they get home, let dh break the news with me present so he doesn't get away with not being truthful that this was a unilateral decision.  It's so fresh and new and I'm trying to manage two things right now - processing it myself and helping our kid process it. DH has been emotionally absent for years. [b]He is blaming his decision on me - as I said to him the other day "you can point all the fingers you want at me, and I can certainly point plenty of fingers at myself, but you are not owning a single part of this in any way." [/b]Ugh. FML.[/quote]

I would say to sit down as a family when they get home but allow them the space to process the information - they may have questions all at once, or need to think about it for a little, they may want to be social with other people or they may not want to feel like they have to put on a happy face for others. In my opinion the key is that they are able to have some control within an overall situation where they have little control.  They also should feel like they have a home to return to and whatever the relationship between the parents they aren’t put in the middle and can still have a relationship with both parents.

As for the STBX pointing fingers at you regarding the decision to end the relationship, my grandma would use that saying “when you point one finger, there are three fingers pointing back to you." You can take on your own stuff but don’t take on his inability to be accountable for his own actions.  Sorry you are going through this and hope you have the support you need between friends, family and therapist (to help process feelings).[/quote]

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