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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous] People experience or hear about a parent telling their child in either an emotion dump or as a way to trash the other parent, and then seem to assume the problem is sharing the issue with the child. It’s not. Everything in a divorce should be done in the best interests of a child. Dumping emotional baggage or getting your child in the middle of a messy divorce is wrong, no matter the topic. Keeping relevant secrets from a child who is emotionally mature enough to handle the topic is wrong too. [/quote]

Agree. I got the worst of all worlds, myself. My mom kept my dad's cheating a secret AND relentlessly trashed him to us as a way of dumping her emotional baggage and extreme rage. She was completely oblivious to the negative effects this had on us.

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It would have been better for her to come clean instead of repressing it.  She likely was resentful for carrying that burden and it messed with her mentally...hence the issues she dumped on you.

Honesty and therapy (for betrayed and kids)...and the dipsh*t cheater obviously should have been in therapy a long time ago.[/quote]

(I'm that PP) She was only "repressing" the cheating from her kids, she told her parents, sisters, and friends all about it. They're the ones we kids eventually learned about it from. She dumped her emotional baggage on us because she wasn't even thinking that being mad at her XH could have any effect on her kids. She was plenty "honest" with us about everything else about him that she hated (lazy, abusive, selfish, narcissistic, not successful enough, gambling debts, etc) so it's hard to imagine throwing in the extra truth that he was a cheater would have helped us or her.

My parents are both from the generation that doesn't believe in therapy. You should just tough it out. Whenever I've suggested therapy to my mom, she starts lashing out - "why do you hate me? I'm fine, I don't need therapy, [i]you [/i]need therapy!" so I've given up on that. As for my dad, he is a total narcissist who does not believe he ever did anything wrong, no point in suggesting therapy to him.[/quote]

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