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]Would you tell your kids the intimate details of a marriage that fell apart over 5 years because dad didn't do enough around the house and mom had to pick up the pieces which caused her to resent him and then stop having sex with him and then they fought a lot and then they didn't love each other anymore?

No.

Would you tell your kids if Mommy wracked up 20k in debt in credit cards due to a compulsive shopping addiction and Dad discovered it and now the family is in financial crisis and mom and dad are divorcing?

No.

Would you tell the kids that grandma poisoned mom and dad's relationship by constantly nagging and interfering and now we hate each other and mom literally cannot be in a room with her mother in law ever again so is leaving dad because he's incapable of drawing boundaries?

No.

Would you tell the kids that mom lost all the baby weight and got hot and suddenly wanted to be single again so left dad?

No.

Because these are dynamics between mom and dad, and they don't owe the kids that. You owe them love and a commitment to keep their lives as stable as possible. If you make your kids an active player in an adult relationship you are doing wrong by them. If you are putting them in a position to enact consequences for a parent based on the divorce you are doing wrong by them.

Of course there are scenarios where kids are going to learn the truth, and no one should lie to a kid asking a direct question, but kids should be protected and they should feel like both their parents love them and have a handle on the situation at hand. If you're exposing them to uncertainty and stress when you can avoid it, you're doing wrong by them.

And so, OF COURSE, the cheater has done wrong by them by exposing them to uncertainty and stress. But that does not give the other parent some free pass to do it too. [/quote]

I do not understand how people are able to twist themselves into a pretzel to have this type of thinking. The way they think is X = bad therefore I have to make everything equal to X. One thing that needs to be said - just by definition a cheater, lot a leaver - wants to stay in the marriage so the marriage was able to stay together except for the cheater by the cheater's own decision making. Secondly, yes I would talk about all those things above with adolescent children and have in my lifetime - maybe it didn't directly affect me but there have been conversations about other people. This is natural when families have conversations about life. Otherwise they just become naive adults. Thirdly cheating is not just exposing to uncertainty and stress. Give me a break.  How do you go from a parent can't handle telling a child because of the burden of infidelity to it's just a stressful 1 richter scale moment that everyone just has to get over? The cognititve dissonance is amazing.[/quote]

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