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][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m the poster whose DH learned about his father’s affair from a middle school bully in the middle of the cafeteria. I have a question for those of you who believe in not telling kids: do you think how he learned (which was painful and traumatic) is preferable to a quiet conversation with a loving parent?? I cannot understand that world view whatsoever. It seems phenomenally cruel. [/quote]

The pp who did it at the psychologist did the right thing.

Loving parent or not, it's difficult to have a "quiet' conversation when you are angry, hurt , betrayed and bitter( and rightfully so if your spouse cheated on you and destroyed your mutual vision for the family).

And people really overlook the selfishness of cheaters. While the non- cheating spouse is telling the child what happened,  the cheater will tell a very different story to defend themselves. If they are capable of cheating and all the lying and gaslighting thst comes with it, they are more than capable of trying to defend themselves to the children. This too will be cruel and confusing to the child.

With both parents and a professional present, an appropriate conversation is more likely to happen.

[/quote]

Sure, tell them with a psychologist, but you are still recommending telling them. What I am wondering about is the view of the people in favor of hiding affairs. Do those people think it is better to learn about cheating from a middle school bully or proactively from parents or in a therapist’s office? Because my impression of the “never tell” people is that they actually think it’s better for a child to learn from his middle school bully than to hear it proactively, which I find astonishing. [/quote]

I think you are misunderstanding their opinion. They are not necessarily in favor of hiding affairs.  They think that the chances of messing up in the process of telling the kids is much higher than the chances of the kid being messed up by finding out elsewhere.

You might disagree with their assessment, but claiming that they are in favor of hiding affairs is an misunderstanding of their position.

I don' t tell my kids about my sex life with their dad. It dies not mean that DH and I are hiding our sex lives. It's just not an appropriate conversation to have with them. [/quote]

Okay, but that still doesn’t answer my question, which I think the pro-not-telling contingent is avoiding at this point: for those of you who do not think that children should be proactively told about the truth of parental affairs: do you think that it was better for my DH to learn about his father’s affair from a bully in the middle school cafeteria as opposed to proactively learning the truth from his parents or in a therapist’s office?

Because my impression from the not-telling posters is that hiding the affair — and I’m really not sure what else it is if you are not telling the kids what happened — is more important than protecting the kids from learning about the truth of the affair in ways like my DH did. I find that viewpoint unfathomable. I cannot imagine, seeing the fallout my DH went through, leaving a child unprotected that way. It is incomprehensible to me. [/quote]

I have specifically said if you feel like there is a more than likely scenario where a kid will be told in an environment like school (because of the players involved or the scope of people in the middle of the conflict) then you should find a healthy and safe way to proactively tell them, with the help of a therapist and if possible the cheating spouse telling them not the other spouse because then it becomes about the cheating spouse confessing to the kid what they did and it is between the two of them. It doesn't place the kid in a position of choosing sides in a conflict, it becomes a conflict between the kid and the cheating spouse directly. But if the middle school bully knows then one or both parents are running their mouths, and THAT is not what any of us are suggesting. Don't tell your kid but do spread it all over town is not what anyone is advocating. The parents know if it is OUT THERE or not, or they should.

But I would also challenge you and your DH to think more critically about what happened to him. Because what most people are saying is that you should tell your kids what they need to know in a healthy way that is focused on THEIR continuing to believe that their life is stable, that their parents love them, that they know what to expect etc. I think situations like your DH it is likely not THAT but parents failing on these other marks and then the finding out in a bad way is just a symptom of other bad things happening.

So like, keeping it from a kid, then having mom talk about it all over town until everyone knows, then continuing not to tell the kid knowing they will be humiliated, and then not admitting it when they are humiliated and ask about it. The crime there was not neglecting to proactively tell the kid on day 1. The crime there is not assessing the kid's experience of the situation, not keeping it within an appropriate circle, not understanding when it escaped that circle, not then proactively telling the kid to protect them from that.

You are making it all about the first decision when in reality it is about a LOT of bad decisions, all of which point to bad parenting. [/quote]

Sure, I’m not going to disagree that there was a full cluster of bad parenting from my cheating FIL (not from my MIL). Among other bad decisions, he asked my MIL not to tell the kids (using the reasoning the don’t-tell people here have promoted) and she agreed, which she of course deeply regretted after my poor DH came home from that day in the cafeteria. My DH was (as a teen) angry with her for not telling him the truth, and it took years for him to realize the awful position her DH had put her in. She thought she was doing the right thing and didn’t know that FIL had been open about the affair in their social circles.

And really, that’s the thing I don’t get here. You seem to think that cheaters are sober, good decision-makers who make good parenting decisions for the benefit of their kids. That really doesn’t track at all with my experience. In my experience, I’ve yet to see a cheater who put their kids first. And the kids know it. They know their mom or dad doesn’t really care about them. Certainly my DH knew that. And so I’m extremely skeptical that cheating parents can somehow cheat yet also be a caring advocate for their kids and be able to soberly assess whether their kids will learn about the truth of the affair in situations like the one my DH endured. I just don’t see cheaters suddenly becoming the kind of parent who care about protecting their kids from harm, when there is concrete evidence that they are pretty delusional. Maybe there are cheaters out there that can soberly assess whether their kids are more likely to be hurt by being told by their parents or not, but when I look around at the cheating parents I’ve known, they are pretty universally incapable of that level of self-reflection. [/quote]

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