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]
There is zero excuse to cheat. Zero. If you were unhappy, you leave.

There is zero excuse to abuse someone. Spoken like someone who hasn’t been abused. Count your blessings that you don’t understand.[/quote]

What you don’t seem to understand is trust cheating IS abuse. It’s an extreme form of emotional/psychological abuse.  If you are trying to say that you were somehow justified in abusing your spouse because they abused you first, I’m sorry that you were raised to believe that two wrongs make a right. That an appropriate response to being abused is to also be an abuser.  This is a cycle of dysfunctional behavior, and no amount of mental gymnastics will make it anything other than what it is.

Look, it isn’t like there can never be any redemption for cheaters.  My teen just needed his dad to be able to say to him “looking back, I see how badly I hurt you/your mom, and I regret that.  What I did was wrong and I really wish I could go back and handle things differently, but I can’t.”  He just wanted confirmation that his dad is not a selfish jerk.  His dad couldn’t say those words, just kept insisting that it was complicated and that a lot of things drove him to do what he did.  While I’m sure in his head that is accurate, the kids don’t care about their sex lives or accidentally falling in love with someone else, etc.  the kids want to know that their parents are decent humans.  The kids don’t want to hear “I am aware of all the pain and devastation I caused, but I had a good reason for doing it.”  That’s a non-apology.  We teach our kids to acknowledge when they screw up, not try and justify why things weren’t their fault.

There is literally no excuse that a cheater can give that can’t be blown out of the water by the response “then you should have gotten divorced first.”  Fact. [/quote]

I’m sorry you were so hurt by someone who cheated on you. I agree that’s it’s also abuse. I never said I thought it was justified. It’s more that I was so broken that I also made terrible choices. 20 years of doing everything for another person and being emotionally belittled by them, sexually abused by them, and controlled can do that to a person. Unfortunately I didn’t understand why I was so desperate for attention and kindness until it was too late. I deeply regret that I couldn’t just leave the bad marriage—but I genuinely didn’t understand I was being abused. It took a lot and I wish it played out differently but life and all.

I actually want to tell my kids everything but it would be selfish at this point. They are too young to understand. When they are older, I will explain more to them. I’m raising them to be empathetic and critical thinkers. I trust they will understand love and mistakes and learning to become better because of it.

I can genuinely say I would never cheat again. I also will never be with someone again who treats me so poorly. Authenticity means everything to me after a lifetime of being what someone else needed and then losing myself in the process.

A cheater isn’t just bad and the person cheated on isn’t always just good. Truth is he broke our vows long before when he didn’t love or respect me as a person.

And he also does it to our kids now…. It sucks and is hard to watch. They don’t like being with him.[/quote]

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