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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I found out on my own at 16.

I think it's better that they know. Otherwise they won't truly understand their own family and be able to make informed choices about who to trust. I certainly am much happier knowing, because it makes a lot of things make sense that I would otherwise not understand.[/quote]

Thank you for sharing this. I am the parent who kept the infidelity secret from the kids and tried to carry on with co-parenting as normal with my ex.  They were 5 y.o. And 18 mos. when we split up, so OFC it wasn’t appropriate to tell them at that age.

But, a guy who commits serial infidelity and tells extensive lies to cover them up and manipulate the partner to stay obviously has a lot of character and personality issues that manifest in his relationship with his kids. Over the years, I do feel like my keeping the secret and trying to support their relationship with their dad normalized his behavior in a way that was not healthy for them.

I often wonder if I should have told them, but when? How?  I think I would have just come off as vindictive or creating conflict.  Instead, I offered them therapy in adolescence and hoped the therapist would help them work through their relationship with their dad.  Also, TBH, I have always been a little scared that telling my kids would set my son up for some kind of subconscious pattern of following his dad’s behavior, which would break my heart.

What is it now that you “truly understand”?  How has knowing or not knowing affected your other relationships and ability to trust?[/quote]

I am the person who wrote that. In my case, since my mother is still with her AP (though he is divorced and they did not marry), there's more to understand. I wouldn't feel the same way about a short-term affair that is long in the past.

The main thing I understand is why my father refused to talk with me about his divorce from my mother, and also refused to be around her AP and would leave social events if her AP was there. That would have been very weird for me without knowing the truth, and I would have probably thought negatively of my father in a way that was unfair to him, and that would have damaged my relationship with him.

I also came to understand why my mom's AP's wife dislikes her so much and all that woman's relatives do too. This is all very awkward in a small town and I certainly could tell that *something* was very seriously wrong, so I think I was better off knowing the truth. I also learned that my mother is a very convincing liar, and that she will choose her AP in the face of some very serious tradeoffs, and indeed she has continued to do so. This has helped me to understand, for example, why her retirement planning is so poor-- it's because she's financially supporting him but doesn't want to admit it. I also now understand why she made me change schools for 9th-- it was because she was planning for herself and me and my sister to move in with him and his kids and the school was in his town. I will always resent her for doing that to me. Thank goodness, they never actually moved in together because she found out about his children's drug problems and didn't want to live with them. Fun times!

Ultimately I 100% agree that the real problem is the underlying personality traits that enable the affair (disloyalty, short-sightedness, avoidance, wishful thinking). [/quote]

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