SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I have tried really hard to conceal my WS affair from my two daughters. He is a wonderful father and they adore him. And although he broke my heart, I did not want to ruin his relationship with them. However, it has been hard to hide things from them as they are naturally nosey and also, I spent a ton of time crying since I found out in May. Since I'm a natural crier, I have been able to explain away most of it. My mother, however, wanted us to tell them because she didn't want them to think I was the problem, that he should have to take some of the heat too. However, my IC and I both wanted to keep this from them to protect them.

Well, that exploded in my face last week when I found the recent texts between my WS and AP. We were all together in the car, out of town for Christmas, and I just lost it. I tried to hold onto my anger until we got away from the girls but I could not. I started yelling at him that he was talking to "her" again and that this time I was done. He managed to pull over by the beach and we got out of the car to further discuss away from the kids. Meanwhile, they are crying and calling my mom for support. My youngest (12) said, "I didn't know he was that kind of man." My oldest (16) ended up getting out of the car, putting my sobbing ass in the car, and chewing her father out for a good ten minutes, telling him he better fix this.

Now as far as I can tell, they think he was just talking to another woman. We did not give details and they didn't ask. In fact, since that incident, they haven't said anything about it. The only time it came up was a few days ago when my older daughter and were shopping for a formal dress and she worried that her dad would be mad if it was too much money. And then she said, well he can't because he's done worse.

Now I know this is not my fault. He's the one who chose to risk our family again and again. I wish I had not had that outburst in front of them so that is my fault. My youngest is already in therapy for her ADHD so she has someone professional to speak to and now I have scheduled my oldest for therapy as well. We might as all be in therapy.

I guess my question is... have I ruined their lives by letting them find out about this? What else can I do to protect them?

Hi AdLarue17, I’m so sorry you find yourself in this situation. I’m following closely because I am telling my sons (aged 22 & 24) tomorrow.
I found out about my H’s affair 2 months ago. I have tried my absolute hardest and put on a brave for all that time but enough is enough. I can’t do it any longer and I refuse to live his lie.
Now that Christmas and New Year are done, I am sitting them down tomorrow to tell them.
I know my sons are a lot older than your children and adults but I know they are going to be totally devastated when they find out.
But I feel my H needs exposure and to take ownership of what he’s been doing for 21 years.
And I also feel that my sons have a right to know what he’s been doing.
I would be very interested to hear what other people further down the road than us can offer for advice.
Thinking of you and please don’t give yourself a hard time for them finding out. This situation hasn’t been caused by you.

Hi and so sorry to hear that you and your girls are going through this. I have an 18 year old and 21 year old, and they are the ones who uncovered DD#2 at the end of December. They are disgusted, angry, and every other emotion they could have about their dad, and they have not spoken to him since.

No one but you can decide what the best thing for you and your kids will be, but I'll offer a couple of thoughts.

One is that while my kids are older than yours, they are still "kids." And they have said to me that they feel like their entire childhood was a lie. That makes me wonder whether sharing with your girls now - even though that will be painful - it could spare them the pain of finding out later in life and having the same sense of betrayal my kinds have about their entire childhood. Something to consider, anyway.

The other is that I was surprised when this all came out to learn that my kids had mostly figured out what had happened with DD#1. That was years ago, when they were 6 and 9, and for a variety of reasons I thought they'd never be the wiser. The affair was brief, and we moved cross country away from AP when the affair was uncovered. They were little kids when that happened, so when they told me last week that they've always more or less known what had happened - and who it happened with - I was stunned. Point being, kids are observant and probably more than we give them credit for at times. Your girls already know part of the story, so will it be less painful for them to be blissfully unaware of the rest of the story, or for you to finish the story with facts (that you share in a factual and age-appropriate way)?

I have a new appreciation for how much collateral damage affairs can cause, and it's awful that your kids and my kids and so many others' kids get caught in the grown ups' problems. You sound like you're doing amazing job of supporting your girls and doing all you can to navigate a difficult situation with grace.

I chose not to tell my kids -- my call. They were adults by the time my wife confessed her A.

I think I didn't want them to think they ever needed to take a side against their other parent.

That said, growing up, my Mom divorced twice, married a third time by the time I was 13.

First divorce was due to infidelity by my biological father, second guy was just a sociopath, third time was the charm for my Mom.

I turned out fine.

Kids know, even when we think they don't, I'll bet they sensed your distress early on.

Divorce was pretty regular as I was growing up and kids talk about that stuff in schools.

You haven't ruined anything!

Now you have kids who will understand why you're in so much pain. And they'll be stronger (at times) than you think. They're micro humans, they will have good and bad days, just like you. They will also be resilient, just like you, regardless of the path you choose going forward.

Kids will make up stories - and believe them - about what's happening unless you tell them the truth. My FOO was like that, big time. We did not talk about bad things, but I could see them happening. It's a mindfuck to be told that nothing is wrong when you can see and feel that that's not true. And lest you think that you're doing well at hiding it from them, think again, especially if your kiddo is the intuitive type.

Based on my history and on our MC's advice, we decided to tell our kids (10 and 16) the truth about a year after DDay. Basic, age-appropriate truth. They obviously knew in real time that something happened, because we separated for a month, but they didn't know what. We thought that was the end of it.

Three years ago, a full 17 years after DDay, my H said the word "affairS" when he was talking to our eldest. We had never elaborated on the number of affairs, just that he had cheated. She assumed that it was one time, and she already held me in a wee bit of contempt for taking him back. When she found out it was three, she lost her shit. She was furious with him, but she seemed to be even more angry with me. It had been so long since we had told them, that neither of us remembered that we hadn't told them that it was more than one A. It took several weeks before she'd even talk to us. She's a black-and-white thinker and I'm not sure she'll ever fully understand why I didn't immediately leave him.

My youngest has experienced infidelity with her H - an EA. Knowing that we had gone through it and recovered, she felt comfortable coming to us for advice, and her H felt comfortable talking with my H. Had they not known, they might not have had solid mentors to help them.

Having experienced both reactions, I still come down on the side of telling kids age-appropriate truth, and allowing them to ask questions if they need to, though also maintaining boundaries about what's their business and what's not. The truth is usually less daunting that what they come up with on their own.

[This message edited by SacredSoul33 at 10:58 PM, Wednesday, January 8th]

Please tell them. My parents did not tell me and I thought I was the problem, causing the fights, even though I was a good kid. Living with a cloud of doom over your house when you don't know what's going on is awful. Also, how can they trust you if you don't tell them the truth?

It doesn't have to be details, just something like "dad was with another woman, and you aren't supposed to do that when you're married because you make promises to each other."

As a thought exercise, replace cheating with physical violence and see if your perspective changes.

Dday #1 was your husband punching you while your kids weren't there. When they noticed your broken nose and your black eyes, you told them that you fell down the stairs. You figured it would never happen again so your kids didn't need to know the truth.

Dday #2 was your husband punching you in the face right in front of the kids. Now you can't lie to them about how you were injured because they saw it happen.

Would you say that your kids are distressed and angry at their father because you howled in pain and drew their attention to the fact that your husband punched you? Or is it because they witnessed their father commit an act of violence toward their mother?

As for how to protect your kids, just as in abusive situation, you protect them by protecting yourself... and stop tolerating his behavior. That means there need to be consequences for his continued cheating (be it divorce or something else).

While you shouldn't unload on your daughters or give them all the gory details, you need to make it clear to your husband that your days of lying to your daughters to protect his image are over.

And lastly, while you've been so concerned about preserving his relationship with your daughters, have you considered how the pain, anxiety, and distress that his affair is causing you might be negatively impacting your relationship with them? How much time, energy, and emotional bandwidth has his affair cost you?

Don't be too hard on yourself for blowing up, you've done remarkably well to hold it in since May!

I also think children should be told. He may be a wonderful father, but he's also the same wonderful father who betrayed his children. Some STI's can be spread by kissing. If he's kissed the Kids goodnight, hello etc. He's put them at risk.

I was relatively transparent with my kids, age 1 and 3 when I found out. It is now 12 years out.
I told them vaguely that dad had relationships outside of marriage when they were very little.

One of my children asked me if I did, too. I was very shocked by that question and said No, probably with an obvious look of disgust on my face.

The kids aren’t close to their father as much as me, but he tends to be more dogmatic and judgey (irony of ironies). They have at times used this rarely in the usual teenage way, but I will always tell the truth.

When I found out, it decimated me. They knew. I lost 100 pounds from not eating and was a mess for several years.

It has been an exercise in teaching them improvement, both of us. And boundaries. And finding your own peace and digging in to make difficult relationships work.

There is always learning in pain, and that is what I try to emphasize.
I don’t excuse him at all, and I don’t assume his guilt and shame. Those are his burdens.

I frankly cannot imagine parenting my very difficult 16 yr old without him, though. I’m glad I kept him around, and he is making some growth. But this shit is still painful. It take the Emotional intelligence of an emotion genius to make this better. And the fact that he cheated made him an emotional idiot, so we started from a shit level.

It’s better. Better is not a destination, it is only a direction. And the path is at times like the Dread Pirate Roberts, where he did well today, he can go to bed, but I will most likely divorce him in the morning.

And the kids know. Openly. I talked about pain too, when we talked about this. I talked about picking yourself up and dusting yourself off and learning to cope without scorching the earth. It’s been reality, like a cancer, for them. We are in treatment and it is a chronic thing. Will never go away. But I’m still here.