Tonight is my first session with IC. I assume that she will want to, at some point, talk about my childhood. I've been thinking ...

My father's OW called my mother, 5 mos. pregnant with me, to tell her about their affair. He is now married to the OW, and was with her for the last 10 years of his 14 year marriage to my mother. My mom was always very upfront with me about his A. I'm the oldest of 3, and I cannot recall a time when she sat me down to tell me about my father's A. I think I always just knew - she never hid it from me or my siblings. We always knew exactly why he wasn't there for weekends, or entire weeks, or holidays. We always knew that when she told relatives he had to work (on Christmas!) that she was covering up the fact that he was with *her*. We knew why he was mean and miserable at home.

It saddens me to know that my mother put up with this, stayed with him for 10 more years, had 2 more children ... his OW even had a child born just 2 months after my sister was born. In the end, he left her. His job relocated him to another state, and he left her behind, filed for D, married the OW. And they all lived happily ever after.

I think about it now, and it makes me both furious and sad that she did not force him to end it with the OW, or leave him on her own terms. He had a complete disregard for my mother and his children. He did nothing when the OW physically assaulted my mother right in front of us kids. Or to stop her from calling our house and screaming obscenities to whomever answered the phone. Or to stop her from driving like a maniac up and down the street in front of our house.

What is even more disgusting is that as an adult, I cheated on my own fiance. Twice. I saw what my father's A did to my mother, and how I felt and dealt with it as a child, and I still cheated. Did I learn nothing? I think I may have learned that there are no consequences for a cheater. My father had his cake and ate it.

I am not saying that I blame my mother (or father) for what I did. I am responsible for my own actions, 100%. I see now how and why I did it, I understand the gravity of how it's affected my husband, and how it's affected my marriage, and I don't see how I will ever feel good about myself again. I'm learning now about how to create and maintain a healthy marriage. But...It doesn't matter if I am a good wife to my H, a good mom to my kids (if I ever have any) or even just a good person in general. I'm always going to be the woman who cheated on her fiance.

I guess ... there is something to being honest with your kids about infidelity between mom and dad. But I have to question the idea of "staying together for the kids" especially when the wayward spouse continues to be wayward.

Filled,

One question;

Is the fiance you cheating on now your husband?

thanks,

Yes. But it's cheated, not cheating.

Filled,

I can relate to your situation. My father cheated on my mother, which led to their divorce in the mid 1960's. I have no idea what, if anything, my mother tried to do to stop it or to save their marriage. Knowing my mother, I suspect the answer is nothing. Going to counselling back then was not common at all and would have been seen as a stigma. There obviously was no such thing as online communities to provide easy access to the kind of advice and support we get here at MB. My mother's options were to put up with it or to split up. I suspect she tolerated it as long as she could and then she ended the M.

My first husband was the child of a serial cheater. Comments XH made early in our marriage led me to believe that he saw cheating both as no big deal and as the way to avoid dealing with problems in relationships. Sure enough, he began cheating on me less than a year into our M. I kicked him out immediately and never looked back. His values were so skewed by his twisted experience with his father that I was convinced he couldn't be rehabilitated.

In your case, your childhood experience may also have unconsciously made you more prone to cheating. Unlike my XH, however, you clearly have a strong moral center and have grown from the experience.

Does your H know? How's your M?

Of course there is! If you want children to be honest with you, you need to be honest with them. But YOUR MOTIVE matters because kids can sense those underlying waves.

A BS telling their kids that they asked daddy to leave because he has a girlfriend and that's not OK in a marriage is very differnt from what you have described.

It sounds like your mother was too afraid to live without him, so she settled for being abused.

You won't find much support for that here.




Staying in an abusive marriage (emotionally or physically) and using the excuse that it is for the kids is very different than working a recovery plan AFTER infidelity to save the marriage because you know that would be best for the children.

The first scenario is driven by fear and tolerates ongoing abuse. (I would mention here that this scenario is also abusive to the children involved.)

The second scenario is motivated by the desire to do what is in the best interest of the children, but does not tolerate any further abuse and requires that both spouses work to create love and intimacy in the marriage again.

FWR,

The fact that you regret what you have done makes you different from your father.

Your father showed no regrets. He blatantly flaunted his behavior in front of his children, with no regard for their feelings, and no regard for the effects his behavior might have on them as they developed. Then, he walked away from them for his own selfish desires so he could be "happy". Right - and the truth is he traded a woman who was willing to try to work things out, despite having such a boor as a husband, in order to attempt to create a home for children that might be better for them.

You might want to paint your mom as someone who wouldn't or couldn't stand up to your father, but it just might be that she tried to do what she thought was the right thing to do for the survival of her kids. Maybe that is what she was thinking - and she did what she thought she could or should do. It's easy to look from the outside in and say what she should have done, but in her shoes, you have to consider the fact that your father was a CHEATER - which means he probably:

Lied repeatedly about not contacting the OW
Told your mom that the affair was over (probably a dozen or more times)
Told your mom that the OW would kill herself if he left her, and that he had to let her down slowly
Lied about the nature of his relationship with OW at first
Lied about how often he saw OW

When your mother finally figured out exactly what was happening, he also probably lied that the OW's child was not his - and was probably pretty convincing for a time, too.

Add in that the OW behaved the way she did, makes a good case that the OW is nutty, so your mom might have fallen for the lies that "OW is crazy, she is making this stuff up, I can't make her leave me alone" that he probably used for awhile, too.

If you think about how VLTA play out, your mom probably went through about at least the first 5 years not really knowing about the affair, or with the two of them being good at going underground once she found out. It was probably later that it was more blatant, after your mom was really aware, and the crappola he fed her no longer worked.

On to the idea of being exposed to this cheating lifestyle as a kid, and how it affected you. I'm on board with that - you do get the ideas and morals from parents. My own husband's father was a serial cheater.

His parents divorced, his dad married OW, and then they divorced and his dad remarried his mom.

What's different here is that you (and my H's dad), figured out that you do NOT have to be that way. There is something to be found in fidelity, and in making a permanent commitment to a person and remaining faithful.

We learn from our mistakes - right?


And are you condemned by the fact you cheated on your fiance? I don't know.

You make of it what you make of it. You choose. You can drag it with you - or you can make it the event in your life that resulted in the best change of morals you ever experienced. You can choose to

drag it as a ball and chain

or

carry it as torch


The ball and chain anchors you right there. It keeps you hopelessly stuck in that one single moment of stupidity in your life, staring at that moment and saying, "Look here. I did something horrible, and I am condemning myself for it. I have learned nothing, except to stand right here and point to it, chastise myself, and linger in the wrongness of it all." You can do that. Go ahead.

The torch lights the way to a new path. It lights the moment in your mind and says, "Take this moment as an example of something that you have done that should never be repeated. Let it be lighted as a memory, and take the torch forward on your path in life as a guide so you know what the consequences were. Don't ever drop the torch, and don't ever forget the lessons that you learned here."

Which is the better choice?



And, by the way, I would rather talk to a FORMER wayward like you, than most people, anyday.

Schoolbus

Thanks to all of you for being supportive. Schoolbus, especially - I may have to refer to your response again and again, just to remind myself that "I am NOT like my father."

To answer Bea's question - my H does know, and has always known from early on in our relationship, about my father. If you meant does he know about my cheating, yes, he knows that too and is pretty messed up right now. I'm the cause of his pain and his sleeplessness and worry, and depression, anger and low self-esteem, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how anyone can stomach long, drawn-out affairs. I see him have a trigger, and I am immediately there for him, consoling him but IT'S ALL MY FAULT. It's like stabbing someone in the chest and then saying, "Oh, I'm sorry, are you ok? You'll be fine."

My H's parents' marriage wasn't as bad as mine, but neither of us had a good example of what a healthy marriage is like. We're learning it for ourselves. I can't go back and point fingers, place blame, wish that things had been different or think "coulda shoulda woulda" ... all I can do, like Schoolbus said, is learn the lesson. I've learned my lesson. I just hope it's not too little too late.