Does anyone have examples to offer of how parents of a couple struggling to rebuild their marriage after infidelity can be supportive and helpful?

Well, I'm sorry you haven't received much response to your post. Unfortunately the boards are quite slow on the weekends, and especially slow on holidays.

I just thought I'd jump in and tell you how awesome my parent's in law were. They were VERY supportive and didn't take sides. They always encouraged "us" to do what was right in our hearts and in God's eyes. My step mother in law took sides (mine) in private .. but never shared her personal opinions with my husband. She was very neutral in her encouragement ... but when she and I got together she could understand how I felt and comforted me.

They all (my FIL, StepMIL and MIL) always encouraged us to think about the long term and how our decisions would affect not only our individual lives, but the lives of our children.

Now my mother was the perfect example of what not to do. She openly took sides. Mine of course. My husband was the evil cheater who hurt her baby girl. It took a long long time to begin to see him in another light. My husband resented her and some of the aweful things she said to him out of anger and disappointment. Even when I forgave she could not. It hurt me terribly that they were at odds. It only added to my stress of dealing with A & OC.

Thankfully years later she sees what a changed man he is. She sees his devotion to his family and his church. She sees now that he has learned from the horrid mistakes he made. While they have a decent relationship. And no obvious resent is present, I fear they will never grow to the point of feeling like mother/son. I feel like a daughter to my in-laws. Even more so after the affair. Primarily because of how they treated me and stood by US, not either of us individually.

Now this doesn't mean my in-laws didn't give my H a hard time about stepping outside of the marriage. They were very clear that it was wrong. But they drove home the point that ALL things can be overcome through effort and faith. They chose to focus on what to do next and avoid dwelling on fault and blame.

I guess if I could give you one piece of advice it would be to do just that: focus on what to do next. How to heal, how to move forward, how to make good, faith filled, choices. And once those choices are made, living up to them 100%. No matter which way the marriage goes, you will walk away feeling like you weren't a contributor to the pain, but an encourager for healing.

Good luck,
Z.

<small>[ April 21, 2003, 10:12 PM: Message edited by: zebrababy ]</small>

rticj

I, too, apologize for you not receiving many responses to your question.

I am not as good a writer as our eloquent Z, but I agree… not being over-judgmental of the situation is best.

My parents were AWESOME. I was never told what I should do.. never told what they “really felt” about H and his A. Of course, they were hurt by his actions, but they stood by whatever decision I made with my marriage.
At first, I had wanted to divorce. My mother allowed me to talk about the whole ordeal, Thank you Momma, and never was judgmental. She was supportive and was an excellent sounding board. My father was very quiet about the whole thing. He allowed me to speak my mind, never saying a word (very uncharacteristic for my father <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" /> )

My In-laws, however, were supportive but in a different way. My FIL was silent, completely. I believe this is because he was also guilty of the same A/OC situation, many years ago. My Step-MIL was open about her amazement that I stayed. She mentioned quite a few times in the early stages of Recovery how strong she felt I was. I also believe this came from the fact that she was the OW w/OC in afore mentioned A/OC situation.
The strangest thing about the entire IL aspect in our situation is that until the A/OC in OUR marriage, my ILs rarely spoke to my H or me. Even after 7+ of our marriage… they still didn’t until this happened. Then they became VERY supportive of me and with an entirely different attitude toward my H.

My H’s Grandmother was livid at the whole thing. She told H he had to fix what he had done. She was very open about who’s “side” she was on, Mine. She even went so far as to tell him he wouldn’t be welcome in her home without me!

As you can see, being supportive means you don’t choose sides.
You encourage the couple to make their own decisions and you encourage their Marriage.
You don’t judge their choices, whether it be to have contact or not with the OC, or any other choice they make...

This isn’t only for Parents and In-Laws… this goes for Friends too…
Be mindful of the Couple and their decisions… It’s ultimately their lives they live and they must make their own choices.

Hope this helps in some way.

rticj,

I can give an example on how NOT to act! In our case, I was the one to have the OC, and my MIL decided, AFTER my H had expressed to his father not to say ANYTHING to ANYONE, that it was her place to tell her whole side of the family! All under the guise of, "I can't lie about this"! Well, that did NOTHING to help in our recovery! I basically took her to task on what she did, explaining that she took from us the decision on who and when would know about the full facts! It created a major rift between my H and her for a long time! He would hate talking to her when she would call, and not only that, but it caused problems w/H's brothers and MIL as well!

I agree with the other posts, that you need to NOT take sides, and support BOTH parties in the M, especially if they are working to rebuild their M! They are going to need all the support they can get in this trying time! Oh, and don't offer advice, unless asked for it! It may be the best advice they could hear, but if it is not asked for, especially in the early stages of recovery, they can/will take offense at the offering.

I think that, over all, just give them your support, and be there for them! I know that's what my parents did, and it made it that much easier for our recovery to begin, and continue! Unfortunately, especially in cases where there is an OC, the recovery will be a lifetime thing, but each day, it gets better!

Hope I helped in some way.

Tigger

Zebra & Stacie Lee
Thank you for your insights. You've mostly encouraged us to keep doing what we've been doing, which is helpful, because it's so hard to know if it's the right thing to do in the middle of everything. Our daughter feels bad because of the pain her marriage problems (A by her H with OC due in July) have caused US, she tried to keep it from us for a while, but we tell her how much easier it is to share the pain and be close to her instead of on the outside.

I wanted to answer when this first posted and have been too overwhelmed at home.

I second the advice you got. Please don't run down the wandering spouse, but sympathize with their pain (ultimately, my H is more hurt by his infidelity than I am--it hurts his heart and soul) without big judgements and encourage a loooong view of the issue--someday, Godwilling, infidelity is a storm they've weathered successfully.

I love that our parents (both sets divorced) have supported our efforts to keep our marriage intact and not told our children about H's OC. My only complaint in our situation is my mother told another relative after I asked her not to tell others.

Another quick 2cents,
J
in recovery 4.5y and glad I stayed

It sure is good to hear from someone down the road who has been able to stay together and be glad about it! My daugther is attempting Plan A and I pray it is successful. I love my SIL and am able to forgive. Like you said, his level of hurt and need is great indeed and I really want to support him as well as my daughter (I think that attitude on my part makes her more able to come to me for support when things are especially hard to bear - she knows I won't just start attacking her H)

Can anyone offer examples of how the responsiblities to the OC of the H were successfully handled?

rt,
In my opinion, dealing with OC will be successful to the extent ALL the adults involved are extremely mature (and if they were all mature, functional sorts of people to begin with, they wouldn't have had an affair!). It takes mature people to put the welfare of the OC first, as well as maintain functional boundaries, meaning no or minimal contact between former 'affairees', married couples in full agreement with each other on all goals, etc. What little (long-distance) contact we've had in our case has been mostly unpleasant; the X-OWoman is still angry and vindictive, even now.

I'm sure others will chime in on this one.

Congradulations on doing a great job supporting your daughter in her marriage!! I hope her H comes to his senses!
J