SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hello there. It’s been a long time. I can’t even remember the last time I logged in. In short, things are good at 16 years out. We made it. We love and respect each other, we laugh and we cry, we talk. We are the best of friends growing old together day by day. 16 years out and I still feel lucky that he was willing to give me the chance to be the best version of myself (which includes him by my side).

What brings me here today is a little clarity on the collateral damage that happened on the way. My kids were just 6 and 9 on DDay. Old enough to know that we were fighting a lot, but young enough that I hoped they would be resilient and come out ok. It’s always been referred to as the time of "the big fight" when my kids would bring it up. We never went into details. We just let them know that mom and dad loved them and we were working hard to be better at our marriage and be better parents. They knew we went to therapy. They knew their dad stopped drinking during that time and they knew he was often angry during those early years. They did not know that I was reason, which unfortunately led them to try to fill in blanks where they could.

My oldest, who is now 25 recently sent me a heartfelt and honest email. He had learned on a long drive with his dad about my affair. Again, no details, just that I was the reason for the fighting in our home. He has been doing great work with his own therapist these days and felt like he needed some answers. It turns out he has a remarkable memory for that time. He needed to understand what those memories meant. His words were eloquent but also clear about some of the anger he felt, primarily for holding resentment towards his father for thinking he was to blame. He gave me the opportunity to tell my side of the story, which I obliged.

Being a good mom had always been important to me. During my A I always told myself that I was still a good mom. After DDay I continued to think I was still a good mom. It took a long time for me to realize that during the affair and those early days of reconciliation I was not good mom. I was distracted, not present. I had become my top priority rather than them. I exposed them to toxic bx and trauma.

I always have wondered just how much the A was going to keep rippling through our lives. It turns out it had some lasting effects on my kids that I never wanted to anticipate. My youngest has BPD and I have wondered if the triggering trauma has been my A or the struggles through school and COVID. Maybe all the above?

Fortunately, both of my kids have seen the benefits of the work we have done. We have good communication and I think we are all stronger for it.

I am not a perfect mom. No one is. I have at times in my life been a terrible mom. What I think I am now is more humble mom. I have learned from my past and have actively apologized to both of my children for some of the wrongs in the past that have directly impacted them.

I’m sure I will make mistakes with them again. They are old enough and bright enough to call me out on them. I know that I love them enough that if I am the reason for their hurt, I want to rectify that.

I know many of you are still too new and raw to consider long term impact. Just keep in mind that those little ears can hear loud and clear. They have uncanny intuition and empathy. Do your best to be there for them in all the chaos.

(((WOES)))!!!

Sooo awesome to "see" you again! Please say hello to HT for me!

My son was only 4yo on d-day, so he doesn't remember much of the craziness.

Shortly after our divorce, my ex told him what she did. Since then, my son (now 15) and I have had some very long, deep talks about all of it. I see it as an opportunity to teach him about love, relationships, marriage, fidelity, trust, the importance of being authentic, the strength of being vulnerable... all that jazz.

I don't think any of us who've survived infidelity were the best parents we could have been during those early years. I know that was true for us. Don't be too hard on yourself, dear lady.

ETA: weekends are a little slow

[This message edited by Unhinged at 1:06 AM, Monday, August 31st]

Your post touches on something deeply personal to me: the generational echo of infidelity and the deep, often silent impact it leaves on the kids.

As someone who experienced infidelity from the child's perspective, I want to validate what you are navigating right now and offer a view from the other side of that dynamic.

I grew up surrounded by infidelity. My mother was my father's affair partner, they married, and his continued cheating contributed heavily to her eventual suicide. My entire family tree was riddled with it, to the point that it shaped my own early relationships until I finally did the hard work in counseling to unpack all that trauma. My father was an unrepentant cheater, but outside of his marriage, he was an attentive, dutiful father to me. Even so, the truth of his actions fundamentally altered how I saw him as a parent.

Because he was deeply conflict-avoidant, we never had the hard conversations. A permanent, unspoken wall went up between us. I pulled away and kept my distance, while he just assumed I was moody or giving him space. Then Alzheimer's took his mind, and he passed away last week without us ever clearing the air. That wall remained standing until the day he died, and the chance for genuine closure is lost forever.

The fact that your 25-year-old opened this door is a gift, even if it is painful to face. When adult children discover the reality of an affair, they inevitably see their parent differently. The childhood lens shatters, and they are forced to re-evaluate their upbringing, their memories, and their own sense of security. As your son mentioned, he spent years carrying misplaced resentment toward his father. Acknowledging that confusion and validating his pain is vital to dismantling the anger before it calcifies.

The affair carries a real risk of putting a permanent wall between you and your kids if you do not actively adapt the relationship to meet them where they are now. They need the space to reconcile the loving mother they know with the person who broke the family foundation, without feeling pressured to pretend everything is fine. When kids feel that anger, a parent's instinct is often to retreat out of guilt or fear of conflict, but retreating is what lets that brick wall harden.

You mentioned becoming a more humble mom, and that humility will be your greatest asset. Adapting to this new reality means meeting them as adults, leaning into the discomfort, and answering the hard questions without defensiveness. Showing them that your relationship is strong enough to bear the weight of the truth is the only way to keep that wall from going up.

[This message edited by 1994 at 2:42 AM, Monday, August 31st]

No stop sign

Just keep in mind that those little ears can hear loud and clear. They have uncanny intuition and empathy. Do your best to be there for them in all the chaos.

My children were young when my wife chose to betray me, our marriage and family with my supposed best friend. As a young Husband and Father who had come frome a fractured, violent and abusive home I was woefully unprepared to deal with the maelstrom of hurt and anger that my WW threw us into. I stuck it out out for a decade (much longer than I should have but thats water under the bridge). Ironically, I told myself I had stated "for the kids". Big mistake.

So, we stumbled through those years, in and out of alienation. She never reached remorse. I never reached acceptance let alone forgiveness. It was purgatory. The tension in the home was constant. We were never antagonistic toward each other when with the kids, but it had a clear deleterious effect on them over time.

Years later when they started acting out (no surprise), my new wife and I got them into therapy and the therapist explained the concept of prolonged trauma induced developmental gap in children whos emotional/behavioral development has been arrested by prolonged exposure to trauma in the home. That gap was severely pronounced in my youngest who had the hardest time even describing their emotions/feelings and had to use a chart to do so. The therapist then told me in my own session that I too most probably had a developmental gap given my upbringing. I felt very very low. Thankfully, a great therapist worked with my children and with me and gave us excellent tools to help us all move forward and fill in that gap. They are all doing well today and have given us beautiful grands that are a joy.

My advice is to do much more than try to be there in the midst of their world being up ended. Get them professional help to work with them as, while in the hurricane post DDay the BS and WS are severely impaired, There is a well known, oft referenced poster on SI that did just this. I dont agree with much else in their post but they got their children into therapy immediately as knowing how impaired they were in the aftermath of the bomb that had been dropped on their marriage and family.

The developmental gap is a very real thing.

ETA: Glad you are doing well.

[This message edited by DobleTraicion at 2:58 PM, Monday, August 31st]

Hey Unhinged!👋🏻

I see it as an opportunity to teach him about love, relationships, marriage, fidelity, trust, the importance of being authentic, the strength of being vulnerable... all that jazz.

Both of our kids are in long term relationships. We have stressed from an early age that healthy relationships require good communication and vulnerability. We have told them that you have to be able to talk about the hard things, even if it scares you. I think they have taken that advice to heart.

They need the space to reconcile the loving mother they know with the person who broke the family foundation, without feeling pressured to pretend everything is fine.

I think that is exactly what he was doing. I think he just needed acknowledgement that from me that I wasn’t always the person he thought me to be. He knows that I am here if he has more questions and he knows that I will answer them honestly.

the therapist explained the concept of prolonged trauma induced developmental gap in children whos emotional/behavioral development has been arrested by prolonged exposure to trauma in the home.

Yes, this is something I have always feared as the kids were growing up. My son has done extensive work with his therapist, my daughter not so much, although she and I have also had some good conversations through the years.

I felt these recent events just proved that infidelity has tendrils that reach far and will poke out when you least expect them. I have the tools now to get through it. As a new WW I would have fought the concept that my kids would be affected by it, especially as they grow into adults.

I have been toying with writing about this topic for a while now, and this thread feels like a relevant enough space to share these thoughts, though I apologise if it comes across as slightly off-topic. Reading through these experiences prompted me to reflect on my own background as a child of divorce caused by my father's infidelity, and to consider what it actually takes for a wayward parent to attempt to maintain a connection with their children.

I often compare my situation to that of a close friend, trying to understand why two very similar betrayals led to completely opposite outcomes. Her father's actions were remarkably similar to mine: frequent travel for work, repeated failed reconciliations, and ultimately leaving the marriage. In many ways, his choices were more severe on paper, involving a betrayal of a close friend and a public exposure through work emails detailing drug-fuelled encounters. My father showed a similar lack of remorse, moving on quickly with a much younger partner who was struggling with severe addiction. Yet today, my friend remains extraordinarily close to her father—arguably even closer to him than to her mother, who was left behind to rebuild everything on her own.

What makes her forgiveness even more amazing to me is that, long before her father's betrayal ever happened, she had been fairly brutally and publicly betrayed by her first love. Given that she had already suffered that kind of devastating heartbreak, I would have assumed she would be far less tolerant of betrayal in general. Yet her ability to compartmentalise and completely forgive her father still astonishes me. I, on the other hand, haven't spoken to mine in seven years.

Looking back, the differences seem to stem from a mix of timing, philosophy, and personal temperament. I was between eight and eleven when the truth came out, absorbing the domestic fallout in real time. My friend was nearly twenty, with a firmly established sense of adult identity. Furthermore, my friend and my mother both hold the view that a man can be a poor husband while remaining a great father. I have always struggled with that logic. Through his own selfish decisions, my father tore our family apart. I saw my mam devastated for years whilst attempting to mask it from us, hearing muffled tears from the other room not quite drowned out by the TV.

The financial fallout of the divorce also directly reshaped my life. Watching the sudden shift to financial strain left me with long-lasting anxiety around money. On the positive side, it instilled a hyper-vigilance that meant I always maintained healthy savings for a rainy day. But the downside was a persistent fear that stopped me from living as freely or having as much fun through my twenties as my peers did. When a parent’s choices dismantle the home and cause that level of financial and emotional instability, it directly affects the children in ways that last for decades.

My mam, holding onto the belief that I should still have a relationship with my father, actively pushed me for years to keep an open mind and spend time with him. For his part, my father tried persistently to keep me on side—buying me video games, taking me on holidays, and taking me to football matches. But I resisted at every turn. I constantly tried to get out of going, and when my mam forced me to go anyway, I sat there and completely refused to engage. After years of this endless stalemate, he eventually gave up. I was relieved when he stopped, but whether my friend's father succeeded because he approached things differently or simply because my friend had a more receptive temperament, I honestly do not know.

Recently, my father offered a substantial amount of money towards my upcoming wedding. I debated taking it for a long time. He had enjoyed a close, lifelong bond with his own father, going to the working men's club with him twice a week until he died, and knowing I was deprived of that kind of fatherly relationship made me feel that financial compensation was, in some sense, owed to me for what was lost. Ultimately, though, I turned it down. Accepting it felt like accepting a financial substitute for emotional work, allowing him to feel he had made amends without addressing the underlying damage.

This leaves me reflecting on how a wayward parent should act if they genuinely want to attempt to preserve a relationship with their child. From my perspective, superficial gestures, financial offers, or trying to buy back affection through holidays or gifts will never work. It requires genuine accountability, a willingness to listen without defensiveness, and an honest, unprompted acknowledgment of the distress caused to the whole family unit, rather than brushing it under the rug or pretending nothing happened.

At the same time, I have to be honest and admit that I do not have all the answers, nor am I sure a clear blueprint even exists. A parent's actions are only part of the equation; the child's temperament, age, and personal moral boundaries play an equally significant role. In my case, I still struggle to say whether there was ever a realistic version of events where my father and I maintained a relationship. Was it his lack of true accountability that broke it, or was it simply my own nature and witnessing the impact on my mam that made a relationship impossible anyway? I honestly do not know. Perhaps with a different approach on his part things could have turned out differently, or perhaps my boundaries were always going to be unyielding. For wayward parents, maybe the takeaway isn't that there is a guaranteed path forward, but rather an understanding that even if you try to do everything right, the outcome might still remain uncertain.

I'm very happy your situation didn't damage your relationship with you kids in the manner it did why me and my fathers relationship.