SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

During this process of self discovery and soul searching I discovered my dad's GF is married. It has been explained to me as she is "legally married" her divorce is stuck in the court system. My dad is fully aware of this. He is the one that let is slip. He accidentally told my older sister. My dad and his GF live in two different countries. She has come and spend Hollidays with our family. I'm really not sure what the truth is, my dad would never say anything bad about his GF.

Questions I keep running through my head...

*Does it have over 4 years to finalize a divorce?

*Is my Dad an OM?

*My dad met her before his divorce was finalize...timeline ... I don't know when they met.

*Is this any of my business.

But I did tell my H and he doesn't trust anything about the situation. And neither do I.

I already have issues with my dad but now I feel the issues are only growing. His divorce was not with my mom.

Is this any of my business.

Sure. But can you explain exactly why you’re focusing on this right now?

Absent significant context, how it reads to me is you’re eager to find something to be angry about- Something to dust off and try and align your BH against, with you as opposed to against/separate from you.

If this is a distraction for you, and you find yourself getting angry for the sake of getting angry, I’d ask if it’s worth the degree of attention paid at the moment.

JBWD,

I'm focusing on this because it is new information to me. I have been digging into my childhood. I had to get some anwsers about some of the legal details I was too young to know. My parents split when I was 18 months and my mom started doing drugs when I was about 2 yrs old. I lived with her until I was about 8 yrs old. Most of that time is a blurr.

But I had been doing some digging into my past. My dad wasn't a terrible man but he wasn't the most emotionally supportive. He was a single dad and a pilot. He was very distant and very strict. There was no support for social things when I was going up. He never wanted to talk about my mom or what I was going through. I was just forced to accept the move and I didn't get to ask questions.

I started keeping everything to myself. I didn't tell my dad anything I was feeling or going through. And we only became more distant as I got older. In JR high I started to lie to keep things to myself. I lied about boyfriends and I kept my dad at an arms length. In high school it got even worse I had a friend's mom that would cover for me so I could spend the night with my then BF. I lived a very covert life.

I guess I never stopped living a covert life. That is until 3 weeks ago when H found out about everything. Even though I ended the PA/EA I still never ended the lies.

My H has been very supportive and his questions are what got me thinking about my relationshiop with my Dad.

I don't think I'm using this as a distraction. More or less just exploring ...

But now that I know my dad is or may be an OM. I'm worried my dad and or his relationship with his GF is a trigger for my H. My H and Dad have never had a friendship.

I don't have anger towards my dad or the situation just questions. But I'm not lost on this.

What have you done prior to exploring these longstanding FOO issues?

My point in asking is based on the timeline you describe, there’s a lot of acute management that needs to be addressed prior to digging deeply into the past.

If it’s to assess if the possibility that your father may be an OM is potentially a trigger- Ask your BH.

Being lost on this is certainly understandable and I don’t envy you such questions- But as someone who ALSO led a covert life, I can tell you that I often took such distractions and allowed them to paralyze me. I have been dropping the Serenity Prayer on everyone on this forum lately, and it applies here as well. You can’t control your Dad’s actions or your BH’s response to those actions. Worrying about them right now is, IMO, a potential waste of energy. At this point in time I think your emerging desire for honesty should focus far more on the specific nuts and bolts of how you thought and what it drove you to feel- Disrupting that feedback loop moving forward. If you start with the mechanisms that fed that loop (such as the FOO concerns you have ID’ed) I can see a fairly rapid detour from accountability.

That’s my read but it’s simply a follow-up to say that I don’t believe it’s where your energy is best spent right now. IC would be a good follow-up. Is that something you’re doing/pursuing?