Fast fwd 1 1/2 years

[theperfectlife]

I don't quite know how to navigate this site.......however ......here is an update 1 and 1/2 yrs later.......

My divorce was final March of 2015. OMs divorce final June of 2015. I struggle daily with hurting my ex & daughters, however I am very happy with OM. He is actually my NEW MAN now. For all the haters out there, I deal with the consequences of my decision constantly. My daughters are both in college; and have been less dependent on myself and ex for some time (except financially).

 

I continue to make the effort to establish a loving relationship with my youngest, and my oldest continues to be supportive. The reason for this may be that I have been there for her through thick and thin and she seems to follow in my footsteps. The youngest still very angry, but I am there for her in a heartbeat which she knows. I can only pray that time will heal. <Link to contextual content>

 

I own my mistakes. I live with the fact that I've lost the respect of my youngest, which is a daily struggle. Although at times I wanted to give up, I did not. I chose to live telling the truth; accepting the scrutiny of my community and family. It has been a difficult road, but I have a select group of friends and family who support my decision. Life goes on. Divorce happens. I vow to teach my daughters that betrayal is not the answer; honesty is best.

Edited October 24, 2015 by a LoveShack.org Moderator
Paragraphs, move to Family and added link to context

[Poppy47]

You will pay the price probably for many years to come. If your youngest never accepts what you did, it will be her loss.

 

Perhaps when she matures , her view of you and the world will change. Divorce happens all the time. Maybe one day she will be pleased that her mother is a happier person.

 

Poppy.

[gettingstronger]

I can disagree with your choices, but I respect anyone that makes a choice to end the secrecy of an affair and live authentically- I hope time heals the wounds- good luck-

[jbrent890]

What I'm about to say is in no way a 2x4, I actually respect the fact that you finally set your husband free. Now, divorce is hard, but when a parent leaves the other parent for someone else, that stings. This will take years for your daughter to get over with. Even though it was not you intention, you daughter probably feels that you abandoned the family. The reason I say this is because a similar situation happened to a buddy of mine back in college. Also, if you don't mind me asking, how is your BH taking all of this? Is he moving on with his life and dating other people? I ask this because that can have a huge baring on how your daughter feels about you. The moment she feels that her father is happy again will probably be the moment she starts to forgive you. Lastly, there is probably the fear that she might cheat herself in a future relationship and there is evidence to support that can happen. Is she in counseling? My friend is now cordial with his mother now but it took some time for him to get to that point. Don't give up, but don't try to rush it either.

[Horton]

I continue to make the effort to establish a loving relationship with my youngest, and my oldest continues to be supportive. The reason for this may be that I have been there for her through thick and thin and she seems to follow in my footsteps.

 

I went back and read your previous threads and I must say that I hope you're wrong about your oldest daughter following in your footsteps. You had multiple affairs, you put your husband through a false reconciliation making him your 'plan B' while you waited for the OM to sh*t or get off the pot, you planned on lying to both his family and your own about the adulterous origin of your relationship so you wouldn't be seen as the 'bad guys' after your divorces. It's completely unreasonable to expect your youngest daughter to be happy for you when your happiness was built on the foundation of her grief and the eventual destruction of her family. Quite frankly if I were you I'd be counting my blessings. After dragging her through all of that craziness just being allowed to still be a part of her life in any facet would be a small miracle in my estimation.

[goodyblue]

I went back and read your previous threads and I must say that I hope you're wrong about your oldest daughter following in your footsteps. You had multiple affairs, you put your husband through a false reconciliation making him your 'plan B' while you waited for the OM to sh*t or get off the pot, you planned on lying to both his family and your own about the adulterous origin of your relationship so you wouldn't be seen as the 'bad guys' after your divorces. It's completely unreasonable to expect your youngest daughter to be happy for you when your happiness was built on the foundation of her grief and the eventual destruction of her family. Quite frankly if I were you I'd be counting my blessings. After dragging her through all of that craziness just being allowed to still be a part of her life in any facet would be a small miracle in my estimation.

 

I have not read your back story so I don't know what the other posters are referencing but I am glad you can live a life of honesty now. The more my h and I talk about us beginning as an affair the more we realize how guilty we felt and him divorcing, us being together and some therapy helped us to feel better about things. My h's daughter was very upset and it stayed that way for a good while but she is better now. She came out of it when she realized that her dad was so unhappy in the marriage and divorce was best. Her mother is still very angry but we can't change it. It does not stop my h and his d from having a loving and respectful relationship. Just do what you can and hang in there.

[Civil]

Reading before commenting and the big yield here: OP's teenage daughter discovered her mother's. Her mother's most recent affair.

 

OP is in a caring profession (access and ed on mental health care) She had had an earlier affair and had been caught. She characterizes herself as sensitive and compassionate but even with her own extensive experience, was unable to do the simple risk/reward calculation that would have saved at least six people, four of them children, a world of hurt.

 

If my children were involved, I would hope that OP would recognize the extremity of her behavior and seek hardcore help while backing off as an influence on her daughters. While there are no more LOLs here, "follow in my footsteps... Life goes on. Divorce happens" leaves room for doubt, not that OP badly wants to repair the situation, but that she fully grasps it.

 

Subjective: I'm not a BS but have dealt with the effects of infidelity across five decades and several generations (I said three but my H points out that it's five generations) and I know that kids don't "get over" their experience of a parent's infidelity. It isn't erased. It is too often the model for their adult behavior. Or they may do better by recognizing the damage and learning very good coping mechanisms.

 

Objective: Decades of scholarship including Wallerstein / Amer Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry: research from several disciplines regarding long-term effects of divorce on children yields a growing consensus that significant numbers of children suffer for many years from psychological and social difficulties associated with continuing and/or new stresses within the postdivorce family and experience heightened anxiety in forming enduring attachments at later developmental stages.

[ladydesigner]

Reading before commenting and the big yield here: OP's teenage daughter discovered her mother's. Her mother's most recent affair.

 

OP is in a caring profession (access and ed on mental health care) She had had an earlier affair and had been caught. She characterizes herself as sensitive and compassionate but even with her own extensive experience, was unable to do the simple risk/reward calculation that would have saved at least six people, four of them children, a world of hurt.

 

If my children were involved, I would hope that OP would recognize the extremity of her behavior and seek hardcore help while backing off as an influence on her daughters. While there are no more LOLs here, "follow in my footsteps... Life goes on. Divorce happens" leaves room for doubt, not that OP badly wants to repair the situation, but that she fully grasps it.

 

Subjective: I'm not a BS but have dealt with the effects of infidelity across five decades and several generations (I said three but my H points out that it's five generations) and I know that kids don't "get over" their experience of a parent's infidelity. It isn't erased. It is too often the model for their adult behavior. Or they may do better by recognizing the damage and learning very good coping mechanisms.

 

Objective: Decades of scholarship including Wallerstein / Amer Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry: research from several disciplines regarding long-term effects of divorce on children yields a growing consensus that significant numbers of children suffer for many years from psychological and social difficulties associated with continuing and/or new stresses within the postdivorce family and experience heightened anxiety in forming enduring attachments at later developmental stages.

 

What a great post! I am a child of a parent who was unfaithful, have committed infidelity myself (revenge affair) and my WH is/was a serial cheater. It has crossed generations and now my children get to feel it as well. Never wanted that for them.

[goodyblue]

What a great post! I am a child of a parent who was unfaithful, have committed infidelity myself (revenge affair) and my WH is/was a serial cheater. It has crossed generations and now my children get to feel it as well. Never wanted that for them.

 

Hmm.what does it mean that my h and I have loving, intact families yet we had an affair...

[Civil]

What does it mean? Simple:

 

Hopefully it is A: that there are exceptions.There are, of course. But minimizing a distinctly harmful behavior because some survive it speaks of empathy deficit, cognitive dissonance... terrible judgement. Or worse.

 

Sadly it is more often B: that there's still time. Studies of the long term effects of infidelity and divorce on children rightly focus on individuals who are well into adulthood. Since relationship issues don't even manifest until adulthood (infidelity itself is so often off the table until middle age) it's unfair to the kids to convince ourselves that doing well in high school means they're in the clear, will suffer no residual effects and everyone can move on now.

[goodyblue]

What does it mean? Simple:

 

Hopefully it is A: that there are exceptions.There are, of course. But minimizing a distinctly harmful behavior because some survive it speaks of empathy deficit, cognitive dissonance... terrible judgement. Or worse.

 

Sadly it is more often B: that there's still time. Studies of the long term effects of infidelity and divorce on children rightly focus on individuals who are well into adulthood. Since relationship issues don't even manifest until adulthood (infidelity itself is so often off the table until middle age) it's unfair to the kids to convince ourselves that doing well in high school means they're in the clear, will suffer no residual effects and everyone can move on now.

 

Well it is a given that our parents will screw us up and we will spend our life trying to fix it. We are imperfect beings trying to navigate a very messy world filled with other imperfect beings. As mother of six there are days I go to bed and think if all of my kids survived the day then I did my job!

 

Look I am not defending OP as I don't know her story, but nobody in this world is perfect. We are human and make errors in judgement. The secret is to learn from those errors and go forward. I am not minimizing harmful behavior I am simply saying that if it was not infidelity it would be something else and no matter how hard we try there will always be something. That said, of course we should do all we can to give our children the best upbringing possible.

 

Still, neither of our parents had affairs, their marriages remain intact and we still did. Perhaps that is why we didn't remain in an affair and wanted a functioning relationship in the open... who knows.

Edited October 24, 2015 by goodyblue

[Popsicle]

Maybe therapy for you and the youngest together might help.

[cocorico]

Relationships between parents and children are complex.

 

My parents "stayed together for the kids", but split as soon as the youngest left home. Both were unhappy for as long as I can remember, though in later years my father became happier, more accessible to us and seemed to have some hope. I found out later, after the split, that it was because he had an A (he is now M to his fOW; they have been happily M for decades now). At the time I was angry that even that hadn't spurred him to leave my mother, and I had a very poor R with him for years.

 

With time I came to understand that if they had divorced she would likely have gotten custody and objectively that would have been much, much worse. I always fantasised about them splitting and us living with him (and his then-GF) but that's probably not what the courts would have decided since my mother was SAHM and my father and his GF both worked.

 

I have a better R with my father now, and a close R with his W.

I tried to have a R with my mother, but eventually gave up as it was just too damaging, and placed my kids at risk.

 

Where your daughters will eventually land up in their understanding of your Rs is difficult to predict. Things will change as they grow and undergo their own experiences of their own Rs. If you live authentically from here on out, and if you and your partner model a good, strong, loving R, the chances are greater that there will be positive takeaways for both daughters - even if it takes a while for the youngest to move to forgiveness.

[Civil]

OP: I think you can do very well for yourself and your kids if you do the hard work on your issues. Print out your posts from that thread, the one about your daughter's discovery, and take them to a very good therapist who specializes in behavioral issues. That kind of therapy is tough and demanding, but it's solidly constructive.

[William]

Since moderation has processed this thread and placed it, per the topic content, in our Family forum, and linked to the context to save members from getting moderated for improper attribution, I'll share something members can't see, that being how many members who spewed their vitriol in that thread and were banned for it.

 

This thread is about building family relationships. Any attempts to rehash past events and take shots at the member starting the thread will result in your ejection from our site. Moderation takes a dim view of people with an agenda so work the topic in a collaborative and respectful manner or move on to something else. Thanks in advance for your cooperation with this moderation directive.