On reading through the queries it’s clear that there are many pain points you readers are suffering through. It’s bad enough that the mainstream news peddles suffering porn, but when it comes to affairs, things hit home.
One of the recent queries concerned telling an adult child about an affair.
Do you just sit your children down and tell them that their father had an affair?
What about the possibility of divorce? Are you going to leave him, Mom? Are we going to have a new dad too?
The answer is not so simple for most families. You can’t pretend it never happened, but you also cannot begin assuming the worst.
Part of what makes this dilemma painful is that the information shatters the image the child had of you as their parent. Learning that one of their parents had an affair changes your whole relationship. Trust gets shattered, and there’s a lot of anger. This wound needs to heal — slowly — and the only way it will is if both parents work to rebuild that trust and create a new relationship together.
When the child is an adult, it has some unique challenges. The affair totally changes how they view their parent. It’s akin to losing a major part of their childhood.
Such changes present challenges for adult children. For them, it’s a sudden and drastic change in their relationship with the cheater and with themselves. They feel betrayed by both of you, but for different reasons. One for cheating and one for keeping a secret from them.
This is why it’s so important to approach the conversation with empathy and an understanding that your child is grieving the loss of the parent they thought they had. They need time to process and grieve. Only then can you hope to rebuild a new relationship with them.
The view of you as a perfect parent is shattered and they now see you as a flawed person… like everyone else. They had to deal with the humiliation/humiliation of being humiliated in front of their friends, school, church, etc. The social disgust was bad enough but it’s nothing compared to your inner feelings over what has happened.
In a moment of time, they suddenly lose the parents they grew up with. whatever emotional security they had in their home is GONE. Sure the parent is still there, yet emotionally, they’re gone. They no longer exist.
Whatever trust they had developed over the years evaporates in a matter of minutes. The affair stole the parent they grew up with!
At that moment, don’t be surprised if they’re unsure how to interact with the cheater or with you. They are still trying to make sense of things. Initially, they may experience a wide range of emotions ranging from disgust to being stunned by the news.
They’re still related to you, yet the relationship is strained and twisted in an unusual fashion. This is due to the well-known fact that trust can be rebuilt but takes time, patience and repeated behaviors.
It’s important to know that you should never demand that your children comfort or defend you because you tell them about the affair. People who are in pain tend to lash out at others, but this will generate an additional level of anger.
Another painful revelation is that of when an adult child discovers their parents are swingers. In that case, they suddenly lose the image of both parents at the same time.
There is no perfect way of conveying such information. Although the cheater should accept responsibility for what they’ve done, it doesn’t always happen that way.
If you expect your adult child to take the information ‘in stride’, you’ll likely be disappointed. Yes, they’re adults and they know you’re an adult as well.
When your marriage is dysfunctional, adult children may welcome news of the affair. This is especially true when the marital relationship has been strained for a period of time. In those situations, they may even be relieved at news of the affair.
In those cases, news of the affair only validates trust that was damaged long before.
Whether the news of the affair is more traumatic or welcomed, the damaged trust still needs repair. Rather than allowing the emotional wounding to continue in hopes that it’ll improve over time, work is needed on rebuilding trust.
You can use my video on “How Can I Trust Him Again?” in helping you and them move past the damaged trust. You can also learn what is needed in your family in order to rebuild this part of the relationship damaged by news of the affair.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
