I am a BS AND was a young child (6/7 in the beginning) who lived though my mother's affair. I have posted extensively on a bunch of issues relating to having that experience. This is a readers digest version of my story and why I think it is a HORRIBLE decision to not tell your children an age-appropriate version of the truth as soon as you can stomach it. I wholeheartedly disagree with not telling your kids if they are old enough to remember anything about how your house felt when the A came to light. EG maybe not if they are under the age of 2 (possibly 3) but if they are old enough to go to kindergarden (or whatever the first year of school is called where you live) they know something is up, no matter how hard you try to cover it up. It damaged me, and ultimately my relationship with my mother, forever.
My parents did not initially tell me (I had a sibling but she was less than 2 so telling her wouldn't have helped much). Instead I ABSOLUTELY felt the tension, the anxiety, the coldness in our house. I have an image in my head of sitting at the kitchen table, I can picture my small hands holding a spoon - motionless, and my mother walking out into the living room mumbling something under her breath and my father trying to talk to me to break the mood. I remember it SO well because it was really confusing. I had no idea what was going on but I knew I needed to stay out of it and try to be as small and silent as I could. I totally noticed that my parents would go outside for LONG periods of time (we lived in a rural area and they would walk away from the house and have their discussions/arguments) where you could still see them but not hear them. I remember sitting in the house during those times thinking something bad was going to happen, but not knowing what that was. I also recall that not every moment was like that, but there were many nights where after having been put to bed I came out of my room and sat at the top of the stairs trying to hear what they were fighting about. I don't recall thinking I had been the cause of their fights, but I do recall feeling very uneasy about my home life.
And no, I never said a word to my parents and never asked what was going on. Never until after they had separated. Had they stayed together I doubt I would have asked until years later when I became an adult.
After about a year and a half my dad moved out so I was around 8 (but as I found out that was my mother's doing - her A was an exit A apparently). I recall him walking me down our long driveway and telling me he was going to be moving somewhere else. I also remember that day like it was yesterday - it was so horrible and sad (even though my dad ended up moving like 1/4 a mile away from us - which quickly became awesome). He still didn't say why...however as my mom turned up pregnant eventually we had to be told what happened - kind of. Basically several months after my Dad moved out my mom told me she was pregnant (she was 5 months then so getting hard to hide), but there was no explanation initially of who the father was (the AP) or that she was even involved in an A. So again I was left to wonder.
Eventually, when my half sibling was about 2, I was told who her dad was (all I knew before was that her dad was not my dad), but again not really about the A. I brought this up to my Dad and his concern was for my half-sibling and that I treated her like the sibling she was and that any anger I had with my mom should not be passed onto my half-sister (who was in SI terms, the "OC"). I was left to figure that what had actually happened on my own, and at 10-11 I was able to ascertain that something really wrong had happened AND that I thought at some point we had met my soon-to-be step father when my parents were married (we had, he came to my younger sister's birthday event at this petting zoo/amusement park and my mom introduced me to him like he was some stranger she was politely talking to when in realty their A was in full force at that time).
My mother and her AP eventually married (he also was married so he had to divorce as well) and her AP also had kids, several years older than I. When my mom and her AP married we moved in with him and his kids and they KNEW what had happened between my mom and the AP (their dad) because their mom had told them/they had witnessed the aftermath of the A first hand in their house before the AP/their dad left. I was pissed and angry that I had been kept in the dark and disgusted with my mother - and in all honestly that cloud - the lies and the avoidance my mother did during and after the A and my parents divorce clouded my and my mother's relationship forever. In therapy I realized that I have had issues with trust, and in being trustworthy (especially as a teen and young adult), and that a lot of that likely stemmed from learning how to lie and how to cover-up/avoid from a young age. If you are thinking that this sounds like the makings of a cheater - it was - and I was. I had 5 year relationship as a young adult filled with cheating and lying and it all blew up in my face - which is when I realized I was repeating my mom's behavior, lock, stock and barrel and needed to make some changes. It didn't take much for me to see, when I finally decided to look at myself, that I was doing what I had seen in my childhood.
Recently, almost 40 years after the A, I confronted my mother about it in the middle of an argument where she was trying to claim that I don't care about her as evidenced in her mind by the closeness of my relationship with my father. I point blank told her that my father had not poisoned me against her (in fact he would try to defend her to me "this is your mother, she loves you. She's made bad choices but don't let those choices make you think she does not care about you - she does...etc") but that her lies and rugsweeping over the years is really what has done it. That I don't trust her in the way I trust my dad, and part of that is because of the cowardice she had in NOT TELLING ME what happened and leaving me to wonder for YEARS. It made me feel like she thought I was not important enough to know. All I got out of her was that what she did was "wrong." That was it. I still don't know if she meant not telling me what was going on was wrong or if the A was wrong or what. And honestly, it doesn't matter to me anymore. She is who she is. She's my mother and I love her but she still doesn't care enough about my feelings to let herself talk about these things. Shame on her. Her loss. (As an aside my WH was also a child in an infidelity household - he was older when his father's A started - 13 and it ended when he was 18 and his parents divorced - and WH's father also married his AP about 5 years after his divorce. His parents never told him what happened and I can tell you, after he's been in 3+ years of IC he is only now becoming really aware of how that behavior affected him too - and it wasn't in a good way).
So, if you are thinking your kids don't know. You are likely wrong. They may not know what is going on precisely, but they know something is wrong, and living with that feeling is kind of like the gut feeling you have pre-A when you suspect something is up but don't know what it is. Any BS out there knows how shitty that is. The difference is that when you don't tell you kids something (and yeah, it's got to be more than "don't worry it's not about you" as I was told that multiple times) they are left with that never-knowing feeling. While it MAY pan out okay and your kids may just recall that mom and dad fought for awhile but they worked it out, it might not, and to me that isn't a gamble anyone should take.
You are teaching your kids how to behave as adults - what do you want them to learn?
[This message edited by ThisIsSoLonely at 4:23 PM, Friday, August 16th]
