Do I F-53 share the deepest secrets of my 1997 divorce to my daughter F-28 in an attempt to regain her respect?

48 comments

1. You can’t.

2. I’m so sorry this happened to you. He should have respected you and your body.

   If you want her to know the truth then tell her. Give her the whole story to let her make up her mind. She’s an adult she can handle it.

3. I would start with a therapist yourself. Come up with a plan, then either write your daughter a letter (with your therapist) or invite her to join you in a session. Before you give her a letter to roll it out, give her the option. Let her know that there are some things you’d like to share/clarify now that she’s older but that it may change some of her perceptions about her father.

   I (45 now) went through similar. Parental alienation wasn’t considered a “thing” back in the early 90’s but that’s what it was. Didn’t get it sorted til I was 30 and that included 15 years of no contact with one of my parents.

4. If she will only accept his version, then it might already be too late for your relationship. You telling her these details may actually make things worse and she may accuse you of lying or embellishing. I guarantee your ex will likely deny all of your accusations and then it will become a “he said, she said” scenario.

   No point in being defensive here. The more honest and resolute you are when you tell her these things, the more credible you will sound. Don’t beat around the bush. He’s the one who raped you, not the other way around. Tell the truth and be done with it. If your daughter still wants to be nasty about, then maybe it’s time to back away from her.

5. You are justified in wanting the truth to be known. I doubt she’ll believe you though, I think you’ve left it too long. Her father and his wife have had all that time to influence her thinking and she will, understandably, question why you never said anything before if it’s true.

6. There is zero chance you were a little buzzed and did not know this happened if it is true. I think you are trying to rewrite history- a common thing.

7. I think it’s entirely fair to set the record straight, especially if she’s actively engaged in berating you.

8. Yet another person that doesn’t tell their kid the truth and lets the ex control the narrative. When will people learn that lying by omission is more harmful than the truth.

9. what is the drawback of her knowing her dad is a rapist? tell daughter and tell the stepmom

10. Yes, I think you should be honest with your daughter. Brutally honest. Not in a *throw her dad under the bus* was, but in a way that is simple, factual, and as open to sharing your faults as his.

    I share a story similar to yours, which I will share here, along with the outcome thus far.

    My oldest was born in ’94. I married her father a couple months later, under serious cult pressure, while I was still a child (legally) myself. Her sister followed in ’96, days after my HS graduation. That same week, their father also suffered an injury to his back at work, which left him in a lot of pain and unable to work. I did not recognize at the time, but do in hindsight, that he became seriously depressed. He wasn’t taking care of the house, I wasn’t even sure if he was taking care of my babies when I was at work. He slowly became abusive, escalating a little at a time, and like a frog in a pot, I stayed. Eventually, my self esteem crushed by the abuse, I cheated in a series of one night stands. It was a combination of wanting to hurt him back, and wanting to prove to myself that if I left I was worthy of love. (thanks mom, for teaching me that my only worth was as a breathing sex doll, and wanting to use me for sex equaled love… /s) One night, he wanted sex and I said no because I was beyond exhausted working 45+ hour weeks in a kitchen. So he strangled and raped me. I panicked, and ran, seriously mentally ill from the lifetime of abuse, unable to care for myself let alone two children. My girls were 5 and 6.

    Fast forward eight or nine years and my oldest *hates* me. I get her talking about it, and it turns out that it was a combination of years of parental alienation by her father, and a story that basically he broke his back (he did not break his back, that’s a straight up lie), so I cheated and abandoned them. Oh hell no. If she was going to hate me, fine, but by god she’d hate me for the *truth*. So I told it. Not explicit details, but all of it. I also apologized, without reservation or excuse, without blame on her father, for all of the hurt *my* actions caused her. Because the rape and strangulation aside, my actions did cause her pain. It was the first step in healing our relationship. Our relationship is by no means perfect, but she graciously allows me to be part of her life which I am grateful for every day.

    Healing can happen, but it can only happen in the light of day. You, her, and your relationship ca not heal in the dark. Assess, with a therapist if necessary, exactly how much and in what way you want to share with her. Then do so. That rape didn’t just take from you everything that was taken that night, it has robbed you of your relationship with your daughter. It continues to harm you. Take your power back. Step into the light with your truth.

11. I agree with what others have said. I just want to point out that the stepmom doesn’t know the truth either. She sounds like an AH for going along with trashing you, but she doesn’t know anything.

    Anyway, I think you need to go to therapy. After you talk to your own therapist, instead of telling your daughter your side, I would do family therapy with her. Honestly, it sounds like a fucking mess and I understand you want to tell her your side, but she has been failed here because (a) her father is a bad person (b) you waited over 15 years to try to tell her your side?

    Your marriage was on the rocks already, so did he divorce you because you had a one night stand, or did you divorce him for being a rapist? Or did you both divorce because it was very toxic? I mean, it matters for story she has fed.

    Even then, you could have gone to court for parental alienation against your ex or you could have told your daughter that it was not as simple as that (without mentioning the rape). I mean why now? Maybe you built the courage but I think she will have all of these questions and will be angry with both parents. This basically happened 28 years ago. I’m not minimizing it, but maybe there’s a way of doing family therapy with her and telling her whatever she is ready to take or questions she has, and working on being closer to her. You are also assuming THIS is the reason you are not close, but you haven’t heard that from her.

    Your ex is probably lying to himself too so he can live with the rape part (can’t you talk to him and see if he admits it, and record him?).

12. I think I could be possible to regain your daughters respect without sharing any additional details. It wasn’t appropriate for her father to share what he did with her. She is the child in the relationship and always will be. She shouldn’t carry the burden of her parents relationship issues even if they are in the past. She deserves the opportunity to love both her parents based on her experience of you as her parents and not your issues with one another as relationship partners. Remember, each of you makes up half of who she is. When her father says you suck, somewhere inside she feels your half of her diminished. Who wants that?
    You could perhaps start out by acknowledging what you did wasn’t true to who you aspire to be but you won’t go into what drove you to do something that conflicts with your moral code because you’re her mom and don’t owe her an explanation of your romantic relationships. It should be enough to say that you and her father loved one another once, fell out of love and hurt each other out of the pain of the failure of the relationship and decided to divorce but agree you both love her.
    I don’t think I would tolerate being beaten up over it – it’s not who you are, it’s one thing you did and furthermore it’s not her business. There is no way she could understand. Also, this obviously requires you to be the bigger person but it really sounds like there’s no contest there.

13. I don’t think you’d be wrong to include his actions leading up to the problems. But it seems like there’s a lot of commenters really downplaying the cheating.

    No judgment, I think you’d have been correct in leaving as soon as he did what he did. But in the eye of your child, the cheating is still going to be a major deal. Maybe your side will even things out a bit though.

14. I have to agree with everyone else. Once my divorce is final and my son is older I do plan to tell him that my husband raped me and gaslit me about it for years. I stayed and kept trying to fix myself so he’d be happy. Now I’m going into 2024 in the process of divorcing him and extremely thankful I finally realized how he treated me.

    It’s never too late to tell someone the truth. And even if she reacts negatively at first she will still know your truth. In time it can hopefully help the two of you become closer. Accept the things that are your fault and apologize but don’t accept being treated like a monster bc someone else hurt you.

15. I imagine your daughter has some early developmental trauma if you were going through PPD that led to a breakdown and unable to bond with her properly in her earliest years, plus your husband wasn’t stepping up. Then, add to that your husband being able to use your affair to alienate her more.

    Someone else suggested you start therapy, then ask her to join and that makes the most sense to me. She may use the affair as the “legit” reason she doesn’t respect you, but she may also have pain from her early years when she didn’t have a parent attuned to her.

    It’s also possible that telling her the truth backfires somewhat because she can’t process seeing her father as bad. You may want to use therapy with her (if she’s open to it) to try and heal your relationship before revealing this info. For example, is her criticism or disdain all about the affair, or is it about you not being there for her in other ways? Your husband’s abuse & your mental health may be the reason for your inability to parent at that time, but that doesn’t change the fact that it hurt her. In this case, she has legitimate reasons to be upset with you that you need to work through.

16. Tell her. Show her this. You deserve to speak your truth.

17. I think shes old enough now that she’d want to know the full truth. I’m her age and I’d want to be able to support my mom through her trauma. especially if I was being deceived by one parent.

    what was fucked up was, my parents airing all of their adultery and personal issues and physical abuse to us when we were too young to comprehend and they were still married and beating each other over it. At least you’ve waited, and now is the time to share.

18. You should tell her. She’s an adult and deserves to know.

19. Absolutely. You tell her the truth not only to gain your respect but that she knows that her mom is a courageous and brave person. She will also know that in no way should that behavior ever be tolerated.

20. My view is this: Your daughter us a grown ass adult. She knows your ex’s side, she should absolutely have the whole picture. Therapy all around, too. But yeah. The one sided thing isn’t fair at all.

21. Yes. Just tell her. Hell, tell the step mom too. There is no shame in being the survivor of rape. There is incredible shame in being a rapist.

22. Just tell the truth. She is an adult and has been put in a position by her father where she needs to know. It’s the fathers fault his deed will come to light. Truth should never be shied away from, imo. That being said, I would be extremely honest and stick to the facts, what your thought process was, etc. Don’t exaggerate or spin everything to be his fault. Just be honest about his faults and yours (as another commenter said).

23. Never protect a parent like that. For exactly these reasons. After being hurt, and basically raped, he has thrown you under the bus. She is an adult. Now it might be too little too late.

24. Send her this post and let her reach out when she’s ready. Sorry this happened to you.

25. She’s 28 now. She’s old enough to hear the full truth, especially since she arguably wasn’t ready to hear the half-truth when she was a teen but your ex-husband felt more than fine telling her that as a way to hurt you.

26. She old enough, ask her if she wants to know

27. I’m so sorry you lived through this! This isn’t advice as such, but my mum spent years keeping quiet about my dad’s awful behaviour towards her, and I do mean irredeemable. When I found out, I cut off all communication and tried to support my mum after everything she’d been through. I was a teenager at the time, and I’m glad I learned the truth when I did, rather than it being kept from me and never knowing the emotional damage he caused. All this to say, truth is power, it enables us to see clearly, and avoids any kind of future resentment.

28. I think you should tell her honestly. I as a person and I think every person would much rather be aware of the fact that our father is a rapist then it being hidden away from us. I’m taking a point of vue of the daughter’s side. Now sadly she may not believe you as the father has already said lies and you’ve said nothing so it may be too late but we can only really hope.

29. Go to therapy first, get yourself in a good place. Then remind her of a time when she told you something that someone said something about her or a friend of hers that wasn’t true a rumour. Then tell her she’s only heard one side of your story. That there were other circumstances that were not mentioned and you did not want a child to hear or be hurt by do you stayed quite to protect her, your sorry for the harm it may have caused because she doesn’t have all the facts and you really don’t want to go into detail unless she’d like to but her dad was just as much at fault for the divorce as she was, maybe she’d like to come to a therapy session with you.

    There are many of us who have taken the narcissistic silent, for our children and who suffer from it for life. You are not alone.

30. Just tell her the truth and let her decide. Good luck.

31. Who’d you cheat on him with? Still in contact with that person? How long after he assaulted you did you have your ONS?

    Why now? Why not right after your daughter got his story? Did you feel you owed it to him to not say anything for cheating?

32. No, of course not. Your relationship with your daughter was bad long before anyone started talking about the bad things that happened in your past, this will solve nothing and actually only make things worse. The fact that you are asking a bunch of teens and young adults what you should do is not a good sign. She is half you and half her father, she will internalize that half of her is a rapist. Two wrongs dont make a right.

33. “I got a little buzzed “, buzzed enough that you and your husband had sex and you didn’t recall it. 5hats blackout drunk. Was your husband also drinking. Because calling your ex husband a rapist based on that flimsy twisted little tale is way out of bounds. There’s a reasonable to high probability that you were responding to your husband’s advances and he had no idea you were blackout drunk. A drunk can put on panties just as backwards as a post coital husband. What I hear and I’m sure several other readers hear is you got drunk, blackout drunk, and had sex with your husband, whilst in the midst of a high point of your relationship and then later used it as the kicking off point for your story of a failed relationship and an excuse to cheat on your husband. So yeah, I think it’s a little bit over the top and harsh and downright dishonest to even remotely label your husband as a rapist.

34. I agree with the therapy recommendations for you. With that guidance I’d talk to your daughter about your post partum experience more generally. That you are so glad there is so much more information out there and hope she never goes through what you did. That you really struggled post partum and nobody really talked about it. That her father didn’t deal very well with the post pattern problems either.

    Focus on how you hope things are a bit better now for women who struggle after birth.

35. I was the kid in this situation, I’m pissed dad never told me about the important stuff.

36. I think you should tell her the whole truth, it’ll be really shitty and definitely complicate things but I think it’s worth it. She should know

37. The worry is she won’t believe you. The bigger worry is she’ll now have two parents she doesn’t respect.

    I’m not sure what the best play is here. I would consult with a therapist.

38. This can only backfire on you. All he has to say is that you were both drinking and you don’t remember the details. Followed by his side of the story. I mean you were married having an active sex life before the birth.

    You’re going to look petty and vendictive trying to excuse your infidelity.

    It doesn’t matter what actually happened this is how you will look. It will not make you closer with your daughter. Quite the opposite.

    Let sleeping dogs lie.

    Good luck.

39. Honestly I don’t think it will do any good and may make her feel like you are throwing her dad under the bus. His raping you didn’t end the marriage (and I’m not judging you, back then people still had the attitude that it’s your husband it doesn’t count and you stayed for her sake which i would have tooback then). But you cheated, and that IS what ended the marriage. Yes there’s a correlation bit all she’s going to see is two wrongs don’t make a right.

40. How can your husband assault you your married he wanted sex so he got sex you cut him off from all affection what something going to happen

41. How do you plan on presenting this information? It might not have the desired results. If she does not respect you do to the cheating then disclosing the SA is not going to counteract that. That doesnt mean you shouldnt tell her necessarily. It just means it needs to be part of a much larger discussion about how complicated the relationship was and why you stayed vs why you left.

42. She’s a full adult. It’s time for her to hear this story. It’s so important to talk about these things because god forbid she has been or goes through the same thing you would also want her to speak up. Set that example but don’t do it from a place of wanting to spurn anyone, do it when you feel ready after healing and from a place of communication and mutual love. You deserve to tell your story and she deserves to hear the truth and make whatever INFORMED adult decision she wants about the type of relationship she wants with her parents in the future

43. She is 28 years old and to harbour any resentment at that age suggests a narcissistic personality.

    Whatever the reason, parents divorce. Move on.

    Anyway, if you WANT to say something you could start with:

    ‘Of course, there was fault. We both behaved in ways we would regret but whilst I can share with you some of the things I got wrong, in the hope that you don’t make the same mistakes, I am not the kind of person who would attempt to ruin your relationship with your father by talking about his behaviour when he is not here to defend himself.

    I hope you are the kind of person who would do the same.”

44. I wouldn’t. People will beliieve whatever they want to believe no matter the evidence.

    A saying I like and have used is “When you know what the magician knows, it’s not magic anymore.”

45. Why would you want to keep the truth secret?

46. First off let me say I have deep sympathy for what happened to you. I could see how that would kill love and eventually a marriage. That being said, here is the thing with cheating. To an extent your daughter sees you cheating as what destroyed her family so in a sense she feels cheated on as well. Now other may disagree with that and may even feel like you were justified, but at this point your daughter might not and even telling her about he dad might not fix that, because it’s personal to her and may not even be about her Dad. It may be about you and her family.

    The other thing I would say is that abuse doesn’t justify abuse, it also doesn’t absolve past abuse either. In other word, just because your husband suffered with you ONS doesn’t men he didn’t do this awful thing to you before that. It also doesn’t mean that it was OK for you to have a ONS. Both things can be awful and painful, neither is good. So you want to be careful not to try to make that connection because I am not sure that will fix this. However you have a right to tell the truth of what happened to you. Context is important.

    Again I am not saying what happened to you wasn’t awful or that it was unreasonable for that to kill you marriage. Look on a different note, my Dad cheated on my Mom, unlike you there is no issue in the past that I am aware of that broke the bond. I was mad about that too, but eventually I had to let that go, that was between him and her. My relationship with my Dad is my own, and he showed me that he was dedicated to me. I always say, he was a great Dad, but I wouldn’t want to be married to him.

    If you are going to clear the air, I think it would be best to also clear the air about how your divorce from her Father effected her. That it had nothing to do with your love for her. I would also show her that you have regret for your ONS, a the very least because scorched earth is not a good approach to ending a relationship (and where you are now is a good example why). That’s OK to do that. The point is she is an adult now and your relationship can be independent of yours and your ex. You can establish that by just focusing on both of you and how the marriage ending effected your relationship.

47. Tell your daughter.

48. She’s 28 not 8. If she’s a big enough girl to talk shit about something that, frankly, does not concern her, she’s a big enough girl to hear the truth.