Kids of cheating parents, how did you process and confront the cheating parent?

19 comments

1. Emotionally difficult. But I accept my father as he is. And I know that I will not behave like this with my children in the future.

2. Hmm I was just a teenager but I punched her AP in the face and trashed her new apartment she got when she left my dad. Then I stayed away for a loooooong time. 🤷‍♀️

3. I can kind of come at this question in two ways. While I personally didn’t find out that my birth father had been cheating on my mother until I was an adult. He did leave when I was 3. And I hated him for years because of that. I even developed abandonment issues in my teens and twenties. Therapy helped that

   Now, I am currently one year post divorce myself, he cheated on me many times. And I have an 11 year old daughter. She knows about everything he did to me as far as cheating and the mental and emotional abuse he put me through. And she is very vocal about how she feels about her father. She has his contact info in her phone as ‘a cheater’. She talks about how she prefers me over him. And she pays attention to how he treats her. Especially when she is with him and has friends over. She notices how she gets ignored or treated differently than her friends. And she makes a point to tell me about it. I am not supposed to say negative things or do things to turn her against him, so I try my best to tell her that she needs to make sure he knows how it makes her feel.

   She is also dealing with having a stepmom as well. As he started dating her before the divorce was finalized. And they were living together and then married by 9 months post divorce. So, my daughter has probably way too much to process in this short window of time. She is in therapy, and is on medication for her ADHD. So, I would like to think that we are doing our best to manage it as best we can.

4. I didn’t. My parents were not good for each other and my dad was an immature teenager with kids he didn’t want so it was kind of better for us. It also wasn’t and isn’t, 40 years later, my place to say anything.

5. So here’s the thing. My mother knew my dad was cheating. We didn’t talk about it and I certainly didn’t offer my opinion because dad brought in the money so
   You couldn’t ask him a thing. My mom just let him and then bad mouthed him.

   They got divorced. Then one day remarried because they figured they’d never find anyone else so they’d rather be miserable together.

   I don’t speak to them.

6. My parent lied to me and acted like it never happened. Theytogether separating then getting back together. Weird time in my life I was 8.

7. it was pretty hard.

   my dad cheated on my mom for a decade. when it came out, he was sent to a mental hospital for depression, mom fell into depression too. she wanted to leave, but didn’t have the funds to do so, because she’d been a SAHM for years. and, well, she put her inheritance in the renovations of the house they both owned.

   i was 15 and it hit me like a truck. i lost a lot of respect for my father, especially since he kept lying about it and changing his story for years. we constantly fought.

   eventually, about six years later, my mom found someone new. she stayed the night with him without telling anyone and moved out that weekend.

   for me, things had normalized in the meantime. my parents lived in the same house, just different apartments. they were cordial.

   but as soon as my mom was gone, my dad blew up and i got hit with the whole force of it. threatening to shoot my mother if she insisted on getting half the house in the divorce. constant whining and rants about her “cheating” – which yes she technically did. but for a few days after six years of separation. he was still convinced she was evil for that, whereas he had been justified. he also kept saying shit like all men do it and that is should just expect it to happen to me. it’s natural. you know the types.

   i tried to move out but as a college student with very limited financial funds and no support from my parents, i always ended up back with my dad after some time. it broke me.

   there were times when he got drunk and pointed a shotgun (unloaded tho) on me and told me that’s what happens to kids who aren’t obedient. mind you, i was in my early 20s at that point.

   whenever i cried to my mom about it, she just said to not take him seriously and stay with him because i wouldn’t have to pay rent etc.

   i’m 26 now. it’s still hard. not the fact they cheated or divorced, i could’ve dealt with that. but how they acted… it scarred me. took years to even trust men again. even now, im not sure i fully can.

8. i didnt need to go out of my way to confront her because she admitted it to me herself. when i found out, there was a lot of yelling and crying

9. My dad cheated a lot on my mum throughout my childhood. My mum had ill health and was essentially biding her time until my younger brother was out of education before seeking a divorce. My dad ended up seeking the divorce first and went off with a younger woman when I was 18

   Ended up cutting my dad off soon after and haven’t spoken to him in 12 years.

   Now in my 30s with my own child, it has dredged up a lot of stuff, and I’m now off work with depression and seeing a therapist. I pushed through for a long time, but now is the time for me to heal (my dad was also emotionally abusive, definitely a r/ raisedbynarcissists scenario).

   My mum is retired and cares for my son while we are at work, my brother is in a high paying job and I am happily married with a child and a career (mental health stuff is a WIP and I will get there).

   I hope my dad is miserable.

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12. I didn’t, but my mom took out all her anger on my sisters and I. My dad constantly cheated on her and would send money to his many mistresses money we didn’t have. I was a kid, but I knew what my dad was doing was wrong, but I wasn’t mad at him because between my parents my mom was the worst one with her constant physical and mental abuse. The one thing my dad never did was hit us. But now that I have grown older I am not mad at my mom anymore, and have come to understand how depressed she was. When she saw her kids, she saw her cheating husband.

13. WHEN I WAS 10 I FIGURED OUT EVERYTHING ALL MY DAD’S GF CONTACT INFO
    WELL, I WAS KIND OF FREAKED OUT ABOUT GETTING THE PERIOD FOR THE FIRST TIME VERY EMBARRASSED WEIRD STUFF BUT MY MA KIND OF ONLY TOLD ME NIGHTMARE STORIES AND WELL I MADE MY MOM GIVE ME 5 $ TOLD HER SHE DIDNT EVEN REALLY KNOW HE WAS SEEING SOMEONE
    I WENT AND SECRETLY BOUGHT TAMPAX WITH THE 5 BUCKS
    1974 THIS WAS

14. Caught my dad 20 years ago a couple times, first time I was 8 and next time I was 23. My dad thought I wasn’t home but I was in my room sleeping and I saw the lady go into the house and leave a little later. Mom wasn’t home. After the lady left my dad walked out of the room and saw me and he froze. We never talked about it since. Bless my mom.

15. I knew my mother was cheating on my father when I was in my early 20s. Apparently she’d been cheating on him the entire time they were married.

    There was nothing to process. I didn’t care what she did. I was actually surprised that anyone would want to have sex with her, considering that she had serious hygiene issues. I guess some people really don’t care about that — they’ll screw anybody who will go to bed with them. Or in my mother’s case they’ll take a BJ from anyone who will spend some time in their car with them.

    I never confronted her about it. Again, I didn’t care what she did or who she did it with.

    I could have gone my entire life without knowing about it, to be honest. I certainly didn’t need to hear the disgusting details about it from people who knew what she was up to and heard things about her activities that they didn’t hesitate to pass along to me. Why these people thought it was necessary to share this information with me was beyond me.

    I’m just glad I had the courage and strength to go completely NC with her, most of the family, and everyone who knows and associates with her. I just wish I had done it sooner.

16. I didn’t. I knew my parents did nothing but fight or work opposite shifts. It was an end to a very bad relationship but it allowed it to move into two separate healthy relationships. Let it take its course, relationships especially marriages are difficult and even harder to just “end”, let them have time to process and move forward. Now I’m not condoning ongoing affairs, but if this is new and the relationship is already failing miserably, I’d give them time.

17. I was angry. It was difficult for me to process. It was only adding on to the fact that there was alcoholism to deal with. We were, long before the broken marriage, not treated as a priority.

    I just made it clear after the divorce that I’m not going with them and their new person.

18. I’m 39 now but uncovered my father’s affair when I was 17. He’d been having an affair with a family friend/co-worker for 10 years. My relationship with my dad completely ended afterwards. Not necessarily because I wanted it to, but my father basically choose himself and did very little to be a part of mine and my brothers lives. After years I stopped trying. I go to therapy and still talk about all these feelings but I’m proud of myself for setting a hard boundary between myself and my father. I’m in a better place because of it.

19. My mother’s cheating was one of the most insignificant “mistakes” so it didn’t come as a shocker and I/my father didn’t even really care at that point.