Things you don't know about your parents (children, grandmother, husband)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I come at this from my own view where my father was unfaithful and hid it from us. He always assumed his children never knew; yet we figured it out before our mother did. And then he tried to protect our mother by hiding her faults. That only made her faults worse, and, again, we were well aware of what was going on with her too. Fact was, he thought our attitudes toward him had been formed by the divorce. They weren't. They were formed by his relationship with us, and our knowledge that he was lying and concealing from us.
There are a whole lot of issues packed into this paragraph.
Is it right for parents to hide infidelity from their children? In cases where the infidelity is not chronic and doesn't succeed in destroying the family, I strongly believe that children should be shielded from this knowledge (if it can be done without lying). The important thing is to keep the family together and to preserve the respect that all family members should have for each other.
Should parents conceal each other's faults from their children? If those faults are not a positive danger to the children, then yes, parents should conceal each other's faults - not only from the children, but from the rest of the extended family and indeed the wider community.
Just as civilization depends on the keeping of secrets (if you knew everything there is to know about your neighbors you'd probably never leave the house), a decent family life depends on the same.
My saintly mother who died 2 years ago after being married to my father for over 60 years had a big secret from the rest of the family. We found out that Dad was her 3rd husband. She was married and divorced twice in the 1940s.
The only secret I found was when I caught my father cheating with 2 women at the same time when I was 11. I used to see him with other women when I was younger but I couldn't understand it and my elder brother told me to shut up when we got home.
Who cares, what happened in the past between parents is their business and not their children's business. They would not believe him anyway if he told them she cheated on him so why bother to bring it up. The children need to tend to their own lives and stay out of their parents past.
This sounds straight forward on the surface , but its a fairytale. If people are into living that way, in la la land so be it. The real truth is all about choices, we make them all our lives, good ones and bad ones, including our parents and or grandparents ( who we are more likely to be like ). Some of us can let sleeping dogs lay. Reality is there is a fair chance that we will become the main care givers of our parents in old age. There becomes a point when all the "secrets" of our youth ( parents adult lives ) does not mean much to us ..Its easy to become complacent, to be caught up in the day to day events we except as our duty, taking care of them to the end. What we do discover during this time of turmoil, uncertainty, drama, is a wake up call that WE have become the people our parents warned us about, which often becomes a mirror reflection of the way they were in their youth.
My grandparents (who were ahead of their time as civil rights activists) were invited to a social event in the 20's. They were quite happy to go as they lived out in the country and didn't have much chance to get dressed up and go out to meet the neighbors. When they got there and started sipping their punch they were quite surprised to discover it was a KKK meeting.
My grandmother loved to tell that story just to see the look on people's faces. Her one and only Klan meeting. (She and my grandfather single-handedly desegregated the schools in their county. And shocked the neighbors by going to a "colored" church. They liked the sermons. How they got invited to a Klan meeting I have no idea.)
So the message is: things aren't always what they appear to be. Had we found a photo of Granny at a Klan meeting and not known the circumstances we might have though she had a secret life. When what she had was a social personality and a husband who enjoyed meeting new people.
But here's the thing. Mature people need to understand that they don't have all the facts about their parents, and they don't necessarily have a right to all the facts about their parents. It's a broken world, and the secrets of broken people will sometimes be taken to their graves. But these daughters do have an obligation to give a parent who clearly loved them and lived for them the benefit of the doubt.
If they're being fed lies by one party and denied the truth by another, they're just going to become the next generation of broken people. They don't have the tools to evaluate what's before them correctly. It has nothing to do with maturity. Your expectations of these women seem rather outsized - they've essentially been brainwashed with a false narrative.
And when did their parents divorce? If they were being told their father broke up their happy home through infidelities, they have every right to hold it against him - if that was the case, it may have "nothing to do" with them in the eyes of many, but they were led to believe that their father's actions directly led to the dissolution of their stable home, which undoubtedly had a negative effect on them. Heck, my father cheated on my mother while I was in college - not even a kid - and the upheaval in my life was epic.
I happen to know three adult sisters, in their 40s and 50s, who are angry at their father for his divorce. This good man (my step-father) died 2-1/2 years ago. What these sisters don't know, and will never know, are the facts about their mother's infidelity. The father has protected his daughters for all of these years from this knowledge, even after her death, in order not to turn them against their own mother, in spite of her calumnies against him.
Furthermore, these sisters adored their now departed grandfather (by marriage), but are unaware that he sexually abused their own father.
Dear bitter, angry, adult children: consider the possibility that you don't actually know much about the struggles, the burdens, or the secrets of your parents. Many good parents will protect you from their own secret pain. Lose the rage and resentment.
But to your point: No one knows anything . . . we all make up stories in our heads, based on our observations, which have to be limited.
Not sure why you are blaming these women (and that's a story in YOUR head) because obviously they are just projecting their realities out there based on the information they do have . . . and on the sidelines, there is this whole other scenario, which includes a scene of you judging them and writing about them on an international forum . . . think about that when you consider "reality" - we never know what is really going on - it is too complex and too multidimensional.
To OP, since you have no first hand knowledge of the facts, other than what your mom has told you, I think, contrary to what others have said, you should absolutely not share this with the sisters.
Have you honestly not considered that your step-dad may have embellished his former wife's role in the divorce, while at the same time concealing facts from your mom about what his role was? Have you ever considered that your own mom may have embellished the story a little further when telling it to you? I think that this is actually really common for women in your mom's position, to believe her man is blameless, while the ex-wife was some sort of shrew.
It is also possible that while you saw your step dad as a nice guy, the sisters may have seen a different version of him.
When all the major players are dead, who knows what the truth really is. It may be as you say it is, and it may be much more nuanced, or what you think is the truth might be all lies.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
