It has been just over 2 years since
my ex moved out after his affair became public knowledge. As far as my feelings
are concerned, I couldn’t be better. The last 2 years were rough, but I dealt
with so many emotions and for the first time I feel like my own person again. I
like who I am and where I’m going.
My son however is not doing so well. He
woke up on Saturday and looking at him broke my heart. His been having problems
with his school work, fighting with his sister, being disrespectful to not only
me, but his father as well and his having trouble sleeping. On Saturday for the
first time I could see what the last 2 years cost him. He looked pale and had
black rings under his eyes. He had a cold, but this wasn’t just the cold. He
looked defeated. For the cold I could give him meds, but what do I do for the
emotional strain he had been under. Sunday morning his father phoned and after
he spoke to him he burst out in tears. I sat there with my child in my arms and
I felt utterly helpless. There was nothing I could do or say that will make the
pain he was feeling better.
The therapist told me he tends not to
speak about his feelings. He bottles it up. For the last six months I have been
actively trying to regain his trust. Felt like I was hitting my head against a
brick wall. She showed me a picture he drew of him in the middle of me and my
ex. It broke my heart. The last 2 weeks was the first time he really opened up
without me having to drag everything out of him. I am so worried about him and
where all of this is going to lead. I have been reading books and speaking to
people that went through the same thing. Unfortunately the stories are all the
same with the same bleak outcome. I have to make peace with the fact that pain
will be part of my child’s future and that things will probably get worse
before it gets better.
So what can you expect your child to
feel after an affair was exposed?
·
Loss of trust – they find it very difficult to believe that someone they love will not
lie to them, reject or abandon them.
·
Shame – they feel the betraying partner’s sexual transgression is a black mark
against them and their family. If there was any pressure to keep the cheating
partner’s betrayal from the other parent, the child is left with the added and
unwarranted burden of guilt.
·
Confusion – they become confused about the meaning of love and marriage.
·
Anger – towards the betraying partner, but at the same time yearning for that
person.
·
Resentment towards the
betrayed parent – they feel they have to become the
parent’s emotional caretaker during the drama that follows infidelity or
because that parent did not stop the infidelity from happening in the first
place.
Add to that all the conflict that can
be generated between two people who feel anger, guilt and betrayal and you have
a potentially very explosive situation.
There is no doubt about the fact that
divorce introduces great changes into a child’s life – parental conflict,
changes in school/residence, economic hardship, damaged to parent-child
relationship because of lost contact, love and authority. The centre of their
world – their family – is torn asunder. It also increases the risk of
psychological, social and academic problems. No matter how hard you try to
protect them, you cannot prevent them from
feeling the pain of divorce.
In studies that were done on adults
that came from a broken family the following were found:
- 73% believe they would have been different people if their parents did not divorce.
- 49% worried about big events, like graduation, where both parents will be present.
- 48% felt they had a harder childhood than most people.
- 44% said their parent’s divorce still caused struggles for them.
- 28% wondered if their father ever
loved them.
·
Make sure your child knows how much
both parents love him.
·
Make a 100% sure he knows that
nothing of what happened was his fault.
·
Give him a place where he feels safe
to just be himself.
·
Do not interrogate him about your ex
– it will cause divided loyalties and increase feelings of guilt.
·
Do not allow him to be responsible
for you or your feelings – you are the parent, so be the parent.
·
Do not lie to him or make promises
you cannot keep – honesty is the only way you are going to get him to trust you
again.
·
Listen to him – acknowledge his
feelings and let him know that it is ok to feel angry, sad, ectr, but help him
understand that there are good and bad ways to react to those feelings. Give
him the tools to deal positively with what he is feeling.
·
Do not allow your own feelings about
your ex to cloud matters more – how your child sees and feels about what
happened, are not the same as how you or your ex-partner see and feel about
what happened.
·
Get help from a therapist – as
parents we normally know what is best for our children, but going through a
divorce distorts a person’s perspective and then you need someone that can be
totally objective and that can also give you advice as to how to do things in a
way that will be best for your child.
·
Acknowledge your part in this
disaster that ripped the core of his being from under him – he trusted his
parents to protect and love him. This will probably be the first major stress
in his life he will have to deal with. The least you as parent can do, is to
acknowledge your part in it and ask his forgiveness.
What to do when one parent had an
affair?
Be honest – Why?
·
Reality - they are going to find out sooner or later. Sooner is better and also
from you and not from some less discreet friend or neighbour.
·
Respect – You will only be able to win back their respect once you have dealt
with the truth.
If you want to continue your
relationship with your affair partner and do not want to also divorce your
children, you need to also learn to be patient. You will have to build your
relationship with them as a single parent, before introducing someone new into
their life.
Looking at my friends and seeing how
things turned out for their children, does not give me much hope that things
will be any different for me and my children. If my situation was different
from theirs, maybe I would have had more hope, but the similarities are just
too obvious. Listening to them tell me of the experiences they and their
children had, makes my hair stand on end. I realise my children’s journey have
only just begun and that a lot of uphill’s still lie ahead. My children will
most probably have the scars to show, but I also belief that with a lot of
love, patience, support and teaching them to look to God for healing,
acceptance and peace, they will turn out to be just fine. I just wished they never
had to be part of the statistics of divorced families.
