Tuesday 24 June 2014

Infidelity, divorce and children

What is the effect of an affair/divorce on children.

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.
So how do you minimise the damage:

·         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.

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