SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Not sure where to put this or even what I'm hoping to get out of it, so...
My father passed away less than two weeks ago from Alzheimer’s, though in reality, I lost him more than three years ago when the disease began taking his mind. I am sitting with a mix of sadness and anger—not just over the loss, but because he died without us ever having the chance to understand how his infidelity shaped, scarred, and echoed through my life. Now, that door is closed forever.
My story is in my bio, but the highlights are that I am literally the product of an affair. My father was married, and my mother was his affair partner. They eventually married after being discovered, but his cheating never stopped. They divorced—twice—and his relentless infidelity contributed to my mother’s eventual suicide.
Because infidelity was the atmosphere I breathed (MANY other members of my immediate or extended family were or had been in affairs), it warped my own early understanding of relationships. Decades ago, long before I met my wife, I was engaged to someone who cheated on me. My immediate, reflexive response was to "repay the favor" and cheat back, because in my twisted baseline, that was just what people did for "justice." We split acrimoniously, and while that experience eventually woke me up to just how toxic and destructive infidelity truly is—saving me from completely wrecking my life before I ultimately built a healthy, loyal marriage of over thirty years—it proved how easily generational poison takes root.
Outside of his marriage, my father was an attentive, dutiful dad to me. But he was also completely unrepentant about his affairs and profoundly conflict-avoidant. Because he ran from hard truths, a permanent, unspoken wall grew between us on this and related topics. By the time I finally started unpacking this trauma in individual counseling—realizing how his dismissive attitude toward loyalty, respect, and integrity had maybe compromised my own foundation—his mind was already deteriorating from Alzheimer’s. He couldn't process it, and I couldn't confront a man whose brain was slipping away. Tragic timing. The chance for genuine accountability, understanding, or closure died long before his heart stopped beating.
I’m sharing this because I see so many wayward parents dreading the day their children might find out, or hoping to sweep the past under the rug to "protect" everyone. If you are a WS, please understand that your kids absorb the atmosphere of your choices whether they know the explicit details or not.
When your children reach an age-appropriate stage—especially as young adults trying to build their own definitions of love and trust—do not hide behind conflict avoidance, shame, or fear of negative emotions. Meet them where they are and lean straight into the discomfort. Let them be angry, confused, or hurt without getting defensive or retreating into silence to soothe your own guilt. When kids discover the reality of an affair, their childhood lens shatters, and they are forced to reconcile the parent who loved them with the person who blew up their foundation. Acknowledge that disorientation and validate their pain instead of asking them to pretend everything is fine.
Do not wait until time runs out. You might think avoiding the conversation protects the peace, but retreating is precisely what turns that silence into a permanent brick wall. Facing your children’s pain is agonizing, but leaning into that truth is the only way to tear that wall down. Give them the honesty, the vulnerability, and the closure my father could never give me.

I couldn't agree more.

This post resonated with me deeply. Your experience sounds so much like mine, just turned up to 11.

You might think avoiding the conversation protects the peace, but retreating is precisely what turns that silence into a permanent brick wall.

Exactly. It's alarming how often people advocate "shielding" kids from affairs. The truth always comes out eventually. Hiding it only causes devastating confusion: a tense, unbearable house, a mother in tears, and a father packing his bags with no explanation. The truth is always the answer.

I honestly don't think my father told me a single true thing his entire life. For that reason, he will never be a part of my life again. I feel somewhat resentful of this when I see how important having a father was to other people, including him. It is deeply ironic given how much he worshipped his own father, not that I have much lasting memory of the man. But I've made my peace with that as best I can.

My mother, on the other hand, embraced the truth, and I have a strong relationship with her. I still see her weekly.

[This message edited by DRSOOLERS at 9:50 PM, Wednesday, September 9th]

While your points are very well taken, you are asking deeply flawed people to do something they will never do.

Some people just leave a trail of broken promises, hurt children, destroyed lives — because they are cowardly and would rather run away than face the truth.

In the Wizard of Oz the cowardly lion asks for courage. So many people stand on the idea that "it’s not me, it’s everyone else who has a problem".

Late for work and your boss confronts? He/she is a hardass with crazy expectations.

Your partner or spouse expects you home after work at a reasonable time? They don’t understand how hard work is and WHY I need to unwind with a few beers with the guys.

You see where this is going. Too many people choose to be blameless for their actions. Explains why they won’t man up and face those hard conversations.

Because they are cowards.

While your points are very well taken, you are asking deeply flawed people to do something they will never do.

You're right, as always. I'm aware of the irony that his traits that enabled him to lie and cheat for decades is what prevented us from having a real, authentic relationship. One built on trust and transparency. Something I've tried--and perhaps over-compensated a bit--to have with my own kids. And that I'm now shouting into the wind to people who share those same traits.
If there's one thing I've learned in my perusing SI for this long, it's that the waywards here tend to be the ones who want to be better and want to shed their wayward selves. Successful or not, they have to have at least a bit of that to be here. And I'm hoping mine could be a cautionary tale that gets through to at least one of them.
But, I've been wrong before.
Thank you.

I'm sorry for your loss.

My father passed away in late March and it caused me to take a deep dive into our fucked-up relationship, too. He was a few months shy of 86 years old and been experiencing a bit of dementia for a few years.

He was also very conflict avoidant and built walls. So was I for most of my life. Ironically, when d-day hit, those walls came down and I gleefully embraced conflict. Still do (just ask DRSOOLERS )

My father once admitted to me that he'd realized that he wasn't a very good father (this was days after my son was born). We had a very superficial relationship. Go figure, right?. His father was a real piece of work, a cruel, abusive, prick from what I've gathered. So, I clearly understand why it's so important that we learn to improve with each generation.

I cannot imagine how incredibly painful it must have been for you when your mother took her own life. My mom passed away nearly 20 years ago. She was a good woman in every sense of the word. She was smart (brilliant, actually), deeply loving and wise. She was terribly damaged by my father. They divorced when she was in her mid 40s. She was still beautiful. As far as I know, she never dated anyone after that, which I always thought tragic.

I spent years of my life banging my head against my father's walls, desperately trying to get him to open up. It never happened. I did what I could to make peace with that, to accept him for who he was, as disappointing as it was.

For me, when he passed away, those issues vanished. The way I see it, death is the ultimate closure. All that remains is finding my own peace.

I will say this, though. In his own fucked-up way, he was always there for me. He helped financially, offered advice, but empathy was alien to him.

Whatever issues you had with your father are now yours to resolve internally. Personally, as I said, I let them all go. He's gone. Why dwell on that shit?

Today, my ex-wife and I have both discussed infidelity and its aftermath with our son. We both do what we can to teach him the lessons we've learned about love and relationships, resolving issues, being authentic... all that jazz.

I hope he's paying attention.

I hate to come on here as a know-it-all because I’m not a psychiatrist nor a psychologist, but I do work with damaged people as a social worker and I studied a great deal of psychology in college. The things that I was particularly interested in are personality disorders. Although we throw the word narcissist around, you really have to meet a very strict criteria to be labeled as such. However, almost every human endeavor means things are on a continuum so you might have a parent who meets almost all the requirements for a diagnosis, but not quite enough to be diagnosed as that. Also, people don’t understand that all sorts of diagnoses bleed into each other, so you might have a parent who has narcissistic traits, mild antisocial traits, histrionic traits and they all are blended into a person that drives you crazy. On the other end of these issues, are those people who are so dependent that they will jettison their children if there’s someone providing for them. I’ve seen this often in mothers who will let their children go rather than make the man of the house leave. When you talk about a parent who does nothing but cheat on his wife he is probably so protected emotionally that the only thing he can get enjoyment out of is sex. It probably comes from what happened to him as a child. That is no excuse because people like that should not be married. If they cannot change or control of their behavior they just do not make good spouses. Your fathers might very well have been charming people out in the public but at home different people. Or they might have acted very loving towards you, but still continue to cheat on your mothers. The only thing I can say is if you came out of that with some good therapy and a happy marriage you have overcome a pretty rotten childhood and congratulations. It is so easy to want to talk to your fathers about their behaviors and sometime the mothers but they are so in enmeshed, covered up, with their own interpretation of the world that getting through to them is trying to hammer into a 10 foot concrete wall. They are just not going to manage to let you in enough to understand where they come from.

[This message edited by Cooley2here at 11:22 PM, Wednesday, September 9th]

My philandering father died relatively young of a massive heart attack that he drank himself into. I got no resolution, no great breakthrough ever came. It is tragic, but that is life.

I sometimes reflect on how deeply I desired a closer connection with him. Even after everything, I know that if he would have come to me one day with humility and remorse that I would have forgotten all past wrongs and started new with him. And that posture probably is a big part of why I put myself thru a couple years of hell trying to R. Thanks, Dad.

Thank you for sharing your story. It saddens me to see the pain you have been in for so many years (((HUGS))). It looks like you overcame most of the crap that was dumped on you through no fault of your own. Your long and loving marriage shows your character...you broke that chain .

My condolences on your loss, 1994.

My father was also wildly unfaithful. He was never discovered until they were months shy of their 40th anniversary. Dad was away when he was discovered and never returned home. They were divorced in months. He told my mom he never loved her.

He lived out the BS horror-story. APs husband moved out of their home and my dad moved in. She was younger than him. At the time, me and my sisters were late-20s, early-30s. Her kids were something like 8, 10 and 12. Dad raised them and is much closer with her kids than he is with his own.

As hard as this is to believe, he was a great father to me and my sisters. Devoted to us (with an asterisk of course). We grew up safe and loved and wanting for nothing. Leaving aside his infidelity, prior to leaving my mom, there’s nothing I can fault him for as a parent.

We are not estranged today because of his cheating. We are estranged today because of how he handled the aftermath. His AP is a psycho and almost certainly has a borderline personality disorder. She lies outrageously. She tried to get my little sister arrested (twice). She tried to get my BIL fired from his job. The litany of her awfulness would take up too much space here.

It all came to a head when she got on my dad’s email one night and told my older sister an email telling her that her recent miscarriages were God’s punishment for being a bad person. I met my dad for a drink and told him he and AP needed to apologize to my sister. He said he did but that AP would never. I told him that if one of my sisters called me again crying that he was gonna get hurt. We’ve barely spoken since then, that was like 15 years ago.

I keep telling myself that I’m going to call him and invite him to have a beer with me. So I can tell him that it’s not the infidelity, but the fact that he never took our side after his divorce. That he permitted all of her bad behavior against us. That he never tried to clean up the mess he made. That he was content to let our relationship get to this point.

But I think he’s mostly just as the 1stWife described.