I suspected my dad was having an affair for a decade, but now I know it’s true do I tell my mother?

Talk about relationships in general terms to assess a person’s happiness levels before revealing potentially harmful information. PICTURE POSED

Katie Byrne Email

February 17 2023 02:30 AM

Question: My parents have been married for over 40 years. I have a very close relationship with my mum but more of a distant relationship with my dad. This is partly because, for the past 10 years or so, I have suspected he was having an affair. My suspicions were confirmed at Christmastime and it’s been on my mind ever since. I spoke to my older sister about it and she thinks our mother already knows. My parents have been in separate bedrooms for a long time and she says they are essentially divorced but still living under the same roof. She could be correct but even if that’s the case, it doesn’t sit right with me. I recently became a father myself and I don’t want to bring my son up in a family where secrets are buried and where people hide who they really are. I’m thinking of telling my mother what I found out at Christmas. She might know already, but maybe she needs to know she has the support of her children? At the same time, they’re both getting older and the stress might be more than they can bear. What should I do?

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Answer: I shared your dilemma with three experts and they all acknowledged how complex and challenging this situation must be for you. Likewise, they all noted your role as a new father and pointed out how this can radically reset one’s priorities. “From your perspective, having a child presents a unique challenge to a sense of being a man,” notes Dublin-based psychologist Dr Finian Fallon. “It can force new parents into a highly pressured questioning of who they are. Being a parent for the first time can trigger issues in either parent, male or female. It can result in a huge doubt about how we can cope with being a parent. This can be made worse where the parenting we experienced was not ideal.”

Fallon encourages you to consider how this life change might be influencing your decision-making, and to avoid any knee-jerk reactions. “The first thing I would do is nothing, for the moment,” he says. “This information is a significant burden for a child to hold on behalf of their parents. However, you risk upsetting a complex set of arrangements that your parents may have arrived at after years of struggle and suffering. At a basic level, just one consideration among many is that the financial implications of your parents separating or divorcing could be devastating for one or both of them, especially if they are older or in retirement.

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“Part of becoming an adult can be about becoming more discerning about our reactions to difficult life situations, rather than launching emotional grenades into the family,” Fallon adds. “Has there been much conflict or drama in your family? Drama in families often repeats and persists and this could be another cycle of drama for the family to cope with, but not really lead to it being more emotionally healthy.”

Brian O’Sullivan, a systemic family psychotherapist in private practice in Laois and Dublin, also brought up the idea of generational family drama when I shared your dilemma with him. “As I read your question, I was reminded of the ideas from structural family therapy where it is considered helpful and functional to maintain clear intergenerational boundaries between parental and child sub-systems in a family,” he notes. “I wonder if there is something in that that may be worthwhile for you to include in your thinking as you seek a way forward in this dilemma.”

O’Sullivan says he can understand how your “core values” might feel challenged, but he reminds you that the design of your own family dynamic is ultimately your choice.

If you decide to share this information with your mother, psychotherapist Stella O’Malley advises you to “anticipate a wide range of different reactions”. “Many people presume that the person knows, only to be astonished to hear that they didn’t know and that this news turns their whole life upside-down. We often believe what we want to believe.”

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Other people operate on a “know/don’t know level”, she adds. “They can live with it so long as they are not confronted with the bare truth, but if they are forced to confront reality they can then feel forced to act upon it. Some people prefer to live in ignorance. Others will welcome this opportunity to speak about it. The writer’s mother might have been very lonely living with this betrayal and she might feel relieved to have the opportunity to unburden herself.

“Ultimately, however, this is not the writer’s marriage,” she adds. “Marriages operate like a private contract with lots of behaviour that nobody else understands. This often develops into an acceptable dance between the couple. This might be a dysfunctional dance but we often choose what we will accept or reject.”

On the face of it, yours is a should I/shouldn’t I dilemma. But perhaps it isn’t so black-and-white, notes O’Malley. “The writer could begin by asking his mother if she is happy in her marriage and if she would like to speak more about it. He could point out that now he is a father he is thinking more seriously about these subjects. Conversations like this could provide the information the writer would need to figure out should he go further while also respecting any defences that his mother has.”

But first, the experts recommend that you speak to a therapist about the confusion and resentment you’ve been dealing with for the past decade. “When we have clarity about how and where we are located in a problem, and can view a situation without the initial turmoil of emotion, then it’s a better time to make decisions, even though these decisions might not be perfect,” says Fallon. “Wait for clear blue water between you and this awful conundrum before you do anything.”

If you have a dilemma, email k.byrne@independent.ie