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For those who want to stay for the kids

13K views 47 replies 23 participants last post by  rustytheboyrobot 
#1 · (Edited)
This is the first thread i open here in TAM, but not the original reason I joined or began to investigate about healthy relationships, I understand is a contributor of my whole problems and internal issues.

this story is about my parent's relationship, and what me and my sisters think of it after almost 10 years of they being separated.

Also before telling the story, I want to tell you that my mother is a good and respectable woman and besides the story i am about to tell she has never failed in any other aspect as a mother, and not she was not the WS.

my father was 31 when he married my 22 years old not yet mother, i was the first born, and 4 and 5 years later my two sisters came in to the picture.

everything was pretty normal in my house, there were never significant problems, normal couple's fights, my father was/is succesful doctor, so financial problems were never a issue in my house.

All began when i was 15, my father since i have memory, had worked night shift in the hospital 3 days a week besides his private practice, so everybody in the family knew his schedule and where he was without fail. That changed when i was 15, he began to have more shifts in the hospital, but unlike all the previous years this were sporadic days. also when he was supposed to be in his private practice, sometimes we called and he was not there.

also until that moment I maybe had seen my father drunk less than 10 times in my life, but then he began to come home at least 1 a week smelling like alcohol and sometimes times drunk.

i think everybody in the family felt something was off, but the first months we just ignored it, maybe in denial, thinking that my father was not capable to do something immoral, after all he was very respected in the community and was very strict en cuanto a what is right and wrong.

my mother began to be on edge all the time, every little detail made her burst on anger, one day she was on the kitchen and was cutting the vegetables he had put broccoli, i said something like "not broccoli again", and that was enough to began huge fight against me, i told her "chill out! mom, you are on edge all the time", then she said, how would you feel if your husband were cheating on you? (thinking back, how would i know? i was on my first girlfriend, and was a very short thing).

Well she tell me what she was suspecting (as I was) and she told me some friends of her told her the rumors of my father seeing a divorced woman. (this was when my hell began).

At the begining she sent me to check in my car if my father was really where he was supposed to be, maybe two times a week, sometimes he was there other times he was not.

also my parents began to fight almost every day, we (my sisters and I) had never hear them screaming to each other like that.

my mother confronted him indirectly some times but he always denied, as delusions of a jealous woman, sometimes my mother would woke me up at 2 am (night shift) to go and check if my father's car was at the hospital.

finally one day one of my friends (his father was also a doctor who moved in the same social circle) confirmed me that my father was having and affair with the supposed divorced woman.

that was maybe 3 months after my mother shared her suspicions with me, after that the first one to confront my father directly was me, my father told me that my mother was putting ideas in my head, but I confronted him telling him what I knew, the name of the woman, and where she lived,I asked him if he would like for the 2 of us to go with the woman to see if I was delusional, I told him that i was dissapointed on him, how he always was strict with us and unforgiving with thing related to moral and legal issues, i was kind of crying when a iwas telling him this, I told him that i have not told my sisters yet, and i did not wanted to tell them, just my mother and me knee at the time (not true, I had not told my mother what my friend informed me yet, I wanted to talk to him first and then speak to her).

After I confronted him, I told my mother she confronted him too and he promised he would no do it again.

Things began to be normal for a while, but little after that, my mother began to be sarcastic, acid, she would rent movies with topics related to infidelity, many comments related cheaters a how despicable they were (she would do it in dinner and meal times when all the family was together), so many unconfortable dinners. My sisters began to ask what was happening (now I know she was lashing and wasa normal reaction, but at that time i did not understand the need to always make every moment unconfortable).

I was 16 when all the confession thing was done, eventually my sisters found out about the affair situation. My mother continued checking on my father and driving to his office and the hospital, and she requested me more often to go and check on my father location.

during that year they fought all the time, my mother continued to lashing at him, making unconfortable family gatherings and my father began to express that he was not happy anymore, whe I turned 17 was the first time my father spoke to me about not being happy and that he will probably look for another place to live (the classic: things are not working with your mother anymore, but I still love you all), my mother then changed her aptitude she began saying things like "we have to stay together for the kids".

To be honest I was already feed up with all the fights, the unpleasant dinners, the obssesion of my mother to confirm where my father was, so I feel relieved when my father said he was leaving, but my mother convinced him to stay (I remember the frase we have to work it out for the kids, I heard that frase many times).

to be continued....
 
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#40 ·
Manticore,

I am curious whether the eventual presence of your own children might have any impact on your relationship with your mom... Also, is she local? Creating a healthy distance between the two of you is far easier when you don't have to see her very often. In my case, my mother lives states away... Her relationship with my son is nominal at best, and I don't even remember the last time that I spoke with her.

Here is a telling question... If you were to get married next month, would you invite her?
 
#41 ·
Manticore,

Your story really touched me.

I respect that you work toward positive personal growth from such a hard upbringing.

I admire the intelligent way you try to help people here on Tam.

Take care!
 
#42 ·
Manticore, I am very sorry your mother did that to you. More sorry that I can even begin to express.

My son was a couple of years younger than you were as a child when I discovered his father was cheating. I said nothing to him at the time and only told him a couple of years ago (he's now 42) when I explained that I was finally getting out. His response? That I should have gotten out thirty years before. Because he knew even though I never said a word then, and tried very hard to hide it, that I was unhappy. Parents never realize how perceptive children are.

There is no excuse for your mother's behavior. I hope very much that you are able to heal.
 
#44 ·
Thank you for sharing your story
Your father should have left the first time he out your mum through mental hell. Saying that the way your mum behaved towards you was totally unacceptable and she needs to take full responsibility for it.

Staying for the kids is, in my experience an 'excuse' some women give because they still want to keep hold of their husbands.
I have been through hell and back this last 3 years because of my Hs infidelity. It's been on and off for all that time with the same women, because he can't make the decision that we are done for good. I have been to weak and blinded by him to out a stop to what he has been doing, because of the love we once shared and the commitment we made to each other. Holding my marriage together, for me, was never about staying together for the kids.

I am shocked by your mothers actions towards you. Absolutely, she was tormented and almost driven mad by your fathers actions, but that is no excuse for the abuse she placed upon you. I have 2 sons, 20 and 17. They hate that their father has hurt me, but I talk to them about love, understanding and forgiveness.

I really feel for you, and hope one day your mother will apologise to you and take responsibility for what she did.
 
#45 ·
Ty all for your advices and responses, the reason I have not updated recently is bacause I could not stay loyal to my word, the true is that the universe have sometimes a twisted way to response to certain actions.

My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and the only family close to her to help her with all (from the burocracy to obtain her sick leave at work to the travel to other cities for the different prodecesures) was me.

if you think that her disease has made her humble and has given her chance to think about her bahaviour, you are wrong her disease has given her a new kind of power, a power to guild trip and manipulate everybody around her, she made sure to tell all her family and friends how his son abandoned her in this time of need, of course now I even have my sisters cursing me from the other side of the world (both of them are out of the country), her life is out of danger but she still nees alot of prodecesures and maybe even a reconstructive surgery, the dynamics of our relationship have not changed, the difference is that now if I try to talk back to her she inmedatly begin to cry and said how the doctors have tell her that she needs to rest and not to be stressed, so I have to shut up and swallow everything, my grandmother (her mother) is also here and is constantly telling me how should I have to be kinder to my mother and how every fight we have in the past was my fault and I have to change, so of course I just stay quiet, what else could I do in this situation?.
 
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