Parents Who Cheat by Ana Nogales

Author:Ana Nogales
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9780757398346
Publisher: Health Communications Inc
Published: 2010-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

SIX

* * *

Is It My Job to

Comfort and Side with

My Betrayed Parent?

When my mother left my father for a man she had been having an affair with, I felt so sorry for my dad. He was lost. After Mom left him, we spent a lot of time together. We’d go out to eat every Saturday night, and I would be thinking of ways to cheer him up, to get his mind off Mom. Then I realized—or my therapist helped me realize—that spending almost all of my free time with him wasn’t really doing him or me any good. I was twenty-one and I’d never had a serious boyfriend. I had to start thinking of myself.

—Suzanne, twenty-six

A betrayed parent is often left feeling dejected, depressed, and unloved. In the demoralizing aftermath of a spouse’s infidelity and rejection, the love of a child, whether they’re five or twenty-five, can be a tremendous comfort. But sometimes betrayed parents cross the line between spending time with their children and depending on those children to meet their own emotional needs. When children of infidelity are called upon to become their betrayed parent’s emotional caretaker or surrogate mate, an inappropriate burden is placed on that child.

Sometimes the unfaithful spouse is the one to encourage the child to fill a role for which he or she is unsuited. One father told his preteen daughter, “I know that what I did hurt your mom very much. She is suffering now and needs you to be there for her.” But if a child is expected to attend to and console a distraught parent whose spouse has cheated, who will be available to attend to that child’s emotional needs? One of the issues many children of infidelity brought up in their survey responses was that betrayed parents were often unavailable as parents. Too consumed by their own anger or unhappiness, they were unable to provide the nurturing and support their children needed.

The issue of conflicting loyalties may also come into play when a child of infidelity is obliged to be the caretaker of an emotionally wounded parent. Some betrayed parents expect their children to share their disdain for the unfaithful spouse. When their kids speak lovingly of the cheating parent or want to spend time with him or her, they are accused of being disloyal. With such expectations placed upon them, it’s no wonder that children may come to resent the betrayed parent.

Another matter that survey respondents referred to was the betrayed parent’s indirect responsibility for the infidelity. Some adult children said that their betrayed father or mother was to blame for being unable to prevent the other parent from cheating, for essentially pushing the cheating parent into an affair. One respondent noted that her betrayed father “never really showed my mom that he loved her—was never affectionate, never demonstrative—so she had to go looking for love from someone else.”

In this chapter we’ll hear from children of infidelity who felt stuck in the role of caretaker to a betrayed parent,

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