Unless you believe your H was always such a screwed up individual, something that was not you happened.
^^^^this
What I suspect your brain will respond with is something like well, if it was not me (being a lousy wife/mother/human etc etc), then it was about Trixie (being so irresistibly pretty/younger/better)…….hence all the what if focus on his relationship with her.
The reality we are encouraging you to embrace is that it was neither about you or about Trixie. It’s about him and his tactics for dealing with how he felt about himself and his own life. At worst, you represented obligations as a partner and parent he was failing to meet and Trixie represented an opportunity to run away and distract himself. You were a scratch to him and she was an itch….it says nothing at all about either of you as people, just representative objects. Although choosing to have an affair with a much older married man and to get pregnant probably does say something about her character….you have to be some blend of a special kind of delusional and self-centred stupid to do that imho. Very standard ow type.
And I suspect your therapist will turn out to be quite right about how well that’s going to work out for Trixie….but hey ho, not your circus.
(On a side note, I think you are still legally married? If so, you might want to take some legal advice. It would be pretty standard if pregnant Trixie the Trollop were to turn up the pressure on her pick me dance and forewarned is forearmed.)
The issue of truth-telling to kids is a real one for many parents here. Age appropriate, of course, but the underlying principles of inadvertently gaslighting them vs inserting your pov into the mix of their relationship with the other parent are probably just as valid. Everything from trying the ‘of course your dad loves you even though he hasn’t contacted you for weeks’ to the gritted teeth ‘glad you had a nice time this weekend making cookies with ow’ grrr and the ‘that sounds as if you found dinner with your dad a bit upsetting when he got drunk and told you what a terrible son/daughter you are’.
Not a parent, so my pov comes with a million caveats
Seems to me the common thing is to separate his behaviour towards you from his behaviour towards them and to show you can separate it in any conversations you have. Which sounds easy to do but of course is actually quite hard. How do you think you are doing on that score so far, my friend? And to what extent can they do that too bc I’m not sure that’s any easier either?
The second thing….and I have a funny feeling that although it might look different with small kids and adult kids, it might be a bit the same….I was trying to imagine how I would have felt in my 20s if this had happened to me….I think there might be an operating principle of being guided by the questions they float. You know, a bit like how you know when a little kid starts to suspect that Santa might not be real (sorry if that’s a plot spoiler for any LBS here lol) or when they start to ask questions about where babies come from or why boy bits look different from girl bits
Humans tend to ask questions when we feel ready to perhaps deal with the answers. What kind of questions are you young adult kids floating with you? Or what kind of things are they venting about to you?
Depending on that - and I’m sure it varies between kids and evolves with time and events - I wonder if it works the same way as a Santa or sex conversation? If you stick to the facts without embroidery eg ‘yes, your Dad had an affair with Susie Slop and left to go and live with her’. Followed by an open question or two eg ‘how do you feel now you know that Santa doesn’t really show up with gifts and reindeer?’ becomes a ‘how do you feel about your dad living in Alaska now?’ Or ‘are there any particular things you would like to ask me about the differences between boys and girls bodies? becomes a ‘are there any particular questions you’d like to ask me about how things are right now?’ Closing with a ‘well, I’m always here if there are things you want to talk about in future’ of some sort.
Imho when there has been betrayal, rejection and chaos for a family, the truth matters. Maybe not all of the facts, but enough to know that you are not being manipulated, triangulated or deceived. That you can trust at least one parent to treat you with respect and tell you the truth in so far as they are able, and listen to you, even if you don’t like it or think they should be responding to it differently probably becomes even more important if you have an MLC type parent who isn’t doing that.
Gaslighting is a very unsettling thing, as most of us know, bc it takes away your agency….it can be a bit crazy making bc your own instincts (or eyes lol) are telling you one thing and someone you are supposed to be able to trust is telling you the opposite. Gaslighting is not protective imho. At the same time, and often in life, people don’t necessarily need our opinions….they need reliable consistent facts so they can form their own opinions and that it is safe for them to have opinions of their own even if others disagree with them.
Just my take fwiw.
Does that make sense? Or am I singing from a silly non-parent hymn sheet here?
T: 18 M: 12 (at BD) No kids.
H diagnosed with severe depression Oct 15. BD May 16. OW since April 16, maybe earlier. Silent vanisher mostly.
Divorced April 18. XH married ow 6 weeks later.
"Option A is not available so I need to kick the s**t out of Option B" Sheryl Sandberg
New here, not new to MLC
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