Turning point Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 (edited) This is what I don't understand.. yes the Mom would be better off but the child would not... Having the child literally pick one parent and turn on the other is not a healthy thing or place for them to be in.. This reflects your personal story, not that of the OP. No one has advised him to take this on himself and play the arbitrator when he is already afraid of his Dad's response. People are suggesting he get adult support, either from a professional or a close trusted member of his extended family. The hurdle for him is the fear that his mother is completely unaware - and for that he needs an adult to assuage his fears. It's more than likely his mom knows. The OP has an older sister with special needs, and he himself is at a critical age of launching into adulthood. His mom has a home based business. If his mom in her wisdom has chosen to preserve essential services for the daughter, shelter her son, and retain her work from home status rather than immediately over-turn their lives she has that prerogative. Knowing my son is struggling with sheltering me, just as much as I am struggling to shelter him, is information that as a parent I need to know. I'm grateful my own children had the courage to connect with me and find some peace of mind. Edited March 13, 2019 by Turning point Link to post Share on other sites
Turning point Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 I was 15 when I told my Step Mom my Dad was cheating on her Our life isn't directed by when something happens, it's directed by how long we choose to carry that weight. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Art_Critic Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 Actually there are people suggesting he tell her without getting adult support.. and you are right this was my experience on what happened to me and it seems I'm the only one giving advice to the OP from the perspective of having done this before...I do and have suggested the op get adult support 1 Link to post Share on other sites
amaysngrace Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 19 is an adult. We give them weapons and tell them to go fight for our freedom at an even younger age. If people are saying it’s none of her/his business because it’s a marital issue why should it concern somebody not in the family? 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Mrs._December Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 You were completely out of line to download and snoop into your dad's private messages. None of this is any of your business and I think you should butt out. I think it's likely your mother already knows, or at least suspects. She's an adult and can handle this on her own, without your interference. Thank God SOMEONE finally said it. Why on earth the OP felt he had any right to stick his nose where it doesn't belong is beyond me. It's not like the messages were left out in the open and the OP stumbled upon them - then those telling him he shouldn't have to shoulder this 'burden' would be correct. But he went looking for the message and had to physically download them in order to see them, which he had no right to do. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
BluEyeL Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 (edited) And how is telling her/him that now is helpful to the situation? She/he didn't ask if they should snoop, asked what to do now once they snooped. I understand that snooping is bad, but cheating is much worse.They likely snooped because they suspected something was going on with the dad long absences. Edited March 13, 2019 by a LoveShack.org Moderator 1 Link to post Share on other sites
BluEyeL Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 OP, I would tell your mom. Maybe have several discussions with her, discuss hypothetical situations etc. to try to gauge if she knows already. However, if you and your mom are close, she will not blame you. If my son told me I would not blame him because I love him before I love any other man or myself. From there, it's her business to handle it the way she can. You cannot worry that you will hurt her, it's your dad who cheated who hurt her, not you by telling. The financial situation may be an issue though. Dad will be mad at you. You are likely to lose the relationship with him. Since you don't like him anyway, that's not the worse that could happen. But you could lose the financial support through college. In case of divorce, the assets would be split. But if you are close to your mom, you'll make a plan together. I would say trust your mom to handle this as best as she could for both her and you. Good luck, I'm sorry this happened! 1 Link to post Share on other sites
amaysngrace Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 Snooping is the lesser of two evils here. We tell people who suspect they’re being cheated on to hire a PI or get a tracking device or go through texts or look for unexplained purchases. Is that not all snooping? And if dad is cheating what kind of boundaries was OP raised with? Save the “blame the person for snooping” line for dad to use. He probably will anyway. 2 Link to post Share on other sites
Art_Critic Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 Our life isn't directed by when something happens, it's directed by how long we choose to carry that weight. OMG, enough... I carry no weight today but do know what happened to me as a teen when I did tell my Step Mom.. so there is that.. EXPERIENCE on how the OP needs to proceed.. even at their age they have no business in the middle of their parents marriage just as I didn't.. at the time I thought I was doing the right thing and today at almost 56 I can say I should have talked to other adults in my family and let them take some of the burden of telling her.. Link to post Share on other sites
Art_Critic Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 19 is an adult. Seriously... you want to draw the line over a few months to what should be healthy for a person who is still growing and forming as an adult ? I had to go to counseling in order to figure out my role in it all and make sense of what I did.. do you want that for them too just so he can go down and you get to feel better ? 19 while a legal adult is also dealing with something that at 19 they shouldn't be dealing with. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
BluEyeL Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 Actually there are people suggesting he tell her without getting adult support.. and you are right this was my experience on what happened to me and it seems I'm the only one giving advice to the OP from the perspective of having done this before...I do and have suggested the op get adult support You were in a different situation. It was your STEP mom. You had no support. It would be different if OP had the step mom , not biological mother. If her mother loves her a lot, she will defend her from the father and she will have her mother by her side forever. The father will be mad as h8ll, no doubt about it. It all depends on the mother's character and the bond between them. Link to post Share on other sites
Art_Critic Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 You were in a different situation. It was your STEP mom. You had no support. Well.. that is just rude... My Step Mom helped raise me and I have always considered myself to have 2 Mom's... In my family a Step Parent is a PARENT and she was a MOM to me.. just as I was a Step Dad to my Step Daughter, I was her Dad as well.. I had support, I chose not to use it and went from the hip... 2 Link to post Share on other sites
Art_Critic Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 The father will be mad as h8ll, no doubt about it. Yeah.. you never know how they will react, my father never laid a hand on me growing up except the little spanking but when he found out what I did he took a long metal blade and put it to my throat while I was in the garage and threatened to kill me and then mentioned something along the lines of being shot down in flames by his own blood... I would have never figured that would have been his reaction.. BUT IT WAS 1 Link to post Share on other sites
BluEyeL Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 Well.. that is just rude... My Step Mom helped raise me and I have always considered myself to have 2 Mom's... In my family a Step Parent is a PARENT and she was a MOM to me.. just as I was a Step Dad to my Step Daughter, I was her Dad as well.. I had support, I chose not to use it and went from the hip... Sorry, you're right, I project my own misconceptions/stereotype about step parents. I tend to believe they rarely even like the kids, let alone love them and that when they do love them it's the exception not the rule. Perhaps your step mom loved you just as much as I love my son. I would still say to proceed with caution and it all depends on the mom. How much would the mom protect the kid. Mom could choose not to tell dad that she found out from the kid. It's really on the mom and I would still tell the mom, no the dad. Link to post Share on other sites
JuneL Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 Personally I think it’s not the kid’s (even adult kid) position to meddle with her parents marriage. It’s just like the kid shouldn’t be shared the sex life between her parents. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
amaysngrace Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 Personally I think it’s not the kid’s (even adult kid) position to meddle with her parents marriage. It’s just like the kid shouldn’t be shared the sex life between her parents. Sex is a good time. Knowing someone is being cheated on is seeing them being betrayed and humiliated. I’m really glad my daughter said she’d tell her dad to tell me or else she would. She’d put the blame squarely back where it belongs and still have my back in the process without owning it herself. That sounds completely healthy to me. 2 Link to post Share on other sites
Orokotikki Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 OP hasn't posted in several pages, and the two camps should agree to disagree, none of us will convince the other to switch sides, but I think we each have enough to appreciate the other side's point of view. 2 Link to post Share on other sites
amaysngrace Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 Yeah.. you never know how they will react, my father never laid a hand on me growing up except the little spanking but when he found out what I did he took a long metal blade and put it to my throat while I was in the garage and threatened to kill me and then mentioned something along the lines of being shot down in flames by his own blood... I’m very sorry you went through that. He took all his junk and threw it on you in a most horrible way. Strange how things like that can help you grow as a man though. It seems you have that father/husband thing figured out pretty well. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
JuneL Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 Sex is a good time. Knowing someone is being cheated on is seeing them being betrayed and humiliated. I’m really glad my daughter said she’d tell her dad to tell me or else she would. She’d put the blame squarely back where it belongs and still have my back in the process without owning it herself. That sounds completely healthy to me. But does she have a healthy view about her father though? Link to post Share on other sites
amaysngrace Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 But does she have a healthy view about her father though? No, just like OP. She won’t allow him to burden her with his bad deeds and neither should OP. I don’t care if it even is a good view she has/had of her father. Surely finding this out would change that view of him one way or another. 2 Link to post Share on other sites
Turning point Posted March 14, 2019 Share Posted March 14, 2019 But he went looking for the message and had to physically download them in order to see them, which he had no right to do. Bulls**. Both parents are gaslighting their own children. I had no right to check my spouses email or phone records either, but I did have a right to know why I was being so abused and how much danger I and my children might be in. It's obvious that the behavior and disposition of the father is a source of great distress for the OP. His mother's unnatural response will be equally disconcerting. How he chose to get to the root of this threat to his reality is on both parents. The mother doesn't get a free pass here. Being an example for our kids is the first line item on the parenting job description. If the son thinks his mother is clueless then the mother is failing him. This "snooping" is an inherent risk that every wayward and betrayed understand goes with the territory and yet, we're going to arbitrarily draw a line of moral imperative for the child because he's simply collateral damage? Hell no. This kid is likely the only real adult in the room. 3 Link to post Share on other sites
Turning point Posted March 14, 2019 Share Posted March 14, 2019 Yeah.. you never know how they will react, my father... took a long metal blade and put it to my throat while I was in the garage and threatened to kill me ... This is trauma - it is an act of violent child abuse. A fair warning. The OP should not be confronting his father directly, or on his own. As in your example, the reality of the father's true personality is an unknown. At the same time, if the father is dangerous or violent, the mother is the most likely person to knows this. The OP deserves some emotional security and his parents are failing miserably in this regard. While the parents may have focused heavily on their older daughter's needs he's left in the lurch. There is no such thing as a marital issue "between the parents." The family is a system, and this is clearly a systems problem. 3 Link to post Share on other sites
Author kithin Posted March 14, 2019 Author Share Posted March 14, 2019 I have been reading the different perspectives and am grateful as they help me think. FYI (I should've said this earlier, but I thought I was writing too much) I wasn't consciously snooping. I was using my dad's device (with his permission), and he was messaging the other woman on another device and the messages popped up on this device. The messages were strange and obscene so I clicked on them. Then I found there are tens of thousands of messages with this woman so I knew something's terribly wrong, and I couldn't help but download and transfer them to my device, and then went through them. There are different perspectives on snooping in this situation, but personally I'm grateful I downloaded them and now I know, even if it makes me sad or confused. (I never liked my dad to begin with, which helps. I am only sad for my mom.) Currently I'm trying to make my mom more (financially, emotionally) independent of my dad and get her views on hypothetical scenarios (like @BluEyeL suggested) to see how she'd react or if she knows. Also, I have a counselor meeting soon. I have never had a good relationship with my dad, so I am not open-minded to see from his perspective even a bit, which is why I don't think I am supporting him if I keep my mom in ignorance, I just think there needs to be a proper plan before she knows this (assuming she doesn't already know). By the way, my sister is not highly disabled, she goes to college and does much better than me, but she does have a diagnosis and she's not that emotionally intelligent which is why I don't trust her to think deeply about this before telling it to our parents. Telling uncles/aunts would do much more harm than good, because none of them like us, they would make their own version and spread it everywhere and I don't know any of them well enough. So I don't have anyone else to tell it to but it's good that I can talk about it online and also have a counselor. A similar situation actually happened to a boy that my daughter went to high school with during senior year. He had found out that his Dad was cheating on his Mom and told his Mom. A few days after he had told her, his Mom sent the boy a text telling him to call 911 and get an ambulance sent to their house and told him not to go in the house when he got home. His Mom had killed herself. Yeah.. you never know how they will react, my father never laid a hand on me growing up except the little spanking but when he found out what I did he took a long metal blade and put it to my throat while I was in the garage and threatened to kill me and then mentioned something along the lines of being shot down in flames by his own blood... These are the kinds of things I am afraid of. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
pepperbird Posted March 14, 2019 Share Posted March 14, 2019 S 19 while a legal adult is also dealing with something that at 19 they shouldn't be dealing with. This could be a sad situation no matter how old the child in question is. Link to post Share on other sites
pepperbird Posted March 14, 2019 Share Posted March 14, 2019 I would have never figured that would have been his reaction.. BUT IT WAS No offense, but anyone who would threaten their child like that over an affair is a fool ( or something worse) Link to post Share on other sites
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