The Vine: August 8, 2012
I’m in need of some advice and I don’t feel comfortable sharing this with anyone in my personal life.
My parents have been married for almost 40 years, and as far as I can tell it’s always been a happy marriage. I recently moved back home for a few months and I’ll be moving out in a couple of weeks. The other day I accidentally stumbled upon some information and I’m not sure what to do about it. In short: my dad has a girlfriend half his age.
I’ve managed to get through almost 26 years on this earth without once having to imagine my father as a sexual person. In addition to just generally avoiding that line of thinking because he’s my dad, he and my mom give off sort of a chaste, sweet, bookish vibe. It’s been easy to go along assuming they’re as contentedly monogamous and, at this point in life, asexual (for my own peace of mind, especially while sharing a home with them, I prefer to imagine them both as asexual) as they appear.
So it was a complete shock to be confronted with this information. What happened was this. My dad was working on his laptop at the kitchen table, and my cat, who stays in my room because my dad’s allergic, escaped into the kitchen. I went to retrieve her just as my dad momentarily left the room. The cat was prowling around under the table, and as I scooped her up I glanced at the laptop screen, saw the words “Hi sweetie,” and thought, “Aww, how cute, my dad’s writing my mom an email when she’s a hundred feet away!” Except, of course, he wasn’t writing to my mom. The email was a short, boring, work-related paragraph, followed by a couple of puke-worthy closing thoughts of a…sexually suggestive nature.
I immediately booked it the hell out of there, and I’ve been playing dumb ever since, but what’s killing me is that I’m 98% certain my mom doesn’t know about this. I’ve been trying to comfort myself with the remaining 2% (maybe they’ve had an arrangement like this for years!) but I’m finding it increasingly difficult. My mom is an intensely faithful person (then again, so is my dad, to all outward appearances). Of course I can’t pretend to know exactly how their marriage works, but my best guess is that she’d see this as the ultimate betrayal.
I Googled the woman and learned that she’s half my dad’s age (only a couple years older than I am, gah). I have no other information except that they work together in another state, where my dad spends at least one night a week.
I guess my question is: should I tell my mom?
On the one hand, my mom deserves to know. On the other hand, as awful as this is, I can’t help wondering if maybe in a twisted way this secret relationship is actually holding the marriage together rather than sabotaging/jeopardizing it. I mean, I’m willing to bet that my parents don’t have a sex life anymore; what if having a little fun on the side is the secret to their continued happiness together? Obviously this stuff goes on far more than is ever acknowledged or discovered. What if it also happened 30 years ago, before I was born? Should it have been revealed then, risking the breakup of an otherwise beautiful marriage? Maybe things are okay the way they are. (Is this the part of the letter where I try to convince you of something ludicrous in order to avoid my own responsibility in this situation?)
The only way I can see this working for my parents is if it remains a secret. And since there’s no guarantee that it will remain a secret, I feel like my mom needs to know. Now that I know, the problem isn’t just my dad’s lie; I’m lying to my mom as well.
I really don’t want to confront my dad, but I suppose I could envision having a “You tell her or I will” conversation. Ugh. I just hate this whole thing. Please help.
Sincerely,
Wish I Could Un-Know This
Dear But You Can’t,
Before I get to the bossing part: my sympathies. The “unwanted information about infidelity” position is the worst, and if “that information is about your parents” isn’t the worst of the worst, it’s in the bottom three. The situation sucks, you have basically no good options, and before you do or say anything, take a minute to sympathize with yourself.
With that kindness to self in mind: I don’t think your theory that maybe Dad’s side dish is what allows his marriage to Mom to function is that off-base. Yes, it’s probably something you’re telling yourself so you don’t have to wade into the conversation without a life vest on, and no, it’s not a relationship set-up I can relate to personally, but “apparently there’s [vague circular hand gestures] An Arrangement” is a phrasing I have heard more than once, and in most of those cases said arrangement seemed functional. You’d prefer not to know either way, of course, but it does happen and it does work for some people.
Unfortunately, you can’t know whether that’s the case for your parents until you speak to your father about it, so to your actual question: no, don’t tell your mother anything yet. Ignorance is in fact bliss, and telling her — if in fact there’s anything to tell her — isn’t your responsibility. And if it comes to that, she will know that, and she will understand the impossibility of your position.
Speak to your father. Invite him for a coffee or something, outside the house. Tell him as dispassionately as possible what you saw, and how uncomfortable you feel having this information, and see how he reacts — and take it from there, and if he wants you to keep it a secret, well, then you’ll have to re-evaluate. My policy on information of that type is usually along the lines of “I won’t tell, but I won’t lie if asked, either,” and you may want to take that stance. You may want to recuse yourself completely on the grounds that children shouldn’t involve themselves in their parents’ marriages, which is also fair. Or you may want to go with the line you mentioned earlier, that he’s got X time to come clean or you’ll do it for him.
But again, you won’t know what’s up until you talk to him — and it’s possible that there’s An Arrangement, or that, unconsciously, he wants to get caught (leaving that screen visible with you and/or your mom in the house indicates to me that either he’s trying to get busted on some level, or there’s no “busting” to do). I would pick whichever option seems the least likely to embroil you further, but the thing to remember is that this isn’t on you. It’s on your father. If you decide at whatever point that you Just Can’t, and you don’t want to tell Mom anything even if she does ask, or you move out and don’t deal with your parents face-to-face for a while to clear your head, that’s okay. Your parents’ marriage may hit a rocky patch and your mom may feel horrible, but you can’t control that and it won’t be because you “told wrong.”
Tags: etiquette the fam
For what it’s worth, this sucks beyond belief. My angle here is that I am currently divorcing my husband of 10 years because of his affair that I found out about last fall (small kids, completely unaware of the affair.)
Your answer is ok, but I do want to mention something that maybe you didn’t. If your mother is currently unaware of an affair, then if/when she finds out, anyone who knew and didn’t tell her is part of the betrayal. So if Wish does’t share information with her, her mother will probably be extremely extremely hurt and humiliated and, at least partially, will likely partially blame people who knew but didn’t speak up.
Just a wrinkle you didn’t mention.
No further advice here, just more sympathizing because AAAH THIS IS HORRIBLE. I am so sorry.
Oh, how I’ve been here. Parents nearly 30 years married, dad dating someone half his age (an age between that of mine and my younger sister’s, just to up the squick factor). The difference, I suppose, is that my mom, my sister, my husband (then fiance) and I started suspecting that something was up around the same time, so there was no awkwardness about “Should I tell her?” Once he was confronted about it, things went downhill fast from there, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.
Anyways, your situation. I think if you confront your dad with this information, you’ll be doing it for your own peace of mind. You can’t unforget what you saw and it will be gnawing away at you until you have some sort of proof. What will you do when you have the answer you’re looking for? If you find out that this isn’t an arrangement, what then? Will you tell your mom? Will you keep it a secret forever? The potential is, once your dad knows you know, he may feel like he has to come clean with your mom, whether you swear yourself to secrecy or not, and that’s when you-know-what is going to hit the fan.
Believe me, I went through this scenario at the same age you are now, and there is never a good time to deal with your parents getting divorced (if that’s what this comes to), but it’s almost worst the older you are because then one or both parents expect you to act as an ally of sorts, taking one side over the other. I dealt with it by moving in with my fiance (as I had been living with them at the time), being a support system for my mom when I could, and pretty much hating my dad for a couple of years (things are much better now, largely because the girlfriend is out of the picture permanently).
Maybe your dad is so wracked with guilt that he wanted someone to find out, as I agree with Sars that if this was to remain a secret affair, he would be more careful about when and where he sent his illicit messages. In any case, once he knows you have knowledge of the situation, your family dynamic is going to change. If you would rather that things continue under the guise of blissful ignorance, I would consider keeping your discovery to yourself.
Oh man, that really, really sucks. I agree with Sars’ first paragraph – this is awful information to find yourself holding, and it’s totally okay to take some time to acknowledge the suckiness of it all before you do anything.
While I recognize this is a near-impossible suggestion, you might want to also take a deep breath and dial back some of what you’ve speculated about here. What you *know* is pretty limited, at least from what you’ve told us. You saw one email with an affectionate opener and some hinky closing thoughts. I’m not saying it’s nothing, or that it’s in any way appropriate on your dad’s part, but it also doesn’t give you much concrete info about the things your dad is actually up to. Please understand that I’m not making excuses for him, just suggesting that you don’t know much at this point and the situation could, in fact, be very different from what you’re imagining. That, among other things, leads me to recommend that you not involve your mom in this at all. If you want to get into it further, talk to your dad and only your dad.
It’s really tricky to be in the middle of parent infidelity. I speak from experience. After my folks split up (but well before they were actually divorced), my dad told me he was going to “start” seeing a woman my mom had long suspected he was having an affair with. He and I started doing things with her and her kids, and I kept asking him if he had told my mom about it yet. He put me off and put me off, saying it wasn’t the right time, or he’d do it soon, blah blah blah emptypromisecakes. As time passed, I was getting nervous and pissed, but I didn’t say anything to my mom. It all came to a head when my mom and I ran into them at a local arts festival. My mom, bless her, kept her cool and made a big point of telling me on the way home that it was in no way my job to have told her, that she wasn’t mad at me at all, etc.
It has been almost 20 years and I’m still annoyed at my dad for handling it so badly, but I have no regrets about staying out of it. It’s sticky enough to insert yourself into that dynamic when the couple in question are friends of yours; it’s an entirely different matter when it’s your parents. I’d look at it this way: if there’s something going on and your mom doesn’t know, finding out is going to be painful and humiliating. Finding out by way of her own child will add an extra layer of pain, embarrassment, and general foundation-shaking crappiness that will in no way improve the situation, you know? Let your dad handle it, if there’s any handling to do.
And again, I’m sorry. There really isn’t enough brain bleach in the world to wash away knowledge of stuff like this, and it suu-hucks.
I have some practical advise on having the conversation.
I really like Sars’s suggestion that The Convo with Dad happen out of the house. That’s super important. Even better if you can have it an a coffee shop or some other public place, where you can between the door and him. That limits the shouting he might do at you, that lessens his ability to storm out on you.
Pay careful attention to him during the convo. Be pointed, but avoid yes-or-no questions. (E.g: “This is what I saw. What do you have to say to explain it?”) Don’t fill in any conversational blanks for him. Let him hang in whatever silence is created.
As uncomfortable as this is for you, don’t take the bait if he turns it back on you for snooping. Pay attention to any attempts to gaslight you, call you hysterical or overreact-y, or in any way makes his defense an offense against you. If there’s An Arrangement, he shouldn’t be defensive. If he’s defensive and claims there’s An Arrangement, that’s a flapping red pants-on-fire flag.
When the explaining is done, don’t commit yourself to a subsequent course of action right there. If he pleads to know what you’re going to do, tell him you’re going to think about it and will let him know what you decide. Then give yourself the space to critically deconstruct the conversation alone. And then decide, based on what you know and how he responded.
I know you’ve said that you have a certain impression of how your parents are. Give yourself a little while to re-think that. People often have impressions of others based on stereotype or convention, and not really seeing what’s actually there. (Picture the neighbor of the serial killer: “He was always so nice!” ..and, he probably wasn’t.) This is especially hard within families, I think. Mom and Dad tend to be archetypes, not actual flawed humans. Your eagerness to cast them as asexual, understandable as it is, suggests a bit of this at play.
Whichever way it goes, Filthy Affair or An Arrangement, getting to know your parents as people will be a good thing for you in the long run. It’s likely going to be miserable in the short run, though. I wish you the best.
If your parents are still having sex, and your dad is having sex with this other woman, and who knows who all SHE is having sex with…I’m just sayin’…health issues might mean your mom has a RIGHT to know?
Wow, this floored me because I could have written nearly the same letter years ago. It does suck majorly. In my case, I was living at home the summer before leaving for grad school. One day I went to check my email on the family computer and my dad had left his account open on the screen with the incriminating message to his mistress co-worker right there for all to see. Let’s just say it was sufficiently detailed that there was no question what was going on. I did not handle myself with quite the same restraint as the letter writer, though. My mind pretty much went blank with rage and I ran upstairs to confront him. He was so shocked that I knew that he didn’t even try to deny it. (He did accuse me of somehow breaking into his email account and didn’t believe he left the message open like that. Yeah right, like I’m some kind of hacker.) I couldn’t deal and ran out of the house in a tizzy, which raised my mom’s suspicions so she asked him what was going on and I guess he admitted to the affair soon thereafter. She was pretty heart-broken, but at least he put on his big boy pants for once in his life and fessed up, saving me the quandry of whether to tell her or not. They have worked things out (as far as I can tell) and decided to stay together, but it really messed with my view of their relationship. To this day I still don’t think my sister knows about the whole fiasco. My dad begged me not to tell her; I tried to give him the ultimatum on that (you tell her, or I will) but I was never able to follow through on the threat. She and our parents had gone through a rough patch during her teenage years and when this happened, they were finally getting along well again so I didn’t want to ruin the peace. Anyway, I went off to grad school a few weeks later and tried to put it out of my mind. I still think about it fairly often though, ugh. My dad and I have never discussed it again and basically pretend it never happened, although for me it permanently damaged my view of him as a person and as a parent.
Anon For This One beat me to it, but I’d like to add to it: on your part, this really is a whole lot of speculation. I know this may be squicky, but since I get the feeling that you didn’t see a response from The Other Woman, you don’t what that is, therefore: could it be that he said some sexy things at the end that are not, have not, and will not be reciprocated?
It’s important to recognize this, because by having the talk with your Dad, you might be nipping something in the bud. Speaking with you, as a non-accusatory fellow adult, might be the push he needs to see that if he’s looking for something outside of his marriage, then it’s the marriage that needs addressing.
Or not. Again, this is all speculation. That’s my point, though: it can go in a whole lot of different directions other than “my Dad is totally cheating on my Mom.”
The other thing I’d add is that you want to be really, really super extra calm when you have this conversation, which is hard. And I don’t like the verb “confront”. I wouldn’t confront your Dad at all, because, again, you have no real idea of what’s going on here. If it were me, I’d tell the complete truth you told here of how you saw it, and explain that (totally reasonably) it got your worried, then ask the open-ended question.
Where it goes from there, yeesh. Oh, honey. If you can — again, hard — I’d say try and prepare yourself for the worst responses possible. Then imagine us commenters giving you a big warm virtual hug.
My strong take on this? Don’t mess with it. By everything you detected before, your folks have a lovely thing going and they’re both happy. Far as I can see, it isn’t broken and not your job to fix it. Maybe your mom is falsely happy because of ignorance, but she’s happy. Maybe your dad will get some skills and keep it hidden for another year or two until it ends on its own, and then your mom and dad will have another nice couple of decades. Maybe your mom cheated on him for many years and that passed too, undetected. Maybe they know and chose not to tell you because the sex lives of two other adults aren’t your business.
They’ve got decades at stake and from your description, they’re doing a pretty good job at it. I would absolutely not get involved in any manner.
Ohhhh, bleagh. You have my sympathies, Can’t.
My only advice is: One, after thinking it through as much as you can stand, try to make a decision you can live with, and stick to it. Two, if circumstances change, don’t feel obligated to stick to it.
In other words, once you’ve chosen a course that gives you the bare minimum of peace of mind, don’t let your dad (or your mom) talk you out of it and into something that’s easier for them. This is a gross situation, and you can’t unknow what you know, even if it would be 1000% easier for everybody. It’s up to you to decide what you can live with.
That said, point two. If circumstances change and your decision is no longer feasible, you are under no obligation to cling to that decision like a post in a hurricane. Even if you want to. Even if you’ve already DEALT with this and you NEVER WANT TO THINK ABOUT IT AGAIN–you may have to. People are complicated, life is messy, choices evolve. Just try to think, whenever circumstances force it on you: What will I be more glad than sad for chosing in the future?
And to add to Anon for This One and Cora, it could just be sexy talk that never was going anywhere on either end.
I don’t know what you saw, but I assure you that at 43, I have a few friends (including coworkers that are friends) that get some pretty risque conversations and there is no intention on anyone’s part that this is anything other than playful/going nowhere flirting.
Talk to your dad if you need to know what is going on.
If it were me, I’d leave this alone and not speak about it to anyone but my therapist. Your parents are adults and have been married for a very long time. This is their business and they should handle it without interference; whatever it is they’ve been doing for the last 40 years seems to work for them. Whether it’s based on An Arrangement, or on a mutually agreeable combination of careful lying and willful blindness, it’s not really your concern unless your dad starts laying out a trail of bread crumbs for you because he wants to be caught. I don’t think a single indiscreet e-mail left open rises to that level.
I’m not saying it doesn’t totally suck for you. I have no doubt that it’s a dreadful position to be in and is terrible for your peace of mind. But while talking to your dad or other family members about it might get that uncomfortable feeling of secret-keeping off your chest, I don’t see it leading to an outcome that’s anything but miserable at worst and extremely uncomfortable at best. Just my $0.02….
Much sympathy. I take a pretty jaded, Joan-from-Mad-Men view of marriage and its vagaries most of the time, but my *parents*? Dude, there would not be enough alcohol in the entire world. I would be barfing meals I ate when I was twelve.
@Megan: I would agree, except for, as Sars mentioned, the leaving-the-screen-up thing. If there’s no chance of busting, cool, but if there *is*…uuuugh. Either he’s being remarkably careless or he’s subconsciously trying to get caught; either way, if Mom *is* happy in ignorance (and many people are, I agree) the way he’s handling this currently stands a pretty fair chance of enlightening her in a damned traumatic way.
I mean, Can’t isn’t the only one who can walk into an empty kitchen, you know?
Which isn’t to say that I know what she should do here. I think Dad needs to know, at minimum, that he’s got to be more careful unless the openness (whether about sexy chat or more) is, er, open–and he needs to deal with any urge to come clean in a way better way–but I can’t think of a conversation that doesn’t involve some version of the phrase “I have needs that your mom just isn’t into…” and then my eardrums would physically try to crawl out of my head.
Ugh. Ew. Good luck.
Hmm. This does indeed suck, and I’m sorry you have to go through it. My few thoughts:
You can never really know how someone else’s relationship works from the outside. Even if the relationship is your parents’. Case in point: your view of them as “asexual.” Which I totally get. I think most of us prefer to think of our parents as those people who had sex just that once (and didn’t enjoy it.) Or maybe they found us in a cabbage patch. Or something. So it might be helpful to remember that you’ve never had a clear, honest view of their relationship. You have no way of knowing what water has been under that bridge, or how it’s constructed. So whatever is going on isn’t automatically the end of the world for their relationship. But with that said…
Your dad should know what you saw, I think. Might be as simple as telling him that maybe he should be more careful about leaving his email messages open where the wrong people can read them. I don’t know, depends on what you can live with.
Lots of people do some flirting with colleagues. I have an old boss, now a dear friend, who still makes some pretty ribald remarks to me. Someone outside our friendship could easily debate whether we had a “thing” going on. We don’t. Never have, never will. It does raise the question of whether your dad could get into some trouble at work, if those remarks are unwelcome. You might not be looking at an affair at all — the co-worker might just as easily define it as harassment. I know, ick. But it just shows how many ways something can be interpreted.
Good luck, and bear in mind that the real responsibility for your parents’ relationship lies with your parents, not you.
About a year ago my dad called me and told me that he had a co-worker who was “being very friendly,” and he didn’t know what he was going to do, and of course he made me promise not to tell my mother before he dropped the big bombshell. At the time my mom was going through a horrible and stressful period wherein everything that could go wrong was, all at once. My dad’s chief complaint was she was too stressed and didn’t have enough time for him. He is a bit of an asshole. Love him. But an asshole. And did I mention Mom and I are super close? Like best friends close? Yeah.
I spent quality time crying to my husband about the unfairness of It and the assholiness of my dad, and stewing on the whole thing. But ultimately, I didn’t tell her. I made the decision that it was their marriage, and I needed to stay out of it. And it was HARD not to tell my mom, and I felt like a horrible person, and I did a lot of behind the scenes stuff, like looking up a good divorce attorney just in case, and trying to talk my dad into counseling. I still feel kind of bad about it, even though I know it was the right decision for me.
A year later, life has calmed down, and the parents are headed out of town tomorrow on a romantic mini-vacation together. And I’m glad I stayed out of it. Cause my mom knows he is a jackass. And she puts up with it. She says the good outweighs the bad, and while I wouldn’t put up with him if I was his wife, it’s not my marriage. It’s theirs, and they need to deal with their own issues.
I also want to throw something else out there. During one of the worst times of that bad period, my mom let it slip that she and my dad were having issues, and that she was afraid he might be cheating, and then she realized what she was saying and immediately starting apologizing to me. She said that she never ever would involve her children in her marital issues, because it was not fair to us. Point being, there is a pretty good chance your mom has an idea of what is going on, but has chosen to keep you out of it. Cause that’s what good parents do. They don’t go to their kids and drag them into the mud if they can avoid it.
I don’t know if any of this is helpful, but I hope it is, and I am sending you a big hug across the Internet. It’s a crappy situation to be in, and I’m so sorry it happened to you. Good luck!
What a dreadful situation. Poor you for having to deal with it.
I agree with everybody who has suggested having a chat with your father, in neutral territory. I think I’d be inclined to just be fairly frank and say, ‘look, this is what I saw – I wish I hadn’t, but now that I know, what’s the score?’ I do wonder whether, after being married for so long, your mother might have an inkling anyway (even if there isn’t An Arrangement) and has just chosen to turn a blind eye.
The only other thing you can do is to be there for your mother if the sh*t hits the fan. I would also say, though, that it won’t be helpful in the long term if you choose to vilify your father for having an affair (if that is what’s going on): I think it’s awful behaviour, but people are weak sometimes and do stupid, selfish things, and it doesn’t make them terrible people – just stupid and selfish.
Man, I’m sorry, Can’t. I agree with the general sentiment that there is no good answer and so the best path is probably going to be the one that makes you feel the least slimy.
I just wanted to mention something that I don’t think I’ve seen upthread. Marriage serves many functions in people’s lives, and only one of them is sexual. It also provides companionship; a link to the past; and a social safety net. I think we make a mistake when we focus on sexual fidelity to the exclusion of these other things.
I’ve got no idea what my parents have going on in the bedroom (and hope I never have to find out). But even if one or the other had affairs, I know I would not tell. I recently watched one of them take care of the other through a long and life-threatening illness. Several months off work without pay, every day spent at the hospital bedside — sex can’t hold a candle to that.
I’m sorry, Can’t, this is just a bad situation all around. I agree with a few previous posters about dialing back a bit on the speculation and going into the conversation with your dad without those ideas clouding your judgement. Beyond that, try to figure out what information you want from your dad and what you’re planning on doing with it. Is it only for your own peace of mind? Is it to come to the defense of your mother, should that be the case? If he’s actually having an affair, do you want him to tell your mom, or will you tell her if he refuses? Have a game plan.
The other piece of advice I have: your parents are adults. I know that the older I get, the more protective of my parents I get, at least on some things. It’s ridiculous, and I often have to step back and remember that they’re my parents, not the other way around, and they were dealing with this type of shit before I was even born. They can handle their own problems, and you don’t need to make them your problems (even though that’s often easier said than done).
Attica, you summed it up perfectly!
I agree with MizShrew. All you DO know is that your dad is clueless about how to use email privately. I think it’s enough to let him know how easily you saw his message when you were in the kitchen that day.
Agree too with everyone who said two’s company in your parents’ marriage. IMO no good can come from inserting yourself.
I’m just saying, but I’m pretty sure that STD rates among people aged 45 and older are seriously increasing. Like, increasing by about 100% in less than ten years, kind of increasing (those numbers are not precise, just what I remember from reading various articles about this over the past few years). You have to talk to your father, because the long-term consequences of STDs can be serious, and not everyone has symptoms right away. Also, symptoms of various STDs are similar or identical to symptoms of various other illnesses (infections or age-related issues), and for all you know your mom could be trying desperately to deal with what she thinks is something-itis when it’s actually syphilis. I mean, I don’t want to be alarmist, but older people (especially bookish, a-sexual-ish types) may not be as educated about safe sex as younger generations, and it’s totally fucked up if you’re dad’s putting your mom’s health and safety at risk in a material way (in addition to the obvious potential trust/emotional cruelty). But if your mom knows, or there’s an Arrangement, or your dad’s just sexually harassing someone at work, then you should know.
Also, if you’re dad is “just” sexually harassing someone at work, then it might also be good to confront him about it (or, rather, if you confront him and find out he’s harassing someone/it’s unwanted/unreciprocated, then you can deal with that can of worms). My father was apparently harassing someone at his job a while ago, and I didn’t find out until years later. He isn’t a sexual predator, but he is an asshole and insensitive and full of enormously inappropriate jokes which he mistakenly believes other people find amusing. Apparently there was a woman in his office who didn’t like the jokes, but he thought she was joking, and then one day she was all, “This is sexual harassment,” and he was all, “….oh. Um, sorry.” and proceeded to leave her alone entirely. He actually just didn’t get it (sigh), and had someone who wasn’t in-the-middle-of-the-conflict explained it to him, he might have (I would like to think, sigh again) knocked it off before he made her that uncomfortable.
Alie does raise a good point because older people are probably thinking, “We don’t need condoms, I’ve had a vasectomy/hysterectomy” while possibly overlooking the safety issue in regards to STDs. Someone like the Dad here may be thinking, “I’m clean, I’ve been with my wife X number of years, there’s nothing to worry about” while possibly forgetting that whomever he’s with may not be as clean as a man messing around on his wife.
Hopefully this is something simple like way too much flirting on Dad’s part and I know Anon doesn’t want to get involved but… it’s hard for me to high five the “stay silent” approach because Mom may be getting hurt in the end of all this, emotionally and/or physically, if Dad is doing more than inappropriate flirting. I say Anon talk to Dad to see what the 411 is (do kids still say that?), but as Attica mentioned, let Dad fill in the blanks.
Excellent point regarding the STDs. But again, she doesn’t really know if any actual sex is happening at all.
And to be clear, earlier I wasn’t suggesting that it was “just” sexual harassment, which is horrible. I said the recipient of the email might “just as easily define” it as sexual harassment, while the letter writer jumped immediately to an affair of some kind instead. (Understandably so, but still.) I was making the point that the letter writer simply doesn’t have enough information to know what’s actually happening here. And of course if it is sexual harassment then Dad needs to knock that shit off immediately.
Talk to your father. “Hi Sweetie” and some smarmy “sexually suggestive” remarks at the end of an email may not constitute a full-blown affair. I’m not saying that flirting isn’t a betrayal, but you seem to be jumping to conclusions here and imagining the worst.
This sounds so sad and familiar. My mother’s high school sweetheart and his wife moved to Florida for health reasons after he retired. (Mother sent him a Dear John letter during World War II.) From the age of 10 she told me about their sweet romance.
Fast forward. Discovered my 88-year old father was enduring elder abuse by her, helped him flee to my state and file for divorce. She tried to have him declared incompetent and failed. Kept stalling, expecting him to die first since he was older. It backfired. She disinherited her husband of 62 years and only child. I found out later how flagrant the affair was when relatives talked about high school reunions the two attended 1200 miles away. This man was supposedly Dad’s close friend. Don’t know how my father could have missed the signs, but he avoided confrontation at all costs.
Coming from a view different from some of the others.
I’ve been cheated on before, in a relationship of a few years. The “other woman” had been sleeping with my bf because she thought he was single. She vented about an argument to a mutual friend, who told her that he was going out with me. So she contacted me immediately and told me about what was going on, and how sorry she was. I obliquely brought it up with him, he freaked out and Facebook-dumped me and cut off all contact with me, which was all the confirmation I needed. :\
But the point of that is that I was *glad* to know. I was glad that she told me all about it, that she answered me when I asked if he used protection with her, and I was glad that our mutual friend told her about me. Maybe some people are okay with it, but others do not want to be in a sham relationship, no matter how long it has been. (Yeah, I know, a few years is nothing compared to 40 years.)
Talk to dad first, and then use judgement based on how your mother handles uncomfortable truths. The judgement would be whether to push him to tell her himself, hopefully never you having to do so.
Hi everyone,
Thank you (a month late!) for all the helpful comments. Since I still haven’t felt comfortable confiding in anyone in my personal life about this, it’s so nice to have some support here. Even immediately after writing to Sars, I felt much better just knowing I’d gotten it off my chest.
It’s funny — I read all the initial comments as soon as the letter was published, and my feeling was that your opinions were basically split between “talk to dad” and “keep quiet”…but I just went back and tallied up your answers (yes, I’m a dork), and in reality the majority of you recommended that I talk to my dad. Even if I put all of the ambivalent answers (i.e. “either talk to dad or keep quiet”) in the “keep quiet” column, “talk to dad” STILL comes out ahead. I think I was unconsciously giving a lot more weight to the “keep quiet” advice because my personal preference is to stay far, far away from the whole situation.
I am now seriously considering talking to my dad, after rereading all of your advice more carefully. I’ve recently moved across the country, so that complicates things, but he will be visiting me one weekend next month. If I AM going to confront him, that would probably be the ideal time to do it; it’s obviously not something I want to do at Thanksgiving or Christmas.
It’s now been almost six months since I saw the email, so it will be pretty easy for him to deny or minimize any wrongdoing, and I cringe at the added awkwardness of explaining that I’ve been harboring this concern for so long. In the meantime, my parents have continued to appear to be perfectly happy together; if anything, my dad appears more affectionate toward my mom than ever. They’ve gone on weekend getaways together, they danced together very lovingly and adorably at a family wedding, they’ve traveled internationally together. I don’t want to mess things up for them. I’m also not sure what I would hope to accomplish by talking to him; I want to know the truth, yes, but I probably won’t believe him if he denies anything happened, and I’m not sure I’d want my mom to know even if he does confess something.
As for the concerns about sexual harassment and the suggestions that maybe what I saw was no more than flirtation: I know it looked like I was jumping to conclusions, but it was clear from the content of the email that they have (or had at that time) a very intimate relationship. I didn’t want to go into detail (who knows, maybe he’s a Vine reader!), but by “sexually suggestive” I meant that he alluded to conversations they’d had about their sexual/romantic feelings for each other (in particular, HER descriptions of things she’d recently fantasized about), and he made it clear that he couldn’t wait to see her again.
Sure, maybe they just have an ongoing email flirtation, but I know they have spent lots of time together in person, and given the amount of privacy and autonomy he has, it’s hard to imagine that they wouldn’t pounce on the many, many opportunities they’ve had to act on their feelings. He also used “love” in signing off, which just made me want to punch him. Maybe they haven’t actually slept together or whatever, but I think it’s at LEAST as bad for him to be telling another woman he loves her.
I do think it’s clear, though, that I’m not going to get any clarity by endlessly ruminating about what I did or didn’t see and what it might or might not mean, so either I have to move on or I have to go ahead and have the conversation. Sigh!