How to tell my kids we have separated

hi supers
honesty is the best policy, mate. You're right kids are really streetwise now and even if youd don't tell them they know something is up, they'll at least appreciate your honesty and not treating them as if they are stupid. When I told my daughter she knew already what I was going to say because we had been having horrific rows for ages. And they are far more resilient and philosophical than you give them credit for, my teenager accepted the situation of mum and dad being apart and living separate lives far earlier than I could.

In fact she prefers it that way; she told me straight that she'd would spend time with me being happy and enjoying our time together than with me being at home all the time rowing with her dad. Makes sense, it doesn't do anymore any good if we are all miserable and it is not fair on her.

I think you are right, you should take control of your own life, never mind the boyfriend and when he is going to sell his house, that is giving away too much of your own personal power depending on someone else's decision.

If you are really miserable move out. If your name is on the deeds surely you will not lose your claim to the house but do consult a solicitor because i have no legal training.

All my friends told me not to move out of the MH but I would have gone insane and I am really glad I did even though he was the one to end the marriage. I am far happier and freer and able to be myself and start a new life; the hardest thing is not living with my daughter but I see her most weekends and keep in touch daily and she doesn't seem too screwed up by it all. She is really busy doing her GCSE this year and next year she will do her A levels and before I know it she will have flown the nest and have her own life. So I don't feel too much quilt having my own as I wasn't the one to break up the family, it was a decision forced on me that I had to accept.

Children would prefer to see their parents happy because they love you as you obviously love them.

Take care
CC

Hi,

Should you tell your children about the affair?

There are many many reasons why a marriage breaks down. I don't believe an affair is the reason, but the excuse. The escapism. Morally, yes its wrong. Yet to completely blame an affair for the failure of any marriage is wrong too. People can be unhappy in a relationship for many many many years yet they will not blame the relationship with their spouse as being the reason for, perhaps, they do not know it to be the case. Instead, they may blame the fact that they needed a bigger house, or their job was exhausting and took up too many hours, or they were always tired because the children were so young and once they grow up things will get easier, etc, etc. However, their unhappiness may stem directly from their incompatibility with their spouse.

Then, sometimes, meeting somebody they are more compatible with shows them clearly that it is their relationship with their current spouse that is making them miserable. Suddenly the house is no longer too small, they start to enjoy their job, they start to enjoy taking the children to the park and life doesn't seem so exhausting.

I do not know the circumstances of your marriage break-up Supers. I don't know what your marriage was like before your wife "fell in love". But what I feel strongly about is what you should tell your children.

If this "other man" is to be part of their lives, the last thing they will want to feel is that he is the "reason" their mum and dad split up. They certainly should know about him, but I just feel he should not be made to be the culprit, for their sakes.

Adultery is morally wrong and goes against your marriage vows and I can understand why anybody who has been the victim of this should feel that their children must understand its not their choosing to end the marriage. Not their wish to live apart from their children. However, the affair will be the symptom of something underlying that was not going to keep you in a happy marriage anyway. An affair does not happen when a marriage is good.

Please do not mistake me for saying an affair is acceptable. It isn't. But they have been happening for centuries and they don't just happen to bad people, they happen for a reason.

LL

Thanks CC.
My kids haven't seen us row before so to them it might be less of a good thing than for some so it will take them time to adjust and see it as a good thing. Funnily enough I am just starting to see it as just that as tonight I am glad she's out, maybe for the first time, and I am enjoying the peace without her.

And I guess you are right when you say our kids would want us to be happy and apart. But only when they have seen the fact that we are unhappy together. Maybe our happy family act was not a good thing as there has been no preparation for them, no reason to doubt we would always be together. My stbx said a year ago we are better off apart but I am only just starting to believe it, and my boys are not going to believe it either to start with.

However I now realise that I have been unhappy for years too but I just said to myself I would put up with it for the good of the family and because I said I would at our wedding. And I meant it too. I sacrificed some happiness for the good of the family as I believe you should, and would have done for the rest of my life. So much of my refusal to let her go was about me letting go of my own personal ideal of and commitment to the family and my marriage vows. I thought we shared them but her withdrawal from the marriage meant that I was not tied to them from that moment on. They are null and void. It's taken me a year to get that.

However a new set of commitments immediately comes into play. That of the responsibility to my boys alone and to make the best of this bad situation for them. Thats quite an adjustment but maybe I'm now better equipped to do it after this.


And thank you LL for probably one of the most important posts for me on wiki so far, and it links on from CC's post above.

No the BF is not to blame for my marriage breaking up. In my case it was over in HER mind before she had the affair and fell in love. However they are both to blame for a load of extra pain borne by me for the past year as they still had the choice to leave the marriage gracefully and without hurt and I can't forgive that. I can't tell my kids about that pain yet because they are going to have to live with him. That is such a hard thing to accept bearing in mind the threat he represents to my essence as a father and a man.

As I said above, I can see now how I was unhappy too, so I have to let some morals go now and accept even more than I thought I was going to - that actually it's ok to break my vows for my own good, because she had already done so. And that the affair is irrelevant to my marriage as it was already over - as you say in your post. All that is relevant is how we are going to shape our lives and our boys lives for the future. If I can let the affair go I can really move on.

So thank you both. I need to let that lot sink in. Am I just being very slow about all this? Sorry if it's all obvious to the rest of you. I reckon it's because I am a forgiving person, not an eye-for-an-eye person.

supers

Supers,
Your post could have been written by me. I was lonely in my marriage, but also know happiness comes from within and is not created by someone else. I had commitments and was prepared to stand by them.

In my case, we hit our low point in June 2007 and took the step of agreeing to work on it. I kept my side up and to be truthful was very happy and felt I was rediscovering the love I thought we had lost. Sadly, (and here I disagree with LucyLou), my wife did not give us enough time to sort ourselves out. She allowed herself to be enticed by another person when she had doubts. I could not see those doubts because she seemed equally to be happier and seemed to be prepared to work at our marriage and she kept her affair secret. She told me she loved me and I had not a single reason to doubt that love. None.

She claims her affair started in Oct 2007, but I know now that the emotional side had been building much longer. Maybe as early as late 2006. That meant our marriage had no chance of surviving. It was not just a quick fling, it was a full on romance. We can all fall into that trap. Attraction to someone else, getting lots of attention, someone else seeming to have more interest in us than our spouse. People who succumb to affairs allow that to happen. Marriage, like a dog, is not just for Christmas.

We did not argue, we had no financial issues, we have children that are lovely in every way. In short, we had what most people would see as a perfect marriage. Our friends would comment on how great we were together. We would watch our friends' marriages fall apart and wonder which one would be next. Our children would say how lucky we all were to be a close family and that they felt secure and knew mom and dad would never get divorced. The last time my 11 year old said that was a week before we told them, I had found out one week earlier about the affair and her decision to end the marriage. I nearly burst into tears. My exwife did not bat an eye When I asked her about it she said she never heard him say it. She had closed her mind and heart and that was affecting her hearing and thinking.

Like you I am a person who's view of life is about forgiveness. At that point I was prepared to forgive and to work harder. But she had made up her mind. After that I watched as she became cruel, as she flaunted her affair, destroyed my soul and had no regard to how easily even the most robust of us can feel frightened by the future. I listened as she created excuses for the breakdown of our marriage. Lucylou, they sound just like your list.

The truth LucyLou is our marriage was not as perfect as I thought. But I still believe it was salvageable. She has said herself that if her BF had not come along when he did or was not prepared to walk out of his own situation after I found out she would have stayed with it and worked it out. So now tell me that affairs don't destroy marriages.

She was bored and that was inside her, it had nothing to do with me or compatibility. She put her own personal happiness in front of mine, our 6 year old and our 11 year old. In front of the woman who was with her BF at the time (a long term relationship.) So did her BF.

She says, as you say LL, she was unhappy for a very long time. Funny that it was not apparent to the rest of us (me, children, friends, family). If she was so unhappy why did she not talk about her doubts? How do you become incompatible after 16 years? Grow apart maybe but incompatible, no way.

Supers, there is no point in telling the children that your ex had a BF and that was the cause of the breakdown, in that way LucyLou is 100% right. It serves no purpose, but you don't have to be a martre either. It is perfectly okay to say that it is not what you want (to end the marriage), your wife must take responsibility for that, it was her decision, you and the children did not get a vote. They will be hurt, but they will not love her or you any less.

They will demand that she tell then the reason. She, like all adulterers, will create a reason. It is a character flaw. They cheated on you, so why not cheat on the children? It comes from fear. The children will see through it.

My exwife tried to tell the children it was because we fought too much and that I did not love her. The children refused to accept that, children can see the truth for what it is. I petitioned for divorce and in the end (about four months after we announced the split) I had to explain to them why I was divorcing mummy, why we would never get back together; because she loved somebody more than me and had for a while and I could not live with that. They did not get upset about it. They do not detest her BF (they like him, which is a very good thing), but they can now understand why out marriage ended.

My ex-wife did me a favour by ending the marriage. The favour was that she did not want to be with me, and now I am able to get onto finding someone who does. But, she cheated, lied and betrayed on the way out. It was cruel, it was unnecessary and it was so painful that I could not believe it was actually happening. It means that there is still much acrimony to get through, and this has spilled over into the finance element.

If she had left the marriage gracefully then I would have been, as I have always been, forgiving and generous. Her chosen approach however left me feeling like I was dealing with a stranger. Many of us have said that about our adulterous partners. We no longer know them. So why would I be generous towards a stranger? She believes that I am trying to punish her financially by not giving into her selfish demands. In my case, I am simply doing a business transaction. That is how the courts see it. Why shouldn't I fight for a good chunk?

I have let the affair go. I have let her go. I really have moved on. My boys welfare is my first consideration. I do not want them to live in two extremes. They are with me 50% and with ex 50% of the time. I don't want them to feel a dividing line in that, but if by fighting I can have a greater share and spend money on them when they are with me rather than with her sobeit.

And that LucyLou is why people who venture down the road of adultery ultimately loose:
- they can have no trust in themselves and their new partner
- their children will be hurt by them and for this they will feel guilty for a very long time
- their ex's will seem them as strangers and hence fair game for fighting over money.

It is not a crime to no longer love someone, but to be dishonest and cheat was a crime and is a crime to me. The courts have made divorce easy in the UK. There is no reason to wait until you have to have affairs to leave. If you don't want it, then try to fix it. If that won't work, then leave, but don't destroy everyone else in your wake of emotional neediness. At least that is how I see it.

Berst of luck Supers, you will be fine. You are released from your moral obligatiopns, not by choice but my circumstances. Take good care of your children and yourslef. Your responsibility to ex-wife ended when she went to someone else.

Hi again

Just following on from the posts that were sent after my last reply to this thread.

I hope what I am going to say is not going to upset anybody for that is not my intention.

PerryPower I am sorry for the pain your wife's affair has caused you. You were clearly a broken man and your strength of character and sheer determination to be a big part in your children's lives have obviously help pull you through.

My view that an affair is not the reason why a marriage ends, but more a symptom of somebody's unhappiness was not meant as a generalised statement, but was intended to mean that not every marriage break-up due to adultery is so black and white.

But, moving on from that I just want to post something that I hope may help to explain the reason why so many people find their wife showed no empathy or compassion, for this can be the most devasting thing for a man, even more devasting than the affair itself.

"She became a stranger to me". A common description. This is because she has already left the marriage emotionally - in her mind she has thought about a new future over and over again and reinforced the neural pathways so that this new, exciting future feels very real. The marriage is thus coded very different in her mind. She sees it as a piece of history to which she no longer feels attached. This explains why the length of a marriage is not always equal to the amount of upset at the end. It's the future planning that is done, whether conscious or unconscious, that determines her attachment to this "other man". It doesn't mean she didn't love you once, or her casualness and seemingly uncaring approach should be taken as such.

There she is all day long thinking, processing and registering her feelings for somebody else. Whatever she does repeatedly gets transferred to the automatic process of the unconscious mind. Every thought she thinks has the ability to change her perception. At a physical level all the activity of the conscious and the unconscious mind is manifest as electrical impulses in the brain which produce chemicals which literally controls her body chemistry. This "altered state" is what enables her to move through the divorce, handle the distress to her children and loved ones, perhaps sell the FH and move on, all in what appears to others to be quite callous and without feeling. She suddenly takes on the demeanour of somebody cruel, she finds she has to lie to prevent having to answer more questions, make more explanations. She can't explain why. She just doesn't feel what you or anybody else is feeling anymore. Why she becomes a "stranger". A form of brain-washing if you like.

However, this "altered state" will not last forever. Her mind will return. The guilt, perhaps the regret, etc will descend upon her. However, its the reaction from her spouse and difficulty of the divorce that can suppress this guilt, and perhaps regret, and lead to a lifetime of arguments, legal battles, confused children.

However, bitterness from her spouse will have set in because he too is human and developing his own set of neural pathways from his broken heart. He has had to survive. He has had to cut her off too. He learns to become ruthless, unforgiving, detached, without feeling too.

Result - a lifetime of pain, exhaustion and, perhaps worst of all, confused children.

So, going back to my original statement that an affair is not the reason why a marriage breaks down. It is a symptom of a communication breakdown by two people. When you are connected in your marriage nothing can break that down. Nobody is able to come between you. True, there may be periods in a marriage where this communication breakdown is temporary and an affair could happen when all that was required was some space or a second honeymoon. But there are also people who have affairs because there has always been a lack of real connection between a woman and her husband, and that woman (or man) goes on to find that connection elsewhere. And before too long the neural pathways are created.

What am I getting at? I'm not sure really, save to say that an affair is more of a "virus" than a disease. It can knock people off their feet but it cannot kill. With some time, forgiveness and healing everyone can be cured. Don't feed the virus, stand back, be kind to yourself and (if you really can) civil to your STBX. For in the end, which is your future, there is a karma in forgiveness. Do unto others as you would have done unto you, regardless of their wrongdoings, inflictions or lies. Be the bigger person. When the dust settles the answer will be there.

LL

Sorry LucyLou, I feel you have read too many books on 'our selfish genes' or maybe not enough.

I do see the points you are trying to make and thank you for your insight.

But, we must all take responsibility for our actions. I might forgive a drunk who runs down my child because she is in an altered state, but I still expect her to take responsibility for her actions and to pay the penalty.

You are confusing forgiveness with responsibility and I don't believe in Karma the way you are offering it. Karma does not have effects in a world in balance in the same time frames. Karma often effects subsequent generations.

I do agree that we should treat people as we would expect to be treated. But that in itself is a circular argument. If people treat you badly then surely that is how they expect to be treated is it not? Kind of a fun concept.

Thanks again for your view point.

Hi PP,
havn't spoke to you before but I agree with every word you write. I too would have stayed in my marriage for life. I took the up's with the down's. For me that is part of life , you deal with it and get on with it.

I really believe anything can be mended. But it takes two.

Our x's had options open to them, and because they are weak they did what they did.

I have thought that if men and women say no to sex with married people then our x's would stay with their families and communicate and mend their marriage. I know for a fact my husband would never have left me without a woman to go to, Because he always came back to me when his "sources" dried up.

look forward to your posts, debs