Infidelity Support Group
Any relationship in which one partner engages willfully in sexual relations with another outside of the partnership is considered to have experienced infidelity. This breach of trust is often traumatizing for the faithful partner as well as the relationship, and support is often needed to heal emotionally and to decide whether or not the relationship should continue after...
I am curious for others, who all knows about the infidelity? Did you rely on family for support, or did you keep it between you two?
so far we've kept it pretty silent, she has told ----(i think) three friends, counserloe, minsiter not form our area, her father but not her mother,
i have told 3 friends none of whom come in contact with our 2 teenage age children,
i'd like to tell my mom & 3 siblings, as her infidelity betrayal is as bad as the divorce but I don't waqnt my mom& siblings to have to keep it secrect from the kids.
I'm considiering, evaluitinging, vetting, wieiging pros&cons, about telling the kids.
2 simple reasons;
silence = endorsement
secrecy = making one compliant --- in the crime or at least accepting of it
IF we were not divorcing, i would not tell anyone other than a marriage counselor. i think this would give the marraige the best chance of succeding, and if the intent is to work on the marriage thne each partner can help the other with the burden, with the healing,
Sorry, needed to vent. The atmosphere is really heavy here.
Confiding in a counselor or a therapist is a special relationship.
These people are trained professionals that one hires and pays for their expert advice.
That being said, it is helpful to have a friend or family member - someone you can trust - to confide in. We tend to have tunnel vision and it does help to get some perspective. You have to remember, once you tell someone, you have lost control of the information.
Before telling anyone, ask yourself why? What will you gain. If you want sympathy, save it. Other people tend to blame first.
Aren't you already having enough trouble managing your own emotions?
Do you really want to have to deal with someone else's?
I say, pay the therapist and keep your mouth shut.
1. Once you tell, you can't unring that bell.
2. If rebuilding, it may make things more difficult to get family involved. There is advice from those who've not been through it, which tends to be wrong or highly idealistic, not practical. And it can make family get togethers uncomfortable.
3. There are really very few people who need to know. You should tell those you believe can offer you some type of positive support. That said, it did seem weird to me. If I'd come down with cancer, everyone at church would be told and pray for me. With this, very few, like one or two, even had a clue.
4. Once you are past the uncertainty of rebuilding, either by successfully doing so or divorcing, you can opt to tell more people.The main reason to keep hush in most cases is to not unduly complicate rebuilding.
5. A forum like this can offer more support than many people you could tell, because we've been through it.
Initially, I told only one person, my priest on the day I found out. Which I'm very glad I did because he was a key part of her spiritual healing from the damage she caused herself and me.
I later confided in about 3 writer online friends. Gabi, my wife, told some of her family that had been aware she was dealing with desires, but she'd never told them she'd actually done it. One friend and two family members. And of course our therapist knew. Beyond that we kept it to ourselves and on DS.
Our kids gradually found out. Our oldest son a few months after dday asked my wife straight out if something had happened with the man (he went to the gym with her so knew the man and how friendly they had become). Our oldest, our daughter, found out not too long after that. We eventually told our youngest son 1.5 years after dday so he wouldn't grow up being the one out of the loop. But we did this only after we felt rebuilding was overall successful and it wouldn't be destabilizing for him.
Finally, we told other family members and friends because we had a book coming out on it (Healing Infidelity) and didn't want them to stumble across it and find out that way. But most people aren't going to write a book about their experiences. If we hadn't, I doubt I would have mentioned it to them.
So we're unique in that regard. Everyone one in the world can read about what we've gone through. So far, everyone has either been very supportive or very quiet. Interestingly enough, with an exception here and there, the women have been supportive while the men are quiet and don't say much about it. A few I think it makes them uncomfortable. Whether due to "proper people don't talk about that" attitude, or their guilty of it themselves, some obviously don't want to know. But both Gabi and I have received a lot of positive feedback off and online about it. If we were in the early days of rebuilding, however, I don't know that would have been the case.
Plus, I needed him to tell my family and seek their forgiveness as part of what I needed from him to begin the rebuilding process.
However, years earlier when I suspected the A, and of course met with denial (hence the delay in dday), I only told 1 friend, and my mother of my suspicions. My suspicions were more than just, "gee I think" and more like, "I'm pretty damn sure". He was so adamant about his denials, that there was little I could do.
If he admitted back then and we worked through it before there was an oc, I'm not sure I would have told anybody other than the 2 I did.
Telling is an individual choice.
I have a strained relationship with my in-laws to begin with, but when my H fly to his hometown 6 weeks after d day for a buddy's wedding, he promised not to drink alcohol- if he did i planned to stay at parents house either longer or permanently. While there he admitted he did drink. That is when i decided to tell his family. I thought it was best they know so that he can't continue to pretend nothing was wrong.
I think telling my inlaws gave me some leeway in allowing myself to be emotional or even be distant with them if need be. Looking back i wouldnt change it, however, my H thinks differenly & was very upset i told them. But again, i would do again if i was put in the same shoes.
Do what's best for you, you may want to talk it out with your H first.
I told close friends because I knew that I would need support. If I started to freak out or if I left my husband, I knew I would need as much help as I could manage.
I told my husband's mother (and left it to her to tell the rest of their family or not) so that they wouldn't be blind sided when/if he decided to leave me for the OW and went running to them for money to make it happen. (That's his typical MO - he wants something and doesn't want to pay for it, he runs to mommy & daddy.) I also wanted them to be on alert to support my kids, since I knew my husband and I would be wrapped up in our own BS.
Eventually (oh... 3 or 4 months post DDAY) I told my sister but I didn't have anyone else in my own family to tell. My parents and grandparents have all passed. I would have told my family if they had been around. I probably would have told my sister sooner, too, if she hadn't been going through a divorce at the time and dealing with her own stuff.
I did NOT tell the OW's bosses. I regret that to this day, but I was asked by my husband's bosses to keep quiet. It was a complete disregard of my well being and ended up causing a LOT of problems between offices because her bosses (and she did, as well) kept trying to insist that she work with my husband while his bosses kept trying to insist he couldn't. No one could figure out why the heck the other side was being so weird. The air should have been cleared and appropriate people notified. It would have saved a lot of really awkward conversations and it would have stopped the OW from spending half a year trying to work her way back into my husband's bed/life and/or trying to sabotage his career.
Life and learn, I guess.
We also told our sons who were 16 and 14 at the time. My daughter was 11 and we just told her we were having problems in our marriage. I regret not telling her, because in the end, she internalized and "filled in the blanks" with stories much, much worse than the actual reality. (If that's even possible!) She was an emotional wreck for quite sometime and we're still seeing issues with her. I think if we'd told her, "Dad was seeing another woman and lying to Mom. He's really sorry and has stopped seeing this other woman and now Mom & Dad are going to get help and work really hard on having a better marriage and being a stronger family," she would have GOT IT and not freaked out so badly. Once she was enlightened as to why Mom and Dad were so distraught and upset all the time, she really did make a vast improvement in a lot of the issues she was having.
The thing that makes me sad is the folks who end up living in SHAME because their spouse cheated. They take on this huge burden as if they were the ones who did wrong. Those folks sometimes end up lonely and lost and severely depressed because they don't have the support they desperately need and deserve. I'm glad people can find support here and work through their traumatic experiences in a safe haven, but my heart breaks that they can't turn to friends and family and say, "I'm not OK... I need help..." and have loving people at their side to lean on.
Betrayed Spouses have our faults, but the infidelity of our spouses is NOT something we should take on as our own. We have had many choices in our marriages, but whether or not our partners cheated wasn't one of those choices. We had no say. It may be on us to put more effort in to fixing a marriage if we stay, but I definitely don't think it's on us to own our partners' choices or take on the guilt and shame for our own.
Now... for those who choose to curl in close to their partner and fight this battle together, hand in hand to the exclusion of all others - hey - that's a choice and I respect that. If you don't want to tell others and don't want or need the love and help and support from outside sources, then good on ya.
I just don't think that keeping hush hush "because this is just between us" is really a strong enough argument by itself and can lead to a lot of damage and isolation. You don't have to drag everyone you know into your business or pay for a "MY SPOUSE CHEATED" billboard to be able to reach out to others and take care of yourself.
I am a firm believer in honesty. I also believe that lies thrive in dark, secretive places and can only be blasted away by enlightenment and truth. So... yeah. I'm very much for telling people and stepping out of the lies and isolation and fear and shame and darkness.