Sailing beyond #infidelity: dealing with collateral damage

Someone pointed out recently that I don't mention my father much. It was a reminder for me to deal with a situation that I had left unresolved while I was dealing with my own recovery from my husband's affair. I pushed my parents out of my life from the day I discovered Mark's affair. 

The wound created by my husband's betrayal re-opened older wounds I wasn't aware of. As I was working on staying afloat while dealing with the shock of my discovery of what I had suspected for many months, I couldn't deal with seeing my parents. They had gone through their own infidelity story when I was still a teenager and it was painful to be around them until thirty years later. 

Shortly after my DDay, my mentor told me to leave my parents' situation in the past where it belongs, so I swept it under the rug and focused on dealing with my own issues. I worked on my inner child, I admired my mother's decision to give her marriage a chance beyond infidelity. As with many things in life, we only appreciate our parents once we become parents ourselves. And we can only understand a spouse's reaction to infidelity after we experience it first hand. 

After almost three years past my DDay, I still felt resentment towards my father for I had to deal with choosing between my mother or a half-sister from his affair. I had never articulated those feelings toward my parents until DDay hit, so it was collateral damage. I felt I couldn't deal with them (feelings and parents) then, so they moved away from me. 

That was in 2018 and it wasn't until this week that I can feel love for them without resentments. I can now feel what my mentor explained in the aftermath of DDay: they did what was best for your family, leave it in the past and focus on your own marriage. It made a lot of sense to me, so I followed his advice. 

It did help to focus on my own healing and, once I stopped thinking about the affair so often and I started to feel this second marriage IS a happy one, I could start dealing with my resentment towards my father. 

I wondered, "Why am I so angry with him? He didn't do anything to me, I felt liberated when he fell from his perfection pedestal".  I thought there were more positives than negatives from my father's affair. It was only after I experienced the excruciating pain of infidelity, that I got in touch with the pain of ignoring a sister that exists. She's out there and I don't have a relationship with her because I didn't want to add to my mother's pain. 

There. I've written it. My father caused this by having an affair. My mother did the best she could to handle it. They got back together. The child was born. My mother hated her existence. It was a constant reminder of my father's betrayal. I got caught in the middle as my own mother asked me not to publish any photos of her on social media so that the girl's family woudn't see her. 

She requested I didn't share any information with this girl as she grew older. Eventually, I felt so choked that I decided to ignore my father's (other) daughter to prevent slipping one day and disappointing my mother. 

My parents are now a lot older. I am stronger beyond infidelity. My mother stopped bleeding when the girl turned thirty (!!). I am now free to feel the pain of having renounced to my sister's love. I forgive my parents for their part in my decision. I am ready to forgive myself for my decision. I show compassion to my imperfect self as I do to others. 

Life goes on. On day at a time. 

Thanks for reading, 

Helen