Did your mom have an affair?

The question, “Did your mom have an affair?” is a powerful and painful to consider. Although comedians make jokes about sleeping with people’s mothers, the humor hides a serious matter. The matter is serious on several levels. This is a tough one for myself as well, especially with Father’s Day approaching. It is painful for me to have to face the question and its answer. I don’t like the ugly answer, but I have worked through it. If you have answered yes to this question there are some things to consider.

One, when there is a family history of affairs, it increases the risk of such behavior occurring again. I know that you are not your parent. What they did should be separate and distinct from what you do. Although this should be the case, the statistics show that that you are influenced by them more than you may think. Since many people operate on automatic pilot, they do not make the conscious choices to change course from that of their parents. Since they mindlessly follow family patterns in terms of attitude and behavior, they unwittingly create the same dynamics that set the stage for previous affairs.

Let us hope that you have changed those patterns, that you have broken the unhealthy family traditions. The reality is that if your parents had an affair, you are at higher risk than couples whose parents did not have an affair. Although you are at higher risk, you can change the pattern. You can make things different.

If your mother had an affair, the man you think is your father, may not actually be. Your mother may have not wanted to tell you the truth about what happened, or I have seen some cases, where the mother did not actually know who the ‘real’ father of her child was. In such cases, the scars of the affair carry with them a sense of betrayal and lies. Your mother may have had good intentions in keeping this from you. Despite those good intentions, the reality you grew up with is not the biological reality of your makeup. There may be a gnawing doubt in your gut that makes you wonder if the man you call dad is really your father. Yes, he raised you, but there may be many areas where you are way different than him, that can not be explained away.

In such cases, the scars of the affairs still carry a burden with them. The whole issue of the affair may be considered emotionally inert by your mother, but her avoidance of it has contributed to the pain.

Perhaps you are the mother who has hidden the affair from your child. You fear that telling them the truth would break their heart or bring pain that is not necessary. Telling them would bring pain. Telling them the truth will also bring a new level of trust to your relationship with them as well. You may find a new closeness that had not existed before, all because you chose to self-disclose. Self-disclosure is the key component of intimacy, including the intimacy between parent and child.

There are no easy answers to the issue of children born of affairs. Although the options are not pleasant, you can choose to continue living the delusion, or risk having a new, deeper level of intimacy.

Best Regards,

Jeffrey Murrah

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