Reply #73: These things are complicated

[Blasphemer]

I had a terrible relationship with my mother and my father had a close female friend who had children and he would take us over to spend afternoons with them from time to time. I have no reason to believe that he was unfaithful at that time but because of my strained relationship with my mother, I used to pray that he would leave her and I would get a stepmother. Of course, as an adult I realize that if I had gotten what I thought I wanted then, I would not have grown to appreciate my mother as I now have and most likely, it would not have been a bed of roses living with a stepmother.

I now know that my father has been unfaithful in recent years and my parents are now separated. It's strange to be an adult child of "divorce". I really don't know how much it has impacted me. I have a strong attachment to my father as he is the parent I most closely identified with when growing up so I think I have tended to excuse it more than my siblings (there were a lot of family stressors that I feel contributed to his infidelity). I've never been one who has been a big believer in absolute monogamy so that is another factor. I found myself falling in love with a man who is very much the faithful type, the kind of guy you would never have to worry about in that regard but he didn't feel the same way about me. Instead, I ended up in bad relationships with men who lied about their circumstances (married with kids or living with someone). In addition to my father's infidelity, just about every other woman in my family has been cheated on by their husbands. I do know it is possible to find a faithful man but to find a faithful man who feels the same way about you as you do about him or who is not already attached may not be possible. I think I may have to accept more unconventional long term relationships in order to not be alone for the rest of my life. Maybe I will end up in an open relationship. I don't have much interest in sleeping around myself but if I found someone who had wonderful qualities but couldn't commit to monogamy, I think I could handle that. I think I have moved into a more pragmatic frame of mind/phase of my life.

My young cousin has had to deal with my uncle's infidelity since she was 11 or 12 and she's been forced to take sides. Naturally, she takes her mother's side and considers her father to be a "whore" (although she saves most of her vitriol for the women in question) but to some extent I think she expects all men to be that way. I see her being in a long string of bad relationships given the kind of boys she has been interested in thus far. So, yes, these things do impact us. Seeing our own mother's disrespected or disregarded by men who love, trust and respect is tough all the way around.