Care & Feeding: My Daughter Discovered Our Open Relationship in the Worst Possible Way

[minoanmiss]

She thinks I’m having an affair. We should tell her the truth, right?



My wife and I have been married for 22 years, and have had an open marriage for the past 10 years. Recently, our 19-year-old daughter was somewhere I wasn’t expecting her (in a different city where we live) and saw me with the woman I have been sleeping with for the past 18 months. We were in an intimate embrace, and she correctly inferred our relationship, but did not make her presence known to me. However, she confided in her mother. My wife told me our daughter saw us and now thinks I am having an affair. I asked my wife if she set the record straight about our open relationship, and the fact that she was actually with her lover at the same time I was with mine. She said that she doesn’t feel comfortable with our children knowing we have an open marriage.

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I am frustrated and angry and feel betrayed. The open marriage was something my wife and I agreed on together. I get feeling a little uncomfortable about admitting something so intimate to our children, but I think that the alternative—them thinking that I am a cheater who is cheating on their mother—is much worse. My wife says I should have been more careful, and that it will blow over. I disagree and want to tell all three of our children (19, 17, and 15 years old) immediately. She has told me she’d rather put an end to the arrangement than tell them. I told her we could do both, but that I was at least talking to the 19-year-old, telling her about the arrangement, and also telling her siblings if she has already told them about my supposed “affair.” My wife doesn’t like this plan, either. Should I go ahead with it anyway? I know my wife is just trying to save the image the children have of her, but in the process she doesn’t seem to see that she is influencing the way the children see me and my relationship with them. I’d rather my children see us as sexual beings with an open marriage than to see me as a cheater and their mother as a wronged party.

—Swinger in Syracuse

Dear Swinger,

Whether you should’ve been more careful seems not worth litigating now; the cat’s out of the bag, and I don’t think your 19-year-old is going to just forget about it. Your feelings and your wife’s are both valid, but given that your daughter is now dealing with the fallout of what she thinks she saw, I think it’s worth framing your discussion and decisions around what is best for her, going forward. Is it better for your daughter to know the truth, or to persist in believing a painful falsehood? If her well-being is the priority, it’s really hard for me to see any option other than honesty.

To be clear, I don’t think it’s your place to share details about your wife’s intimate relationships with other people—she has every right to keep that information private if she chooses. But sharing the fact of your open marriage is another matter, and I believe it’s far better to explain this than to let your daughter believe you’re having an affair. Of course, it would be ideal if you and your wife could explain it to her together, calmly, as a choice adults in a relationship can make together—or at least agree on why telling her is the best option. However you approach it, you will need to find more common ground around how much you share, because it is important for her to know, and soon. And I think you and your wife should also discuss when and how you might have similar conversations with your other two children, as hearing this from you is preferable to them finding out on their own or from their sister.

I can understand your wife’s desire for privacy. And if she truly can’t imagine telling any of your kids, ever, perhaps she has more complicated feelings about your arrangement than she once did? But in any case, your daughter needs to know enough to understand what she saw. And I think that’s probably the best way to consider this question, and to frame the conversation with your wife: not focusing on the goal of damage control, or trying to control how your children see either of you, but recognizing that it is obviously better for your 19-year-old to know the facts than to hold a mistaken impression that is undoubtedly causing her pain.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

as a poly person I have Opinions about this, but this time I'm going to hold off for a bit.

[heavenscalyx]

Wow, the wife here is seriously Not Getting It.

I have a lot of polyam thoughts about this too.

[gingicat]

And he calls himself a swinger, which does not connote poly, at least to me.

[minoanmiss]

REading the letter,since they both have long term lovers, I think this is more a matter of the terminology he has than what he and his wife are actually doing. But yeah, I wish I could extend them an invite to a poly group.

[purlewe]

I feel like telling the truth is the only answer. If the wife doesn't want to tell about her other relationships, It sounds like she doesn't have to, but at least you should be able to tell your adult daughter that you are in an open marriage and that you have another partner.

I am kinda leaning into the idea that you tell age appropriate things to your children about sex. And at 19 it is age appropriate that she can know about open marriages. I would also say it is age appropriate for 15 and 17 yr olds. You don't have to tell them anything more than that. I doubt any child wants the details beyond that anyway.

[azurelunatic]

Right now this teenage adult is bound to be thinking very hard about at least a few things.
* Does Mom know about this?
* If not, should I tell her?
* Dad could bring home an STI and give it to Mom
* Is Dad planning on getting a divorce and surprising Mom with it?
* If I tell Mom, will she want a divorce?
* What would that mean for my younger siblings?
* What does it mean for me?

Carrying an unwanted secret about a terrible thing that one of your parents is doing/has done is a really shitty thing. It's all you can think about. Your world is shattered. Someone whose bad side you thought you knew has revealed a bad side that you now have to review all of your memories of them in case it was hidden there. You have to review everything they contributed to your own personality and system of ethics, to see if there's something hiding there that you don't want there.

Do you want to explode your other parent's marriage?
Do you want to explode your siblings' good opinion of their dad?


Don't leave her with that.


(My own dad did something pretty terrible. I'm not on speaking terms with him, and haven't been for fifteen years. It wrecked my relationship with my mom as well. The situations aren't perfectly parallel; my sister knows. It's still made things awkward with her.)

[heavenscalyx]

I'm just ripshit that the wife DIDN'T tell the 19-year-old that their marriage was open when 19-year-old came to her with the AUGH Dad's having an affair news. That is both being a terrible partner and being a terrible parent. Selfish and awful, bordering on abusive to leave her child in that much doubt and anguish.

[cimorene]

Right? And if she refuses to talk about it or admit that she's also got other partners, the daughter could reasonably be left with the idea that 'open marriage' is just so the dad can have a second partner when the wife didn't really want to, a notion about poly that is not uncommon out there in culture and still paints him as the bad guy. That's assuming she WOULDN'T lie outright or take other steps to try to constrain what he says about it. I'm not saying the mom has to admit details or even say outright that she has another partner, but it's going to look SERIOUSLY weird if she doesn't also participate in telling the daughter that the relationship is mutually open.

[petra]

100% agreed. That was the optimal time to explain matters to their upset child, who is more than old enough to know that sometimes her parents spend romantic time with people other than each other. If the LW's wife is so bound up in what the kids think of her, she may have more guilt around the open marriage than enjoyment of it at this point.

[ashbet]

Agreed. I’ve been openly polyamorous (in age-appropriate ways) since my daughter was 7, it didn’t harm her at all to “find out,” because it was never a secret.

The mother absolutely had a responsibility to tell the 19 (!!!)-yr-old that the father wasn’t cheating, that everything is okay with their marriage including other partners, and that nothing nefarious was happening.

The poor daughter has to be going through agonies over this :(

Even if the mother froze in the moment, there are ways to ameliorate it — “I’m sorry, I never expected to be having this conversation and I wasn’t prepared, but I want you to know that your father wasn’t cheating and I knew where he was and who he was with. It’s awkward to have to talk to your children about our love/sex lives, but I need to correct the understandable misimpression you had when you saw your Dad with his girlfriend/other partner.”

Ideally, she would say that it’s an equal arrangement, but she at least needs to disclose that it wasn’t covert or against her will.

[topaz_eyes]

I agree the daughter should be told the truth about the open marriage. But I'm also wondering if LW's left something out of this letter, given his wife's opinion about telling their children. How did the open marriage start? Did both parents agree enthusiastically to it, or was it a compromise for something else? All the kids were under 10 when it started. Or am I reading something that isn't there?

[green_grrl]

If wife is also dating someone else, I think she’s okay with it. Some women “agree” to an open marriage under duress to put a polish on husband cheating. But this sounds like between the two of them it’s been equitable and fair.

My guess is that wife is stuck in that space of “kids don’t want to think about their parents having sex”-“parents don’t want to think about their kids having sex-“I don’t want to think about my kid thinking about me having sex.” But the cat is out of the bag, and LW has every right to be hurt and upset that wife is allowing daughter to think the absolute worst of him.

[mommy]

"You saw Dad with his girlfriend? Yeah, that's fine. We have an open marriage," would have been sufficient to solve this whole ordeal. LW's wife is a jerk for letting the daughter conclude that LW did something horrible when just a few simple sentences would have solved the whole mess. She wouldn't even need to divulge her own relationships!

[julian]

I... hope the LW is leaving some stuff out about the relationship with his wife, otherwise his wife sounds like a jerk.

If she doesn't want to talk about it to the kid at all, though, then yes, "We have an open marriage, and I was not being an unethical assmidget" is a reasonable conversation to have. Don't tell details about what your wife has going on unless she wants in on the conversation, though.

[ysobel]

"We have an open marriage, and I was not being an unethical assmidget" is a reasonable conversation to have.

And it would be best if the mom validated -- she doesn't have to disclose details! just acknowledge the open marriage! -- because otherwise it might sound like Just An Excuse. If I caught a guy cheating and he said "oh it's okay we have an open marriage" I'd side-eye hard; if his partner said that, it'd be more comforting.

I really hope the only reason mom didn't say anything was because of the "kid knows parents have sex" awkwardness vortex, and not more worrisome reasons...

[starfleetbrat]

So... what did the mother say when the daughter told her? I think that's important to know. Did the wife say anything to confirm that the LW was cheating, or did she deny that anything was going on at all, making the daughter doubt what she had seen (gaslighting?). I really can't think of any discussion they had that isn't a problem. (Except if she had told the truth of course).

[minoanmiss]

Very true. What she said ought to have been the truth but whatever it was needs to be known to deal with the situation now.