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Dear Care and Feeding,
In June 2021 I left my husband of 23 years. Although we had some ups and downs throughout the years, he was a good husband and a great father to our now 20- and 22-year-old daughters. We were a close family and had a great circle of friends. To most people who knew us, we looked like the picture of a perfect marriage/family. But for at least the final five years of our marriage, I knew I wasn’t in love with him and I was starting to panic about being empty nesters, as our daughters were starting university and moving away.
While for the first 15 years or so of our marriage, there was no reason for him to mistrust me, in its later years I engaged in mild (and not so mild) flirtations with other men. I am not proud of my actions, and looking back I can’t even recognize who that woman was. In any case, in February 2021, I unexpectedly fell in love with another man and began an affair with him that lasted for four months. In June 2021, my husband overheard me having therapy on Zoom (thank you, Covid!) and confronted me. I admitted the affair and told him I was in love with the other man. My husband and I talked and cried nonstop for four days, and I made the difficult decision to choose ME and my happiness and moved out of the house. I knew my kids would be upset, hurt, and angry, but I assumed that at the stage they were at in their lives, they would understand (or try to).
Things have not gone that way at all. I haven’t seen my younger daughter in a year. My older daughter has been a little more hot and cold with me, although more cold than hot. She is at least more communicative than her sister (and by that I mean occasionally she will text me telling me how angry she is). I have tried to respect their desire for time and space to grieve, but I am afraid we will never find our way back to each other. I text them often, but they rarely reply. I’ve begged them to go to a therapist with me. They will not. My younger daughter is completely closed off and shut down. My older one sporadically sees a therapist on her own. As a child of divorce myself (my father left my mother for another woman when I was 14), I understand their pain, anger, betrayal, and sadness all too well. I just don’t know how they can heal and grieve without even having one conversation with me. (I should add that my soon-to-be ex-husband and I are actually fine with each other now and have remained in contact throughout the year and a half.) I know my daughters are tired of my texts (they say they feel they’re “just words”). I want to respect their desire for space while still trying to prove to them that they are the most important people in my life. Because I didn’t end the relationship with my now boyfriend, they do not accept that they are my priority. I wish I had had the courage to leave my husband before meeting someone else. I wish I had not left the family home and not left my older daughter to look after my husband, who was a broken and destroyed man for a few months. But I can’t undo any of the things I did. I feel like my 20 years of mothering counts for nothing now and it breaks my heart that they’re choosing to live without me in their lives. Can you help us? I want to do something, but I don’t know what!
—Left My Husband, Lost My Daughters
Dear LMHLMD,
You need to step away from your phone. Stop texting them. It’s not doing either you or them any good, and it’s not going to suddenly start doing any of you any good. At this point, it seems like your contacting them in this way is compulsive behavior you’re engaging in to try to ease your anxiety about your relationships with them (and it’s not working anyway—you’re still consumed by it).
Your daughters need time to work through this on their own. Whether they get consistent (or any) therapy or not, it’s not going to happen overnight. They are choosing to live without you in their lives right now—that doesn’t mean this will last forever. (Honestly, if your relationships with them were good before this fissure in your family, I don’t believe for a second this distance will last forever.) Let them be now—let them feel what they feel. You’ve said your piece(s). Step back; be respectful of their sadness and anger. Your assumption that these young women would “understand” was faulty (and at the risk of sounding harsh, I will add that it was also self-serving: there was no reason to suppose they would not be shocked and dismayed to learn that their mother had had an affair and was leaving their father; they are not disinterested parties, after all). I am not attempting to shame you for choosing “yourself” and your happiness. You are entitled to that. What you are not entitled to is your daughter’s immediate forgiveness and an embrace of the new situation in which they find themselves. They can “heal and grieve” without a conversation with you. In fact, I think they have to.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/09/afterschool-babysitting-care-advice.html
In June 2021 I left my husband of 23 years. Although we had some ups and downs throughout the years, he was a good husband and a great father to our now 20- and 22-year-old daughters. We were a close family and had a great circle of friends. To most people who knew us, we looked like the picture of a perfect marriage/family. But for at least the final five years of our marriage, I knew I wasn’t in love with him and I was starting to panic about being empty nesters, as our daughters were starting university and moving away.
While for the first 15 years or so of our marriage, there was no reason for him to mistrust me, in its later years I engaged in mild (and not so mild) flirtations with other men. I am not proud of my actions, and looking back I can’t even recognize who that woman was. In any case, in February 2021, I unexpectedly fell in love with another man and began an affair with him that lasted for four months. In June 2021, my husband overheard me having therapy on Zoom (thank you, Covid!) and confronted me. I admitted the affair and told him I was in love with the other man. My husband and I talked and cried nonstop for four days, and I made the difficult decision to choose ME and my happiness and moved out of the house. I knew my kids would be upset, hurt, and angry, but I assumed that at the stage they were at in their lives, they would understand (or try to).
Things have not gone that way at all. I haven’t seen my younger daughter in a year. My older daughter has been a little more hot and cold with me, although more cold than hot. She is at least more communicative than her sister (and by that I mean occasionally she will text me telling me how angry she is). I have tried to respect their desire for time and space to grieve, but I am afraid we will never find our way back to each other. I text them often, but they rarely reply. I’ve begged them to go to a therapist with me. They will not. My younger daughter is completely closed off and shut down. My older one sporadically sees a therapist on her own. As a child of divorce myself (my father left my mother for another woman when I was 14), I understand their pain, anger, betrayal, and sadness all too well. I just don’t know how they can heal and grieve without even having one conversation with me. (I should add that my soon-to-be ex-husband and I are actually fine with each other now and have remained in contact throughout the year and a half.) I know my daughters are tired of my texts (they say they feel they’re “just words”). I want to respect their desire for space while still trying to prove to them that they are the most important people in my life. Because I didn’t end the relationship with my now boyfriend, they do not accept that they are my priority. I wish I had had the courage to leave my husband before meeting someone else. I wish I had not left the family home and not left my older daughter to look after my husband, who was a broken and destroyed man for a few months. But I can’t undo any of the things I did. I feel like my 20 years of mothering counts for nothing now and it breaks my heart that they’re choosing to live without me in their lives. Can you help us? I want to do something, but I don’t know what!
—Left My Husband, Lost My Daughters
Dear LMHLMD,
You need to step away from your phone. Stop texting them. It’s not doing either you or them any good, and it’s not going to suddenly start doing any of you any good. At this point, it seems like your contacting them in this way is compulsive behavior you’re engaging in to try to ease your anxiety about your relationships with them (and it’s not working anyway—you’re still consumed by it).
Your daughters need time to work through this on their own. Whether they get consistent (or any) therapy or not, it’s not going to happen overnight. They are choosing to live without you in their lives right now—that doesn’t mean this will last forever. (Honestly, if your relationships with them were good before this fissure in your family, I don’t believe for a second this distance will last forever.) Let them be now—let them feel what they feel. You’ve said your piece(s). Step back; be respectful of their sadness and anger. Your assumption that these young women would “understand” was faulty (and at the risk of sounding harsh, I will add that it was also self-serving: there was no reason to suppose they would not be shocked and dismayed to learn that their mother had had an affair and was leaving their father; they are not disinterested parties, after all). I am not attempting to shame you for choosing “yourself” and your happiness. You are entitled to that. What you are not entitled to is your daughter’s immediate forgiveness and an embrace of the new situation in which they find themselves. They can “heal and grieve” without a conversation with you. In fact, I think they have to.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/09/afterschool-babysitting-care-advice.html
no subject
It is amazing how well people can do that, LW, so don't worry about it.
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Talk to your therapist about owning your own shit and abandoning the passivity of "somehow, an affair just happened! unexpectedly!" and leave your kids alone. Let them have the space they want, and practice NOT making everything about your feelings and your guilt and your need for forgiveness and you, you, you. (The most honest thing you said in this letter is that you chose YOU! Okay, so now you have to own that. And live with the consequences.)
Maybe if you work on that, and give them time, you will eventually be able to have a conversation with them in which you actually care about their perspectives and feelings, because this letter says you've got nothing for them but manipulation and excuses. ("I feel like my 20 years of mothering counts for nothing now" is just disgusting. Do you even hear yourself.)
no subject
This is a really good closing.
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no subject