SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I know every situation is different, but how do you decide if keeping your spouse’s infidelity "secret" or sharing it with your children is the right/wrong thing to do?

My kids are young, they were only 3 and 7 at the time of discovery so too young (obviously) to openly talk about what was going on in those early weeks (they are still young only 4 and almost 8). I’m always going through different scenarios in my head …

if we R then what would be the point in potentially damaging them/their view on us or their own future relationships/marriage

if we D I would want to tell them (age appropriately or when they are old enough to understand) the truth about why we are D

while not very many people know about the infidelity, what if it "gets out" and they find out from someone else causing resentment (I’ve seen this happen amongst my extended family, not infidelity related, but a family secret was exposed and did not turn out well).

I guess I’m at a loss. What did you end up doing or how did you navigate this? I know it will depend on many different factors … the only reason my kids don’t know is because of their age. I know kids are very intuitive and can sense when something is wrong, but they don’t know what cheating is. I think if they were teenagers or adults then that would have been a whole different conversation.

Sorry that I'm not much help. My children are adults, so probably a moot point. I had strangers stopping me to ask if I was ok. There was no way to keep things from my children.

My oldest DS told me that he was surprised I stayed so long.

Now, I think it's ok to share at an age-appropriate manner so the kids don't blame themselves.

I'm a year out, we told the kids (16 and 21 at the time) and I regret it most days. I think someday I will be better with it but it has taken a major toll on them. We both felt they would know something was up and would be devastated if we were not honest but truthfully seeing the pain this has caused has made it incredibly more challenging. That being said I have moments where I feel confident we did what was best and it's the consequences of the actions of betrayal.

My kids were older at the discovery of A with MOW in 2012. They were 9 and 6. I did tell my daughter even though I feel she was too young to understand only because she intercepted texts between MOW and xWS. As they have gotten older I have been able to better explain to them. At least now they know why I was such a mess all those years and why we fought. They never deserved to be exposed to any of it. I never wanted that for them as it was the childhood I grew up in (my mom cheated on my dad). I should have left my xWS years ago as I could not handle the aftermath of his A.

Thank you for the responses. It’s hard because while I’m not concerned about telling them anytime soon, I just look into the future and wonder if there will be a "right" time where I/we feel they should know the truth about their mom and dads marital history (regardless of R or D) or if I/we will be content with the decision to keep it secret. Like I have so much saved on my phone pertaining to infidelity, we have books around the house, our oldest knows we have a friend named P (our MC) we see frequently. I just wonder if eventually our oldest will put the pieces together at some point. Maybe this is more of a cross that bridge when we get there kinda thing.

My sons were 3 and 6. We’ve never told them. It’s 13 years. I’m still with my WW. My wife trashed me to her cousins, sister, friends and random people during her A. She shared what she was doing with a subset. Some sort of bizarre badge of honor. Once I knew and we’d gotten past DD2 (I sensed she was lying in MC), she wanted to tell more people and apologize. She felt guilty that she’d badmouthed me so much and made of inaccurate stories about me. I told her she needed to not tell anyone unless we both agree. We couldn’t untell it.

I’ve wondered periodically about telling my sons. I’ve been a difficult father for them. A little more severe and disciplinarian. I wanted them to succeed academically because it would justify me staying. That was a mistake. They’ll never appreciate the immense price I’ve paid to keep WW’s insane decisions private. I guess that’s the craziness of A’s, one WS gets to go nuts and then the other gets to try and pick up the pieces. It’s not fair. Just like life.

I grew up in a family of secrets whi h did some significant damage, so my point of view might be different. I would tell them when they are old enough to understand. MYbe run it by an IC first. Not telling them is like thing a shit in the pool and just pretending it didn't happen. Whether you acknowledge it or not, the M en environment has changed, even subtly, and they will pick up on it, assuming that it's not only normal, but even expected in their future relationships.

It's like when some people rugsweep and tell them that sometimes people fallout of love. This inculcates in them an expectation that relationships are these precariously temporary arrangements that just end in a poof. Better to see them as they are.

Life is complicated and people do ugly things. By not telling them, who are you really protecting?

I'll put it this way. My BFF married a very toxic partner who withheld intimacy from him and refused to work, even though they struggled. Because he was religious, he felt that D was impossible, and chose to use sex workers as a release. It was a passive aggressive coping me hanism and it blew up his M. Looking back, he now realizes he should ha e ended the M, but he was too cowardly. He knows my stance on infidelity and I do not pull punches with him.

When his son was old enough, he confessed to him and apologized. He laid it all out,in all its ugly. He did this because he wanted his son to see his terrible choices and live a better life than he did. He wants the cycle to stop.

I recently had a talk with my DD21, who told me that they knew almost everything about their mother's I fidelity even though i had not addtessed it. During the conversation, I could sense a tremendous loss of respect for my EXWW because she had never spoken to them about it. Since they are both grown, I am under no obligation to protect their mother from. Her actions, so I speak very frankly about it without adding judgement. It is a thing that happened and these are the factors. She understands that her mother has strong narc tendencies and has even commented on a personality disorder such as borderline, so she sees things for what they are.

Sorry for the ramble, but I really do believe in the truth leading to freedom, forgiveness, and restitution.

My WW and I were very young when we married 40 years ago. Her affair with her boss was early in or marraige. I'm not going into the many factors regarding our marraige or issues from youth that contributed to her acting out.

Neither of us discussed this with any friends, coworkers or family. We come from strong God fearing families, raised in a semi rural region. Nothing like this happened in either of our families.

I've always wondered and worried if anyone else knew. A few specific people come to mind. But in our family which now includes children and grandchildren, the infidelity doesn't exist.

My WW's parents passed away over the last 5 yrs, mine are in their late eighties. They all would have been crushed had they learned of our problems 3 decades ago. Later in life it would kill them. We still struggle because we didn't properly address the infidelity early on. Now I can't imagine having to share with my daughters and sons. It might kill me.

In my 1st M...the A became public when my H left me for the adultery co-conspirator. My child was 9 months old at that time. I didn't shout out what happened...but I didn't lie either when asked about what had happened. As our child asked questions I would give age appropriate answers.

This time though..My H and I have never told anyone about his A that he had while working overseas. Our grown children knew that something was up...but I had just had a medical procedure that I was able to use as an excuse for my behavior. It wasn't a lie because the procedure DID cause me to be much more vulnerable than I would have otherwise been.

At first...my H wanted me to let our children know because he felt that they were old enough to be able to handle what happened and he felt that they may be able to help ME in my healing. I REFUSED!! I told him that he destroyed MY life and he wasn't about to destroy theirs too!! Looking back...I can understand where he was coming from. But I am still happy that we didn't tell them.

To ME...there are certain things that a married couple doesn't tell anyone else...and this is one of them. I don't need to know a couple's personal issues in order to be friends with them. This is between THEM. Some people may need to know more...and for them...this may need to be known. But for ME...it isn't. So I act accordingly with what I tell others about OUR personal issues .

I think this is the hardest question, with no « right » answer in most situations. Obviously there are the extremes where it seems people instinctively know. My frame of reference is that my father cheated and everyone knew because he moved out for a month when I was 13. I was most definitely permanently affected and I never understood why I was so affected until I was cheated on. I always kind of thought I had massive trust issues with no good reason. I also borderline thought my mother was more affected than she « should » have been. Now I realize how wrong that thinking was and that it is actually a huge deal and of course she was deeply affected, of course I was deeply affected. As a result I really really really don’t want to tell my daughters (now 17 and 20). My husband told our son (now 23) partially because the son actually knew—he was older and more aware when it all happened. This creates a problem because he probably will tell them some day. But, he is on the spectrum and processes information totally differently, doesn’t communicate with them really at all so it feels I have some time.

The thing I am somewhat planning to do is something that my logical self says is a terrible idea but my emotional self just wants so maybe when the time comes I’ll have sorted it out…. I want to tell them someone at work pursued him and he did a bad job of shutting it down. And just leave it at that. No details. That doesn’t get into the fact that for a couple of months he really did engage and he most certainly betrayed us all and lied for seven years, never admitting it was physical. It just affected me so negatively that my father did this, and I honestly never got over it, and it destroyed our family that I am DEEPLY AFRAID of having my daughters react as I did. So this seems like the kinder thing to do - minimize it. But of course everything we’ve learned here on SI is minimizing things is the worst and et cetera et cetera.

I am eager to hear how you and everyone else deals with it. I don’t really think anyone should judge anyone else’s choice because it is so personal and so dependent on the specific facts of your case and what you expect for the future. I agree with what most people seem to say—that if we divorced I would probably reveal the facts because I would want to explain. But if we stay together that is much more complex.

My husband was gung ho to tell the girls. I think he honestly had no idea what he was getting himself into. (Partly this is why he told our son). I also thinks he expects would have the same blase response our son had. Which is definitely unlikely to be the way it would unfold. They talk about cheating like it is a crime against humanity, which I completely understand. When I wrote out on paper what I would tell our daughters my husband almost passed out and was horrified. I think he realizes how serious it is for a spouse, but definitely did not get how betrayed our daughters may be.

Anyway, its so complicated. I am sorry you have to think about this.

So…my thoughts on it is it’s not a family secret. It’s something that has happened between my husband and I. It only becomes a family secret if it’s something like paternity is in question, or something that may have a lasting impact on the kids.

I feel a marital relationship has intimacy that other relationships don’t have. My husband knows about my SA, for example. I don’t see that as a dirty secret or a family secret.

As far as whether you tell and who you tell, it’s a very personal decision. Given the kids ages, you may be long past this infidelity before they are an appropriate age. However, if they are effected by the tone of your home you can still choose to tell them something like "daddy has lied and now we are trying to work on trust" and use that as a way to talk about lying. It can be reassuring to know mom and dad aren’t fighting about them. In the absence of that, there is no real reason that you must tell them.

Should you divorce, then I could see telling them the rationale. I think in that case it does become a family secret because it has impacted the family being under one roof.

Again, this could vary with everyone. But I wouldn’t look at it right now as a dirty family secret. I would look at it as a marital issue and adjust that as the situation unfolds. By the time they are old enough, it’s hard to tell where you will be in your marriage or how you will look at it from a more healed perspective.

When it comes to infidelity, I think one of the lessons that come is take it one day at a time. I think of it in the terms of you only have to have strength for the problems you face today. Tomorrow you will use your strength for the next thing to deal with. You do not owe anyone a transcript of your marriage, since your children are too young for that I would focus on who you can rely on for support. That would be the best reason to disclose this information at this point in time.

Some also believe that it’s ws consequences for extended family or friends to know. I think honestly that I would consider it better to think about who you as the bs want to know. Because often, later, the people you tell may not be able to accept you staying in your marriage and you don’t deserve to have strained relationships on top of what you already endured.

Thank you so much for the additional responses everyone. It really is a tough one to navigate. I didn’t really think of it from the perspective that our marital relationship is truly nobody’s business other than our own and I suppose I/We don’t "owe" an explanation to anyone (children included) about the privacy, history, intimacy, etc. of our M.

I’m almost 100% certain that if we ever were to D I would tell them the truth about why and not give some lame, cop out explanation. If we R that definitely makes things more complicated, but I get what you’re saying H/O … if R is the path then hopefully as the weeks/months/years go by I will be able to look at my life and M from more of a healed perspective. You’re right H/O … right now I’m very much in the mindset that my WH needs to be punished in every way possible and that one (of the many) consequences he deserves is making sure his children find out what a horrible person/husband/father he was and I want them to hate him (what more of a consequence then your own flesh and blood despising you) - not that I actually would want this to happen … but sometimes my mind wanders to a very spiteful place.

Use your best judgment on this, things may change over time.

We had a one year-old, three-year-old, seven-year-old, and an eight-year-old at the time that my wife had her affair. My wife did not believe the children knew what was going on. They didn't.

Not until they were older.

Then, the one that was seven years old at the time of the affair, had a lot more knowledge of what men and women do in bedrooms with the door closed, and realized that her mother had been having sex with this other man while her dad was gone at work.

Then, this child, now a young adult, told everybody else. This became an elephant in the room, because none of them knew that I knew by now, and it was very troubling to one of the children. Eventually, this child came to me and spoke to me, telling me what her sibling was saying, all of them were adults, although quite young. She was struggling with some issues with an ex relationship herself.

I told my wife, and told her that we should sit down together with the children, and address this. My wife lost her shit, then when I was gone at work, told them all, which royally pissed me off because I was not there. Then, I lost my shit, and nearly divorced her over it. I was just as furious as I could be.

That is why you have to have very strong discussions around this, we had those discussions, we had agreed that no one would be told without both of us approving and knowing before they were told. Despite this, my wife broke this agreement three times. Told a close friend, told her sponsor in her alcohol recovery group, and told all of our children, all without telling me first.

So, if you do have those discussions, you might want to clearly layout in writing the consequences of breaking that agreement. We did not do that part.

I agree with HIKINGOUT our marriage is between us. We did not separate and have always worked towards reconciliation. We told our college aged kids that dad was having a mental health crisis. They knew we were having issues as a result

I would not want to put this on a 21/23 year old as they are just getting their lives started and it would be devastating for them. Our therapist agrees. Again they know we’ve had a challenging year just not specifics.

I chose not to share with our adult children. My situation is unique to this site. Found out 42 yrs after the A. Kinda complicated. WH has done a major transformation. The kids have noticed a huge change. He is working hard to rebuild his relationship with all of us. They don't need to know about the A. It could undo all of the progress they've made.

I just explained it off as a "come to Jesus" moment. Which it was. This stays between us. Not because of shame or embarrassment, but because our relationship is not public. I need the space to work out my own shit without spectators.

IMO your kids are too young to drop that on them. I have gkids 6 & 8 and they are so sweet. The world lays way too much on these little ones. Love them up and keep them innocent as long as you can.

My kinds [one a young adult, one only 14] had to be the ones to tell me. Right down to sending me all the sex charged conversations and quasi pornographic photos.

Now - since then, if they have had questions, I've done my best to give age appropriate answers. The gory details of reconciliation and why aren't their business. But IMHO the fact that we were working towards reconciliation and how much we did love each other and feel we were worth the try was something I did share.

The then 14 year old - I made sure she knew that it was OK to be angry at her father but still love him deep down. She can love the man but hate the act. And that was perfectly fine and normal. No shame there.

While it has been 7 years since that DDAy - her questions really don't come that much anymore. But when they do - I make sure to give her honest and heartfelt answers but spare her the drama and detail. I don't use her as a shoulder to cry on or replacement for IC. I do listen, make her feal heard and valued and give her honesty sans drama.

Tough one

Individual choice.

My baby boys were 3 1/2 and 6. Today, they are 29 and nearly 32. They know nothing of their mother’s affair.

My feeling is they will never know. The one caveat for me is if they are affected by infidelity (either side), then we will tell them.

The children know they were and are loved by both parents. They think their parents always loved each other (this part is not true-many years were loveless).

As we did not divorce, there is no reason to upset their idealized childhood.

My boys will never know what I did for them. And it is ok. They will not love me more. However, they could love their mother less, and, that would be unfair to her, as she was a great mother to them. It is possible to be a good mother and not a good wife. It is also possible to be a great dad, and not a great husband.

My WW doesn’t want our kids to ever find out. And so far at almost 3-1/2 years from DDay, I haven’t said a thing to them. I do hate that I have to keep this awful secret, I feel like I’m lying to my children and that doesn’t set well with me. Just more unfairness from an affair I guess. I have told my WW though, should our kids or anyone in our friends circle approach me and directly ask if there has been an affair, I will not blankly lie to their face. To this day, no one has ever come up to me and just asked, but I certainly won’t lie to them. That is a consequence of an affair. Lying is one of the things that got her into this mess. I have viewed in the past that the telling of the children could be a learning experience. Bad things can happen and through hard work and love, damaged relationships can be repaired, and while that can be the case, it’s not looking like the case in my situation. If we wind up ending the relationship the boys will find out anyway. 🤷🏼‍♂️

I think about this quite a bit. My kids are early teens and they have no idea. At the moment we are trying to R, but if at any point I decide to leave I will not lie to the kids about why. Same with my parents - I will tell them only if I decide to leave. They are older, and would be absolutely devastated if they knew how much WH hurt me.

Well said " Goingtomakeit". It has been my feeling as well, however, it is a tough decision.