I’m an affair baby

I think your looking at this in terms of everything is black and white
your mum was abused and my guess is your dad’s marriage was over before your mum came along

OP it sounds like you’re transferring your own hurt from the betrayal of being cheated on & your hurt & anger is being projected onto your parents.

therapy to heal your own wounds would be more beneficial for you. Keeping their relationship separate from your own life experiences.

I don't think you're awful, but I do think you're kind of making this all about you. You will never know exactly what happened back then, but the outcome was happier lives for your parents. Your dad supported your half sisters well and you say yourself he was very involved in their lives.

You are the result of the love between your parents and you should be happy with that. Stop creating this drama and recognise that sometimes shit happens in relationships.

Very

And just how would that have made your half sisters lives any different? Their Mum is what made the difference to them growing up & her still the way she is decades later, not your & their Dad. Who was an involved father & contributed financially, generously.

Yes, that confused me too. She supposedly has a relationship with her half sisters, & knows their mother, so how devasting & traumatic can their childhoods have been that she's only finding that out now?

@bimms

you have done remarkably well to come to terms with that. I hope you are as 'ok' as you sound 🌷💕

@wildgreyseas

I think this puts it into perspective does it not?

your parents were in relationships that weren't good, they met, they fell in love & you're a product of their love, which has endured all these years.

you mum owed her first husband nothing & hopefully your Dads first wife went on to meet someone better suited & had a great life.

Yeah I agree with this. I have been divorced for the best part of 15yrs and do not feel that my daughters life was fucked up and I'm not incredibly angry either.

My ex admitted being in love with someone else while we were married and then promptly moved on with a different person two weeks after we seperated which was awful at the time. These days he's married to someone else, we talk every couple of weeks and occasionally we all turn up at the same events together like proms, were all friends on facebook, instagram including his wife etc....

I would think she probably needs some help if her anger is getting in her way of being happy.

@wildgreyseas I completely understanding why you feel as you do. You perhaps feel like your childhood isn’t as you thought it was based on how you were conceived.
I don’t think I’m wording this very well but I think you feel you have been lied to by omission and if you add to that your strong feelings about people who cheat, you’re viewing your parents differently which has really unsettled you.
You aren’t overreacting- your feelings are what you feel and that makes them valid.
Having said that, it’s in the past and can’t be changed so it’s how you deal with it now that’s important.
It might be worth telling them how you feel if that would help.
I hope you feel better soon.

I hit Not being unreasonable by mistake. You are being unreasonable. This happened a long time again. Quite frankly it's none of your business.

You are projecting. It seems you were cheated on whilst the relationship was in full flow.

I’ve been cheated on at the end of a horrible marriage-it was a relief to be honest, and took it as the impetus to get out of there.

Fundamentally of course, it’s also none of your business, and raking up decades old stuff is bad form.

Excuse me? Daring to question our choices? If you mean responses, well it's a point of view. But the implication that anyone who thinks OP is being overdramatic must themselves have been unfaithful is really offensive.

You're not an awful person. You're a person who's been cheated on, you're feeling really raw, and on top of that you're being confronted with the fact that cheating is incredibly common and consequently a large number of people think it's no big deal.Including your parents.

Give yourself some grace. It is OK to be hurt by what your ex did. It is OK to be hurt by your parents's casual attitude towards it. It is OK to be hurt that none of these people you love are the people you thought they were.It is also OK to be disappointed that a bunch of random people on an internet forum have engaged in the same behaviour and think you're the unreasonable one for daring to question their choices. But at the end of the day all of this says much more about them than it does about you.

Oh stop it. No-one thinks you're 'awful' - just overreacting to news about events a long time ago.
Quit the dramatics.

Your parents sex lives are absolutely none of your business

Loads of us are 'affair babies' OP. Many never even married, it was a temporary affair and parents remained married to someone else after.

Doesn't make us better or worse than anyone else, for most people we just keep quiet about it. Move on with your life

Get some therapy op. You’re overthinking this.

Not awful. Just naive and somewhat judgmental.

This does seem like a huge over reaction…

I'm not talking about lines that liars use, I'm talking about realities. If someone is in an abusive marriage and having an affair helps them in some way to leave, I have in theory no issue with that.

Of course you are correct that no-one can ever really know someone else's situations outside of that person themselves.

This is really manipulative. No one said you were an awful person.

This has clearly triggered you over what happened to you, get some therapy to help deal with it.

Are you feeling very down in general or suffering from depression?

If not, this makes you come across as a bit manipulative.

What?

I think you’re being hugely hyperbolic here. It was an affair, not murder.