To not tell my DCs this

[MiddleAgedandConfused]

Background - married my Uni boyfriend in my early twenties, divorced mid twenties - no kids together. Met current DH when I was about 30 and have been together 20 years; 2 DCs, 13 and 16. Family and a few old close friends know I am divorced, but I have no contact with anyone else from that time in my life. Haven't seen exDH for 25 years.
A close family member that I like and trust has told me that they think I should have told my DCs; they think that when the DCs find out I was married before they will be angry and resentful they had not been told earlier.
I have not taken a conscious decision to not tell them - I have never even really thought about it. DH and I have never discussed it. It is something I consider irrelevant - it happened years before they were born, before I met DH, so to me it just a non-story. But happy to tell them if it could be an issue.
AIBU not to say anything?
Or is the other person?

Good luck with ds.
I ended up telling dd at about 7. It was in the context of mistakes and how I picked Daddy to be Daddy. How did I know? She said I made a good choice!

My mother did this to me. I found a letter addressed to her in her old married name (similar to you, she married her uni boyfriend) when I was 15 and thought it was unsettling but didn't say anything. Then when I was about 20 I was at home with my best friend from uni and she just casually mentioned that she's been married before (I think we were gossiping about a friend from uni who had got married in a rush). I was gobsmacked and really hurt at how casually she'd tossed that info out there to a non family member after 2 decades of non disclosure. I told her I was upset and she laughed at me which obviously upset me more.

Looking back on it I can see why she didn't tell but it DID hurt me. I think because we'd talked to my parents about their wedding day and no one had thought to mention mother had been through it all previously! Just felt like a piece of family history I should have known about.

Its none of their business. I don't get the idea that children are entitled to know everything about their parents, and get all upset that they had lives before they were born. Grown adults getting all upset about their parents having been married before....its weird. You don't own your parents, or their histories.

That said, I probably would have casually mentioned it at some point, but only if I wanted to.

Plus my parents both used to tell stories about my dad's ex girlfriends he was apparently a real Casanova, ugh so I felt like it was a bit of a lie by omission

Ps I'm aware this is not a rational response but my emotional response was to be hurt.

This happened to my DH. He was in his early 30s at the time and had no idea that his father had been married before. His younger sister knew and he didn't, and she accidentally mentioned something while we were all on holiday.

I remember his face. He just went pale. He was so shocked and very upset. He was even more upset that he didn't know; he felt like his mum and dad were trying to hide it for some nefarious reason.

The problem was that he had a very distinct idea of who his father was and what his parents marriage was about (indeed, marriage full stop), and hearing his father had been married before just blew all that out of the window -- he felt like he didn't really know him, and that upset him deeply. It completely changed the view he had about his father, and their relationship has never been the same since.

So I would say it might be a good idea to tell your DCs.

I only found out my mum was divorced in her 20s when I was having relationship problems with OH. It was very hard for her and something she only told my dad about - no one knew as she was from another part of the country to where they lived.

Can see that since asking q you have told DD. FWIW I agree to go for telling when you feel the time is right.

I used to come into contact with work with adults after a bereavement of a parent and the one thing that really upset them was finding out things they hadn't know when sorting through parents paperwork eg that their parents weren't married, that a parent had been married previously, that they had siblings or half siblings they hadn't lnown about etc. I think the most upsetting bit was finding out at such a sad time and because in many cases there was no one else they could ask about it .

I am 41 and having divorced parents wasnt usual when I was a child. Having a parent who had been married before was even more unusual, so I guess we react differently to kids now who probably wouldnt give it a seconds thought!

When my mum told me that my aunt was on the way when my grandparents got married in 1939, I was really shocked. She got upset because she thought it meant I thought less of them, but I didnt! I was surprised as my grandfather as very moral (either do as I say not as I do, or he learned his lesson!) but I wasnt upset. As a PP said, it made them more human, more like me.

I smile when I think of it, I do get a bit upset at the fear my grandma must have had when she realised she was expecting but they were married for 64 years, and that made them and us very happy.

I think the "yeah, and?" reaction of your DD will be replicated by your DS!

My mum was a widow when she married my Dad, her 1st DH had died 2 years before she married my Dad. I can't remember not knowing, we must have been made aware at quite a young age. Mum still lived in the house she had bought with her DH, in fact he had died in our back garden. His sister (who I only meet 3 times) was my god mother. It was never a big deal. I still use mum's 1st MIL's hairbrush!

I only found out DF had been married before when we went to register the death. It was a shock but in those days divorce was not spoken about. It was only on the way home I thought to ask my mother if there had been children from the marriage. She said there hadn't but I honestly can't be sure if she was telling the truth or if that was something else to be kept secret.

When my DH's father died he found out through a family member that DH had a brother who died as a young baby, so in effect he lost his DF and DB in the same week. So I would say it is much better to be open about these things.

I think you did the right thing deciding to tell them. Not because they had the right to know, but because it isn't important. Not wanting to be overly morbid, but there could/will come a time when they are sorting paperwork out and if they had 'found out' they could have been left with questions you were no longer able to answer which would have made it a bigger deal than it had to be.

I think you need to tell them.

I do have personal experience in this.
One of my very good friends from childhood got a boyfriend at 18yo. Her dm strongly disapproved and said she was too young.
She said this to an old family friend-actually not even a close family friend, just someone who'd known them going back donkey's years and did a sport which they still did in the same club.
Family friend laughed and said "Of course your dm was on her second marriage a year older than you".
This was the first indication my friend had of this, family friend assumed it was common knowledge-there were a lot of people around who knew it.

Friend's mum took the stance "well she had no need to know" and the upshot is that they've been non-contact for now 20 years, and my friend, who was the most beautfully confident and fantastic young lady has had 20 years of fighting eating disorders and lost all her confidence. I grieve for the person she was.
She worries that there's more they haven't told her too.

Her mum (my parents still see them) still shrugs and says "she didn't need to know".

That might be an extreme reaction, but it can happen.

Seriously? Developing serious eating disorders and never speaking to your mother again because she didn't tell you everything about her life before you were born? Your friend obviously had serious mental health issues anyway, because that is not an extreme reaction, its a bizarre and massive overreaction.

I don't think your kids need to know every detail of your life but I think the problem is if someone else mentions it. They might say the person has it wrong and then feel a bit annoyed that other people know more about their family than they do. I think its probably best to tell them but in reality not a big deal. Kids have to realise their parents had a life before them or their other parent.

Having read some replies I think my family overshare. I knew from an early age that my mum had been madly in love with a GI but granny put a stop to it. My dad had been engaged but had a falling out with her, met my mum and was married six weeks later. My one set of grandparents eloped, my other granny married her fiance's best friend. God we have no boundaries, I think I knew these stories before I started school. A bit later I found out my great aunt was an unmarried mother, must have been a terrible scandal in a small market town in the 1920s. It seemed a romantic tale to me at the time, she was a lovely lady who never married, just seems a sad waste now particularly as the guy wanted to marry her but her parents would give permission.

DH's parent was married before. In fact had a whole other family. DH knows and has absolutely no interest whatever. Literally none.

My friend was married and divorced like you in her early twenties. She would have no intention of telling her children. If you were to ask her she would say she'd never been married. I've been there when she's done that. I was at her wedding.

"When my mum told me that my aunt was on the way when my grandparents got married in 1939, I was really shocked"

I would have thought that it was quite common though.

Both sets of my GPs "had" to get married, (1920s)

My maternal GGPs lived together & had 4 children before getting married(1900s), because he was already married

They married a couple of months after his first wife died!

Dd has probably already told him.

It seems odd to me that people haven't mentioned it, in passing, to their children. Have you never talked about your lives pre-them?

Even when they were little and talked about getting married, there would have been opportunities to drop it into the conversation, no big deal.

Anyone with little ones, I suggest you do this.

My dad had a first marriage that I found out about at around 12. I was really angry and felt lied to when I found out about it. It wasn't traumatic or anything, but your kids will eventually find out and the question is so you want to be the one to tell them or do you want them to hear it from someone else.

I agree with telling them. I doubt if not telling them will do them any harm but I can't see the point of not doing so, particularly as they are now of an age when they can understand the situation.

I don't understand this - your parents had lives before you were born. They loved, danced, hated, worked - why is that any of your business? Why on earth would you feel all hurt when you find out something from your parents' past? It's their past, not yours!

I only found out that I had a half-brother when he'd died (in an accident, different country - mum 'got pregnant' and had a baby, left it to be raised by gran). My sister also told me that she'd found out about my father's illegitimate son, whilst snooping () so I found out one day htat I had 2 half-brothers. I have never, ever spent any time wondering about them, or a minute thinking that mum and dad should have told us. Why would they? Their past. Nothing to do with me. It's very entitled to imagine that you should know everything !

I've been married before; I've never even contemplated telling my dc. Again, nothing to do with them.

Where do you draw the line, anyway? What are your children entitled to know about? So we have to tell them if we're married before, what about if you lived with someone? What about who you loved? What about where you lived and what drugs you took and whether you had casual sex and what you did at college and so on?

I gave my children life and I've given them my life pretty much since the day the first was born. I don't see why I somehow owe them my life before they were born too?

All of those who were so shocked and felt lied to etc....do you think your parents aren't people who are entitled to keep their lives to themselves? Do you tell your parents everything, do you owe them all of your secrets or is it just the other way around?

I would probably tell them but not make a big deal out of it. I have mentioned to my dcs about a previous long term relationship, we lived together for many years so it was kind of like a marriage and I told them more in a kind of "this is what I was doing at this time in my life" sort of way. I think it helps kids to understand that you were in fact a person before you had them. I presume you talk about stuff you did when you were a kid and a teenager so why would you airbrush out a whole section of your life?

As I said earlier in the thread grocklebox I was shocked when I found out my dad had been married before. Not life changing shocked, but enough for me to remember every detail about when I found out, all these years later..

I don't know why it's upsetting. Maybe because your mum and dad are everything to you when you are young, and your family unit is the essence of who you are and what is normality to you. Maybe if you find out one of your parents has been so intimate and in love with someone before enough to marry them, then there was a different family unit which existed with the parents you love, first before the one you have, which is now secondary.

Its hard to explain. And I think its marriage which is the key; it is an assumption that most people will have boyfriends/girlfriends before they settle down, even engagements. Marriage is more serious.

And some people on this thread say the knowledge hasn't bothered them in the slightest so obviously not everyone feels the same as me.

The thing is I suppose, that you don't know how it will affect your children, if at all, until you actually tell them.