No, your affair isn't the 'love story of the century'

[cosmonautkitten]

I am becoming increasingly frustrated with my DM and the way she portrays her marriage as the most perfect and romantic love story with no thought for the pain and suffering she's caused. Basically, a couple of years ago my mother left my father for my now stepfather, after an affair that began in 2009. Although they originally cut off contact after their spouses found out about their infidelity in 2011, after three years they 'couldn't help' contacting each other again and decided to run off to be together.

I was 18 at the time and had not long left home for university, but was basically my DF's only emotional support for at least a year afterwards, despite being several hundred miles away. With regards to my mother and stepfather, I've tried my best to be supportive and form a relationship with my new stepfather and accept them as a couple - we're going on holiday together in the summer, I was MOH at their wedding and I do actually like my stepfather as a person. However, I do feel like I was forced into being supportive too quickly and that if I'd expressed anger or refused to accept my stepfather I would have lost the relationship with my mother entirely - especially as I was told that DM had said I was one of the things she was willing to 'give up' to be with him .

I honestly think I would be much happier with it if DM wasn't so 'in your face' about it all the time. When I visited over Christmas they had purchased a new artwork - a canvas with words and dates that were important to them and it had in large letters FINALLY TOGETHER! in the middle and the date they ran off together next to it. She frequently posts on Facebook that he's the 'most important thing in the world' to her and really revels in it every time someone calls them a nice couple or such like. They have new jobs working together and their colleagues and other new friends they've made have been told a highly edited version of how they met (along the lines of "oh we were together at uni and had such a spark but then lost track of each other for 30 years and KNEW we were meant to be") with no mention of the other people they were married to at all.

She doesn't tell this version to save face but so everyone will think they are the 'perfect couple'. I understand that this is the way things are but these constant reminders of quite how they started their relationship are still a little hurtful, even three years later. If they could just be quietly in love and not constantly telling me how glad they are to have found happiness in other people's pain it would be so much nicer.

Happy to be told AIBU though and that I should be totally over it after three years - would give me some more perspective!

The best person in all this seems the OP, especially the support given to her DF.

My dp's ex has done similar to dp when she ran off with another man.. I feel that she has done a number on him in other ways when he describes how the other wife lost it when she heard about the affair.

Dp was devastated but kept things on good terms for the sake of their child.

None of them can fathom why she got upset and called dps ex names...i totally can get it. Name calling is getting off lightly.

Its just the complete lacknof awareness that the infidelity might have devastated the people being cheated on.

What HannaSolo said. The people I know who bleat on about how perfect their relationships are are without exception the ones that are the most shaky beneath the glossy veneer.

TimeforCupcakes the father said she said that, the mother denies it. The father sounds like he has overshared a lot. I cant see how it is true, personally, if she waited til she was 18, and they are still in touch, but I dont know the ops mum, maybe it is something she would say. I do know that wounded parties in divorces say a lot of things.

Yoda unfortunately the counselling services at my uni are notoriously terrible and ridiculously oversubscribed, so that's not really an option. I think I'll have graduated by the time I get an appointment... they also understandably prioritise people with diagnosed or suspected mental health conditions. Would have been a good idea somewhere else though!

Painting my mother definitely said it. It's exactly the kind of thing she would say. She's denied things that she's said directly to me before despite knowing that I clearly remember them, so I have no reason to disbelieve this one.

On Mother's Day two years ago she rang me up around midday and screamed that she was disowning me for not calling her - despite the fact that I'd sent her a box of little presents and a card in the post that she'd received the day before. This also now 'never happened'

I would probably be furious with her and out them on Facebook as the cheating gits they are and ruin their perfect family image. But that is based solely upon the fact that my own mother would have said she would give me up for that man. That is unforgiveable in my eyes. No mother should ever say she would give up her child for a man. She deserves her happy life to be ruined based on that alone.

Sorry about her attitude towards you. That is such shitty behaviour of her to say she would give you up for him. I dunno how you have managed to stay calm and have been accepting of him, I wouldn't have been. Better person than me.

My dm's been married 5 times and made very poor parenting choices during my growing up stage. She hurt me and made what I would consider to be unforgivable choices. We've talked, I've had therapy, and I've let it go. You need to work it through and let it go op. You'll feel better for it I promise.

YANBU. I wonder if it might benefit you to put a little bit of distance between you and them. You've been so accepting and I think maybe how you're feeling is a consequence of that xx 💐

Cloudyapples my DM was never married to my brother's father, although they were engaged very briefly. I believe she also cheated on him, although their relationship was pretty dead at that point but were still living together for the sake of DBro who was a toddler. DM moved out of their shared flat when DBro was about three/four and in with a friend (taking my brother with her). She then met DF through a shared hobby and they eventually married.

DBro is 8 years older than me and was very resentful towards me when we were younger because DM and DF were married and his parents were no longer together. As adults we get along fine but he lives in another country so we only see each other a couple times a year. When we do it's always nice though

It sounds like there is a lot more going on than just the remarriage. Your overall relationship, affair or not, does not sound very healthy (from her side/behaviour). I agree a little healthy distance might help?

Yes, marriages end, but there are ways to end a marriage that are at least a bit, idk, 'kinder'. My cousin's marriage ended when she discovered her ex's affair. She was absolutely devastated and felt so betrayed. Plus her feelings of inadequacy (Is she prettier? Younger? What does she have I don't? etc) and that she wasn't 'enough' for him.

She said it would have been much easier on her if he had just come to her and said he didn't love her anymore and that he wanted end the marriage. She still would have been devastated, but her pride and dignity would have been intact. There wouldn't have been the insult heaped on the injury.

She sounds so fucking egotistical and insensitive OP

Even if I did what she did I wouldn’t brag about it like that .
Yanbu not at all

She has a brass neck and a massive lack of sensitivity and I am surprised Boone has called her on it

Massive sympathies OP

Anyone who makes a finally together picture

Sorry to slag your Mum off

Actually having read updates

She sounds toxic and narcissistic and I reallly think some distance and some reflection would benefit you

Sorry your Mum is such a narc it’s a head fuck isn’t it

DM will not respond positively if I brought any of this up to her. She is like a teenager in a lot of ways - constantly seeking her own pleasure and feeling every emotion to extremes, to the exclusion of reality. She and my DBro (we have different dads) are basically NC these days because she won't acknowledge or validate his feelings about things that happened in his childhood, so I can see that being my future quite easily

OP, your mum sounds like my EH. Its horrendous. My adult children live with his rejection every day. I met up with him 18 months ago to try and sort things out. He told me - I'll never be their slave and if they wont accept my new life I don't want them.

That he's a psychopath is for sure but knowing that he is doesn't make the rejection any easier. Nothing does. My children all have their own children now and it hurts them all the more because they say mum, now that we're parents its even harder to understand why he was able to throw us away.

My children used to urge me to leave him but i always held off because I had a feeling it would pan out this way. Then one day I did end my marriage after 36 years but even though I knew what was going to happen nothing could have prepared me for the pain of my children now being nothing to their father.

We all have good lives but its a constant bloody heartache.

I think your mum sounds insecure in her relationship, cosmonaut, people who are insecure are often the ones bleating endlessly about how 'perfect' it all is... because they need to believe that to be true, they can't trust to the future without grand (empty) gestures

In a nutshell.

I was in a similar-ish situation to this with my mother. I lost her to her new husband for over ten years. It's shit.

Nobody outside of the relationship gives a shit when one person in a marriage jumps ship.

When they behave decently and don’t minimise their responsibilities towards their children and sorting the practical aspects out.

All this star struck lovers crap that then gets forced on people effected by your decision but with no choice about it, is wanky behaviour

Another vote for a bit of distancing here. Low contact for your own good I think.

I think that one of the issues is that the mum has set out to control the OP’s emotions and response to her relationship.

Nothing but full unquestioning acceptance will be tolerated, and I think op probably realises she would be cut off if she expressed any other viewpoint. I think getting her to hang the canvas was an out and out power play.

I tend to agree with others’ assessment that the mum demonstrates narc tendencies.

Agree. Your mum sounds more and more unreasonable the more you say.

Christ. YANBU. What a piece of work.

Op, there’s a lovely thread also currently going in Aibu about tiny acts of vindictiveness - I’d get stuck into that if I were you, it’s FULL of brilliant ideas

And don’t get me started on the canvas. Sounds fucking horrendous.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3124702-Minuscule-Acts-of-Vindictiveness?pg=1&order=

^ here you are.

Sorry, you don't know what the true relationship between your DPs was like. Although I luckily escaped before marrying him, I had an emotionally abusive relationship that eventually became physically abusive. It took a lot of courage to walk out, and he got all our friends in the 'divorce' as they were shocked I'd been seeing someone else. I've now been married to the someone else for nearly twenty years but I had to go through years of animosity, of me apparently "throwing away the perfect man" for a "short lived affair". Be pleased your Mum is happy, even if she's being annoying about it. It's an amazing feeling when you feel something is finally right in your life.

In 2001 my dad left my mum and a week later my aunt left my uncle. They deny that they left their partner because of an affair and that they just found fell in love trying to cope... Yea I saw the letter he left my mum and it was all about him not willing to admit that they were having an affair.

That Christmas he asked if it was OK for her to come over during our only day together over the holidays and I said I want comfortable with that. I got screamed at for 45 minutes. I dared not bring it up after that. I was only 14 at the time.

For the next few years my dad would just say awful things constantly about my mum. My mum on the other hand treated me like her slave, emotional support and just acted like a teenager.

5 years later they got married. They seem happy together but honestly if they had been open it would have caused a lot less heart ache.

5 years ago my sister and I confronted my dad about how negative behavior and emotional abuse effected us. My sister isn't talking to him now.

Either way it's been hell and it has only been by going to therapy (cbt worked well for me) that I've been able to set clear boundaries. I either have my mum not talking to me or a distant relationship with her and my dad. No one in my family knows me any more but it means I can stay safe.

She sounds toxic but if you want a relationship with her then you need to set boundaries and stick to them. Tell her "all of this effected me and while I want you to know that it has an impact I'm not comfortable explaining why to you, FIL or my dad but to respect my feelings. Please can you keep the story of how you came to be honest or not over the top - it hurts and I don't want to have to cut communication over this. I understand that you may feel look he this has come out of no where but it has been brewing for years and after finally seeking professional help, these rules are the best way forward for a healthy relationship."

It sucks, I'm here if you need to talk. 16 years on and it is all still painful and a sore point of the family.

Good on you for having enough restraint to not punch your fist through the sodding canvas.

This reminds me of my SIL. She was engaged, and BIL WAS 9 years in to a seemingly happy marriage, when they had met and started an affair. Her ex fiance found out and told ex-SIL.
Every year, sil gushes about their anniversary on Facebook, including pictures of their first dates etc.... Even though the anniversary date is a month before their poor exes found out about their betrayal. Enough time has past that everyone accepts their relationship, but the mind still boggles as to how anyone can think it isn't it poor taste to publicly bask in your deceit.