To think this OW has no shame?

[LividLucy]

Dsis’s XH had a 4 year affair which she discovered around 10 years ago. They’d been married over 20 years by then. OW knew he was married with 4DC throughout it all. They even went on regular holidays abroad together passed off as business trips.

Dsis was devastated when she discovered it quite by accident and he immediately left for OW. Dsis was completely shafted by him as he hid quite substantial assets and had already moved their house into his business name so she was left with nothing, had to move into a rundown rented house and work in a minimum wage job while her H and OW have lived a life of luxury with a big house, big cars and lots of holidays. Dsis had been a SAHM but had also helped him get his business off the ground. She had a crap solicitor and refused family help to bring in the big guns as she still loved him and hoped they’d get back together. I think she was still in shock for a long time.

Anyway oldest DC went completely off the rails when the affair came out. Blamed Dsis as she was very passive and wouldn’t hear a bad word against XH so all the DC took it out on her. DN got pregnant within a few months at age 16 and has since had 3DC by 3 different fathers obviously trying to recreate the family her Dad destroyed but picking unsuitable men!

Dsis always encouraged XH to have contact with the DC and he would lavish expensive gifts while not paying child support knowing they were living in a shithole, so the DC are still quite close to him and OW.

OW constantly refers to her ‘grandchildren’ on Facebook and Instagram now which upsets Dsis greatly. Even though 10 years have passed, is this really appropriate? How can Dsis broach this with DN and EX/OW and would she be UR to?

Seriously I don't there can be any solicitor that is so crap that your DSIS got nothing and no child maintenance. Even if that were the case it is entirely up to your niece if she has the type of relationship with her step mum that she is happy for her to be called Grandma.

Your sister needs to smile and say that's nice or I am not really interested if her so called friends are telling her what the step mum is posting. They are clearly looking for a reaction and getting it.

10 years - time to move on ( about 9 years too late)

The child maintenance issue could easily have been resolved using the CSA at the time. Indeed, that was probably the expectation in the settlement.

Hope the business goes under. Also your niece needs to reassess where her loyalties lie. I could never be close to someone who has taken part in hurting my mum like that, knowing that it still makes her feel shit. WTAF.

@vixxo

Hope the business goes under. Also your niece needs to reassess where her loyalties lie. I could never be close to someone who has taken part in hurting my mum like that, knowing that it still makes her feel shit. WTAF.

Doesn’t she deserve to have two parents in her life? She should just write off her father and support only her mother and therefore only have one person in her corner? That seems extremely shortsighted.

LovePoppy
Unfortunately, much as many posters on here deny some mothers use children as a weapon in splits, there's a substantial minority of people who seem to think a child's right to relationships with both parents comes second to point scoring between their parents.
It's really sad to see that there's people who think children should shoulder the emotional burden of their parents' failed relationships.

@LovePoppy

Doesn’t she deserve to have two parents in her life? She should just write off her father and support only her mother and therefore only have one person in her corner? That seems extremely shortsighted.

That's exactly what my mother demanded that my two brothers and myself did when my father left her. We were 22, 21 (me) and 18. I'd just married my ex H - was actually on honeymoon when my father left - and returned to find WW3 had broken out.

I was struggling with my mental health anyway (2 years later I was diagnosed as bipolar) and obviously shocked and upset ...so sadly I let my mother emotionally blackmail me into dropping all contact with my father. I've not seen him since, I'm not even sure if he's still alive. My younger brother hasn't had any contact either, but I have a feeling my older brother might have.

@LolaSmiles

My mother to this day says he left all of us, not just her. She actually blames me for him having an affair, as my getting married made him 'feel old' - he was 42 . If it wasn't for me getting married she'd still be married to him. She's said this to my face on numerous occasions.

So many women fall prey to this.

They enable their husband's careers by providing a functional home life - housework, cooking and childcare plus the PA type work.

Husband gains success off the back of his wife's silent, reliable, stable contribution. Then husband decides that he needs an "upgrade" to a younger model more eager to please in an exchange of money and sex.

To add insult to injury, husband financially shafts his wife as he was the one who was working!!!!!!!

There is a special kind of hell for these men. Let them rot in it.

I'm sure this is all upsetting to your Dsis, but I wouldn't expect a woman who has an affair with a MM with 4 kids to be decent or considerate in that way. It's just not their way and they have shown they are far from upstanding.

As it happens I know an OW who had an affair with a married man with 4 kids. Well I knew his wife, not the OW.

This OW was way more shameless and caused enormous hurt to the wife, as of course did her H. He beat his DW causing a miscarriage when she confronted him about the affair, which the OW laughed in her face about.

This woman was like your Dsis in her stupid love for her DH, except she wasn't a SAHM and could have left him.

I know this isn't the point of your thread, but I do think SAHM leave themselves so financially vulnerable. What happens to your sis has happened to so many women.

@LolaSmiles that just makes me so sad

@theprincessmittens your mother sounds terrible. I hope you are in therapy and learning that your fathers affair was NOT your fault.

Children, no matter how old, actually do deserve relationships with their parents.

Makes me so upset.

Also your niece needs to reassess where her loyalties lie. I could never be close to someone who has taken part in hurting my mum like that, knowing that it still makes her feel shit

No no no. This is so unhealthy. It is such bad parenting to expect your child to choose sides between their parents. It is so damaging and unfair, I have experienced it myself as I said upthread. To be perfectly honest, I immediately lose sympathy for anyone who does this in these situations.

still makes her feel shit

And there comes a point where you have to start helping yourself. OPs sister shouldn't still be feeling so shit after 10 years that her children need to take sides. It's been a decade. Time to move on and seek some help if you can't.

You're essentially punishing your own child by not allowing them, or making them feel bad for, having a relationship with their other parent because you've been hurt.

That child's relationship with their mum or dad is nothing to do with their other parent. It is their own to either have or to walk away from, they should never be influenced by someone else's hurt and seriously, shame on the posters suggesting it.

@LovePoppy

Thank you. I've never felt guilty, just angry at my mother for ignoring the fact that in their nearly 23 years of marriage, my father was unfaithful for at least 19 of them. Of course it is easier for her to blame everyone but herself for constantly turning a blind eye to it...

@Purleaseee

That child's relationship with their mum or dad is nothing to do with their other parent.

That is a concept my mother has never been able to accept. My father stopped being her husband, not my parent.

That doesn't mean that I blindly support my father in what he did - quite the opposite. He should have had the guts to admit the marriage wasn't working at least a decade earlier, done the right thing and left. Yes, it still would have caused a lot of upset, but at least everyone could have moved on without all this bitterness and anger ... much like the OP's sister.

That doesn't mean that I blindly support my father in what he did

Absolutely. I felt very much the same toward my mother (she was the one who had the affair in my situ) and my relationship with her did suffer initially. However, it's so hard to expect a child to just cut off a parent, someone who's loved them, whom they love, someone they want when they cry, when they need a hug, who knows them and has known them their entire life, their mum or their dad. That's not a bond you can just cut easily.

My dad never understood that, and still doesn't to this day. He thinks I should have just cut my mum off there and then. He doesn't get it. She's my mum. It's too hard for me to walk away from that, especially just to save the feelings of somebody else.

It's so unfair to put that expectation on your child. Whether they are adults or not.

"Purleaseee theprincessmittens*
Your situations are sad. It's such a shane when children end up being made to pick sides.

Parents should accept that parent/child relationships are separate from their romantic relationships and it's not their children's job to deal with their emotional baggage from failed relationships.

Honestly it was and still can be, horrid. I had so many problems and added stresses on the lead up to my wedding because of it. Arranging for them to arrive at seperate times, having to delegate people to 'watch' them and make sure they didn't cause a scene, being made to feel guilty for even inviting the other (to my wedding?!!!).

I feel sympathy but it is so selfish when it spills over into this sort of thing. Anyone who makes their kids feel bad, feel awkward, bitches about the other parent in front of them, makes them feel wrong or like they have to keep their relationship quiet, is displaying some pretty shitty parenting imo.

@LividLucy coming back at all?

I agree @Purleaseee. It’s shocking parenting. But surprisingly common.

My wedding was similarly fraught. DH wanted to invite my dad (we didn’t, because I haven’t spoken to him in 20 years rather than anything else). My sister (successfully alienated since the mid-1990s) threw a bit of a tantrum about any possibility my dad might be there, and my mum acted like a dick about it. If it had looked like we were going to invite him, she’d really have kicked up a fuss.

MIL got angry because my mum didn’t ‘have to put up with’ my dad when she had to ‘put up with’ DH’s dad (and his wife, the OW 30+ years ago). She sulked and acted the martyr throughout. DH’s siblings (who were successfully alienated as children) refused to acknowledge their father’s presence.

Do you know what all these people have in common? A refusal (which appears to be an inability, but it’s a choice) to put their own feelings aside for other people. Not one of them actually gave a shit that it was supposed to be about DH and I celebrating with our families. Their own resentment and grudges were far more important than that.

But, we’re both adults. We can stand back (with the benefit of decades of putting up with this crap) and think ‘what a bunch of arseholes’. Children can’t do that as easily when their parents and other family members are busy projecting all their emotional baggage on to them.

Why is she seeing this stuff on SM? It's not up to us to police how anyone else uses SM. Presumably the DCs don't mind their DCs being put on there? (IYSWIM? )

Best outcome: your DSIS blocks them and moves on with her life and maybe reflects a little that she might have made a mistake not accepting her family's help back then. And then find a lawyer who specialises in setting this kind of historical wrong to rights.

I understand why it sticks in your DSIS's throat but it was a long time ago and she should try and dwell on the fact that her kids are OK with the family set up. There is no point in upsetting them and also the young grandchildren by saying they shouldn't be calling X nanny or whatever.

10 years on I think dsis needs to move on & concentrate on her own children & new grandchildren.
She's wasted too many years on this.

The thing is Op if you cared about her, as I’m sure you do, you should be helping her move on. Not actively encouraging and agreeing with her.

My friends parents divorced when they were in their early thirties. Three kids. He was a shit by all accounts, he remarried. They are now in their seventies and she still hates him so much she can’t be in the same room as him, she won’t accept his “new” wife of nearly forty years, and has made their kids suffer for decades over it. Weddings were a particular nightmare.

He’s simply not retaliated and simply quietly lived his life. She’s been single apart from a few short lived relationships the whole time. She just can’t get past it. It’s like it happened yesterday.

On one hand you listen to her and feel discomfort for her and concern, and yes pity, and on the other hand you think “it’s been forty years! Yes your marriage ended, yes he moved on, but it’s been forty years, move on”

If you don’t want this for your sister, then stop feeding this righteous anger and start to gently push her to try to Emotionally move on. It’s been ten years, do you really still want her to be like this as an old woman, having lived her life full of bitterness and anger?

What happened to your sister is awful. But you all need to move on. It's been 10 years for goodness sake.

Your sister seriously needs to stop allowing this man and woman to continue to sully and define her life.

After 10 years if she still lives in bad circumstances I'm afraid that's now her own fault, not theirs.

She needs to stop giving these people so much power over her. Stop stalking social media. Block and move on.

After 10 years I'm sorry but she clearly has a relationship with those children,as has the exh, both of whom are entitled to do so and post what they want on social media.

Choice I think a PP was right when they suspected this may a poster who regularly posts about how bitter they are that their ex and his new wife have the life she deserved.
If it is then they will probably read this thread and refuse to listen or it will go quiet for a few weeks before another one is started.

Yanbu, they're obviously unpleasant people. But you can dwell on it or get on with your life (same for your Dsis). How long do you intend to let someone else's behaviour have such an impact? 10 years it's time to refocus her energy to where it's actually needed.

@LolaSmiles Oo I hadn’t thought about that. The one that kept posting as if she was the step mum. If it is the same poster then she is very bitter and never going to move on