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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To cut off a family member having an affair?

113 replies

YorkieMumma · 27/12/2022 18:06

A very close family member dropped this bombshell on me in Boxing Day, after claiming they “didn’t want to ruin Christmas” when I asked if they were seeing anyone (this was on Christmas Eve when they arrived).

This family member proceeded to tell me that they are in love (!!!) with a work colleague. They have been seeing each other for months, he is married and has two children - one of which has a life limiting medical condition.

My relative has said that they have given the guy the Christmas period to decide if he is going to leave his wife - not for them, of course, for himself. This family member is apparently not okay with having an affair and feels terrible etc, but maybe they can be together in the future once he’s divorced his wife and ruined his children’s lives.

Some more backstory. My mother, brother and aunt were all abandoned by their father when he decided he was leaving their Mum for his secretary. My grandmother was pregnant at the time. To say that my family has been impacted by the horror of infidelity is an understatement, and this family member is one of the above so this is particularly shocking.

I had to hide all of this from my Mum on Boxing Day so I wasn’t the one destroying Christmas - I have a toddler and I refused to
be the one who let all of that mar Christmas. The next day, I phoned said family member and did go absolutely ballistic. They are flitting between ending the affair in January, waiting for him to leave his wife (which we all know is an excuse for him to carry on sleeping with this family member) and maybe they will end up together in the future.

AIBU to remove this person from my life for not only having an affair, but having an affair with someone whose child is incredibly sick and won’t live very far into adulthood? I am
appalled and disgusted in every level. This family member, considering their personal experience with this situation, is honestly the last person I ever expected to have an affair. I feel like everything I thought I knew about them is wrong and they have to be sick and selfish on a whole new level to do this.

OP posts:
Windbeneathmybingowings · 27/12/2022 18:21

My dad had an affair. My parents divorced. And were both 100% happier after and so were we. Coparenting brilliantly even before that was a word. I think YABU.

motherhubbard12 · 27/12/2022 18:23

Totally unreasonable. The biggest mistake she has made is to confide in you. I'm pleased you're so perfect.

YouJustDoYou · 27/12/2022 18:23

I understand your feelings, OP.

HitMeWithAHotNoteAndWatchMeBounce · 27/12/2022 18:25

YouJustDoYou · 27/12/2022 18:23

I understand your feelings, OP.

I think most of us understand her feelings.

It’s her reaction that people are responding to.

OldTinHat · 27/12/2022 18:26

Okay, it's brought up difficult memories for you but she is not in the wrong. HE is. He's married. She's not.

YABVU and spiteful. Support her, don't cut her off.

neverbeenskiing · 27/12/2022 18:31

You sound like you're enjoying the drama a little bit to be honest. Why did you need to phone your aunt and go "ballistic" about a situation that has no direct impact on you whatsoever? You don't have to condone you're aunts choices. Since she's chosen to unburden herself to you it's fine to say that you think what she's doing is morally wrong and that you don't want to hear anymore about it. But cutting her out of your life is a very extreme response.

TheLittlestLightOnTheXmasTree · 27/12/2022 18:33

Yabu

Dacquoise · 27/12/2022 18:36

Perhaps the Ops reaction is due to the trauma caused by her grandfather's infidelity. These sort of things don't happen in a vacuum and can cause a lifetime of trauma and hardship to those affected by it.

It's also puzzling why people affected by their parents infidelity then go on to do the same to their own families in the same way that children of alcoholics either go onto alcoholism or avoid it like the plague.

In my own family my mother was deeply affected by her father abandoning her mother for another woman. Resulted in a childhood of poverty and deprivation (and mental health issues) as her mother had to support three children single handedly.

But my mother and both her siblings are multi-adulters leading to eating disorders, abandonment of children and subsequent adoptions and all sorts of traumas to their children.

It would be lovely to think these things are private matters between the parties involved but my experience has been the opposite. Everyone has been dragged down with it, expected to collude against parents etc I'm NC with my whole family, not just from a moral standpoint, but the ruthless selfishness is hard to ignore.

NickyT64 · 27/12/2022 18:36

Everyone is assuming it’s the aunt. Why couldn’t it be her brother……..

Stationsofthecross · 27/12/2022 18:37

Good god, it’s not your business. Super dramatic too btw.

Tiltedandwilted · 27/12/2022 18:37

Unless you know all the details it’s best not to take sides like this

Liorae · 27/12/2022 18:44

InBedBy10 · 27/12/2022 18:13

Not your circus, not your monkeys.

But she needs a circus and she wants some monkeys.

UnshakenNeedsStirring · 27/12/2022 18:46

You need a hobby or a job if you dont have one.

halfsiesonapotnoodle · 27/12/2022 18:46

OP, please don't get drawn in to it. Just be yourself, treat them as you would have done anyway. I disagree with taking the moral high ground and judging. It's not your place or your business.

user1496262496 · 27/12/2022 18:47

Given that a high percentage of the population will have an affair at some point… you could end up very lonely if you have a ‘cut off’ policy for affair participants.

Metallocker · 27/12/2022 18:47

HitMeWithAHotNoteAndWatchMeBounce · 27/12/2022 18:16

I’m not sure why you need to disguise the fact that it’s your aunt, when it’s so obvious it’s your aunt. It’s not your Mum, and the object of the affair is a straight man (since he has a wife), so it’s your aunt.

I mean…. yeah, I wouldn’t be too impressed either. But I don’t think I’d be getting all dramatic and cutting people out. That’s not going to have any impact whatsoever.

Just because a man is married to a woman, doesn’t mean he’s straight. He could be bi or gay and just realised or gay and living a lie.

TheLittlestLightOnTheXmasTree · 27/12/2022 18:49

Well op hasn't come back to her thread....

GooglyEyeballs · 27/12/2022 18:51

Way to make someone else's life and situation all about you OP!

Maddening how some people observe other people's lives and decide they need to put themselves in the centre of it.

Justnosing · 27/12/2022 18:56

Oh my god, give over. Quit clutching your pearls and stop being so overly invested in other peoples lives. It has absolutely nothing to do with you. And whilst an affair isn’t ideal, they may well be in love. You can’t help who you fall for.

that said, you’re entitled to live your life with or without whoever you want in it. But if I was your relative I’d be the one cutting you off for being such a weirdo.

YouJustDoYou · 27/12/2022 19:02

OP, having been through this, my feelings for said family member numbed when I found out what he'd been doing for years. It was an innate response I had no control over, and the more I found out the more numb I felt.My feelings never returned, all these years later, it was awful what he did and instantly changed how I saw him. I may not have disowned him had he lived (he died a year later after discovery), but still, it changed the way I saw him, after seeing what it did to my poor nan. She was destroyed after finding out.

YouJustDoYou · 27/12/2022 19:05

All these people thinking they are so morally right saying "how dare you" etc, but what if this happened to them? What if their dh did this to them, and their own family were like, "well, your poor dh....he's only human...poor dh....you are so wrong to judge him! And how dare you think we're wrong for not liking him now!". Hypocrites are like that.

MissTrip82 · 27/12/2022 19:08

YouJustDoYou · 27/12/2022 19:05

All these people thinking they are so morally right saying "how dare you" etc, but what if this happened to them? What if their dh did this to them, and their own family were like, "well, your poor dh....he's only human...poor dh....you are so wrong to judge him! And how dare you think we're wrong for not liking him now!". Hypocrites are like that.

Hypocrites are indeed an issue here.

Thats the problem with getting up on your high horse, isn’t it? It’s a really really long way to fall when your own imperfections are revealed.

I’d not personally get too comfy on the moral high ground. It’s precarious at the best of times, more so when your own words suggest a love of drama and an insightless view of yourself as the upholder of rightness.

theleafandnotthetree · 27/12/2022 19:18

I think if I had to, I'd rather hang out with the aunt than such a judgemental drama queen. How can anyone with this harsh and hardline a view even function in modern society without their head exploding?

FKATondelayo · 27/12/2022 19:20

I'm trying to imagine a situation where a grandfather's affair would cause generational trauma. Pretty shit for the kids at the time but this is presumably many decades later and all are middle aged (at least) adults by now.

Tadpoll · 27/12/2022 19:21

This thread is FASCINATING.

🍿 at the collective u-turn on the usual MN stance that anyone having even an emotional affair should be burned at the stake.

Lol at ‘pearl clutching’ and ‘maybe they’re in love’, as well as ‘I hope you never make any bad decisions in the future that your family judge you for’ 😂