Was my mother emotionally abused? Father had long term affair.

[Crockofgold]

My mother and father had very much traditional roles when I was growing up but it came to light years later that my father (probably for about 10 years) didn't just go away for the weekend with his club, drinking and partying I think) but lived with another woman and had a child with her.

My parents never argued, but they also did not speak much to each other. I was totally unaware this silence was not 'normal'. My mother slept in a separate room but cooked and cleaned for my father, never being nasty or bad tempered. Growing up we never realised something was wrong. Mum just seemed to accept it but I am sure she resented it.

My father died at 50 and mum never talked about it or him and died a few years ago. My father was very calm and laid back, never temperamental or bad tempered. He gave her his wages every week. He never smacked or shouted at us. Neither did DM either.

Was my mother emotionally abused? I'm wondering if this is true it why I've put up with the load of shit my H has dished out over the years. Divorcing him as we speak but I wonder is seeing this passivity growing up has made me put up with bad temper, emotional abuse and some physical violence.

That is so sad Crock. I guess this is what people mean when they say about showing your dcs a good example of a relationship?

Yes, I think you probably stuck it out longer than you should because your poor DM did it all your childhood. How did you find out?

I am sorry you are going through a bad time now and well done for ending it.

Thanks. I have wondered why I went on and married a bastard who threatened to dump me if I did not have an abortion. I am really confused by it. I've never thought of myself as a weak person but I clearly am to have put up with all this. I did it so my kids (luckily now teenagers) could have security, even though I realise it's not been good for them. This is what my mother did but she had no family at all to turn to.

I found out after dad died when my brother told us he had informed this OW about dad dying suddenly. We've never discussed it so no idea how he knew.

It seems just so strange. My parents did have a good marriage for a long while (4 children) so the whole thing was such a mystery.

I suppose if you grow up with parents being equal and respectful of one another it teaches you to respect yourself and expect to be treated well.

Just coming to the end of my marriage has made me think things like this and try to make sense of it all. I'm realising more and more how wrong it all was. I am on the way out though!

Really sorry Crock, sounds like you have really been through it. Your DM could have been happy with the situation perhaps and chose to stay because of finances.

You are your own person though and you are doing the right thing. I am just sorry that you put up with that horrible man.

I wish you a happy future.

Thanks. I intend to. I think when you reach the end of an abusive relationship you want to ask yourself what made you live with it so long. DM wasn't happy with the situation, but just accepted it because of finances. Traditional SAHM who never worked.

I believe that to be emotional abuse, yes

Thank you. I'm seeing now why and how that affected my rationalising and excusing my own treatment. I think understanding yourself comes with breaking free emotionally and it's something that's only just occurred to me. It's just a situation that was

Especially as one of Hs taunts to me was I am cold and a man hater like my mother was. Not true for either of us.

Without knowing either parent it is impossible to say if this was abuse. You have no idea what went on nand although I feel for you and your shock, it's not fair to take sides now when your parents are not around to complete the picture. Although your dad had an affair he may not have been the villain of the piece. Have you ever considered that your mum may have been a cold and unemotional woman, whom he didn't want to divorce for all sorts of reasons ( maybe giving you and your siblings a stable home came top of the list..?) and his way of treating your mum well was to make sure she never went short of money and had a roof over her head.

Someone in my immediate, close family had an affair for over 40 years which came to light after their death. I'd never consider the other partner in the marriage 'abused' because they had the choice to leave- just as your mum would have but she didn't.

I just feel it's terribly sad that people live like this when they are unable for whatever reason- to make the break.

Have you thought about counselling to talk this through? Might help.

Oh and I don't know about your mums' 'passivity' but you certainly didn't have parents whose marriage was a good role model of a healthy relationship.

I don't think it's ever as simplistic as saying that, because your parents' relationship was dysfunctional, you were destined to be in a dysfunctional relationship yourself. It's just one of many influences that shape you. Your mother's version of stoicism could have just as easily been rejected by you as copied. You could as easily have been attracted to a man with the same personality flaws as your father or someone who was the opposite.

I know a family of four adult children. Their parents were the most loving, solid couple, married 50+ years very happily, a model of stability. Their children, by contrast, had very poor adult relationships, multiple partners, and all kinds of personal problems. Maybe their parents made a successful marriage look too easy, I don't know.

Was your mother emotionally abused? If the definition is being manipulated or coerced into accepting intolerable behaviour from a partner then yes she probably was. However, if you'd asked her at the time, I'd expect her rationale would have included a lot of other influences.

Only your mother could answer that, emotional abuse is a very personal situation. Everyone's marriage is unique to them.

I know a family of four adult children. Their parents were the most loving, solid couple, married 50+ years very happily, a model of stability. Their children, by contrast, had very poor adult relationships, multiple partners, and all kinds of personal problems. Maybe their parents made a successful marriage look too easy, I don't know.

Ah you must be talking about the Royals.

OP- one other thing to consider is that ( not sure how long ago all of this was with your parents) people's expectations of marriage and what they'd put up with have changed considerably in the past 50-60 years.

My parents have been married for almost 70 years. For their generation, divorce was something to be ashamed of and was rare. Women- and men- often endured situations that nowadays would seem intolerable in a marriage. People sometimes had 'arrangements' that would be unacceptable to us. 'Emotional abuse' was not something that was recognised because the social norm of a 'good marriage' was, in part, for the man to be 'good provider' and not be violent.

For all you know, your parents may have had an understanding, reached a compromise, or whatever. Your father may have offered divorce but your mum rejected it for all kinds of reasons.

As for how this affects you now is hard to say. I think statistically we tend to mirror our parents' marriages ( divorced parents are more likely to rear children who divorce ) but there are always exceptions. And how we perceive our parents behaving will influence how we behave - it's one of the fundamentals of counselling to take a client back to their childhood and the role models they had.

OP do you have siblings? If yes, have they had similarly bad experiences with partners or difficulties forming good relationships?

I think this sort of thing used to be more common than it is now, but I'd say it's still very much emotional abuse.

Leading a double life because you know your wife has nowhere else to go, no means of supporting herself, and no viable alternative other than living on the street, is shitty, abusive, and in my eyes, unforgivable.

Leading a double life because you know your wife has nowhere else to go, no means of supporting herself, and no viable alternative other than living on the street, is shitty, abusive, and in my eyes, unforgivable.

Did the OP say that this was the situation?

Where is the evidence that her mum had no means of supporting herself, would have had to live on the streets, etc?

Not sure how long ago this was - but in the 1930s my gran was widowed and left with 3 children. They were also bombed out of their council house. They survived - my dad was 8 at the time.

The reason for saying this is that even if it was as long ago as the 1940s women did raise families alone- and there was no benefit system- my gran had 3 p/t jobs to support her family.

"Ah you must be talking about the Royals"

:) Ordinary working class couple, married in the 1940s and occupying 'traditional' roles at home. They stick out in my mind as a genuinely loving partnership. Not 'Waltons' saccharine sweet or faultless but very family oriented. Their kids include 1 alcoholic, 2 'OWs' and the last one has been married three times.

Another family I know, also with 4 adult children were completely dysfunctional. Divorced back in the 1940s, Dad never seen again, lived in poverty, Mother lurched from bloke to bloke, physically abusing the DCs along the way. The kids include 1 alcoholic, 1 victim of DV, 1 serial adulterer who has DCs all over the place, and 1 who is reasonably normal and been married to the same person for 50 years.

So the 'cause and effect' argument has to be treated cautiously.

This is a very interesting thread, and I understand your line of questioning, Crock - you seem very perceptive.

Yes, your parents' relationship will have been a very big influence in shaping your understanding of relationships, as will your parents' relationship with you, and a lot of other factors besides.

It is very likely that seeing your mother accept a crap deal in her marriage, helped you accept the same in your own adult relationships.

I think it's good to understand how we came to hold our deeply held, subconscious beliefs, in order to then start stripping out the ones that harm us. You'll probably feel like blaming your parents for a while. But ultimately, understanding the faulty lessons they taught you will help you address and change them inside yourself. And that internal change is the most constructive thing you can gain from this questioning.

This was more common than people think. Not being married or being divorced was highly stigmatised and many people just chose to make a life together and not to ask too closely what the other one was up to.

I know someone who was in this situations since early in their marriage, in their case, it is the woman who is a very strong Christian and doesn't want to be divorced, plus the desire to have a family life even if there is no marital life. They seem to have made it work, and their children have all grown up stable and having their own families and partners.

I think it is wrong to assume that today's standards apply to 30/40 years ago- or that this would necessarily be what the man in the situation wanted. In the situation I know, the man did offer divorce and his wife said no she would rather carry on having Christmas together, living more or less separate lives, but as parents together and that is what they have done.

Keep reading and rereading all the insights above! I'm just hoping by understanding my background and my marriage I can comes to terms with my marriage and put my feelings about Stbx behind me.

I was born when my mother was 44 and my parents generation didn't go in for divorce and my mother had no possibility financially of managing alone. She certainly wasn't cold and unemotional but she was very reserved and knew great poverty in her childhood, so staying married was her only option. Fear of a return to poverty with 4 children and society kept her in that marriage. I think I am very similar, reserved but capable of deep love. My father was the opposite of mum, loved to party, drink and company. I'm sure this is what he found in his OW.

I don't think either of them were nasty. Dad fell in love after a 20+ year marriage to someone else and mum withdrew emotionally from him. I've been told dad stayed because of his children and although he didn't intend or want to hurt my mother, I'm thinking more that it was EA simply because of the hurt it caused her.

I see real parallels with my marriage. Despite a good career I fell into a traditional female role of house and child care. H's parents were 'the man is the boss and the woman knows her place' type, but actually seemed happy because his mother knew her place and didn't rock the boat! I never managed it and paid the price.

All my siblings seem to have reasonably happy and stable marriages although all H's siblings have divorces, so I think H and I have both acted as our parents did. Odd because I intended to have a different marriage but married the wrong person and ended up behaving like my mother because he was behaving like his father, despite all the feminist books I read! I think I learned growing up I didn't want a distant marriage like my parents and intended to have a warm, loving one which probably played against me as I put up with things I never should have because I was so determined to make it work and ignored behaviour I shouldn't have. I think subconsciously I did behave like my mother despite knowing I didn't want her marriage.

I am trying just to understand what's happened. I've understood for a long while Hs behaviour and his parents, but I'm only now looking at my own background. I don't blame either of my parents but see their situation from both sides. I still love them both, but understand my fathers selfishness was the root of the problems.

I don't need counselling. I've got more insight from MN than from anywhere else . I'm just doing the 'closure' thing!

"I didn't want a distant marriage like my parents and intended to have a warm, loving one which probably played against me as I put up with things I never should have because I was so determined to make it work and ignored behaviour I shouldn't have. "

If I were you I would run with this one.

It's a popular (although mistaken IMHO) concept in general society that warm, loving relationships need effort, have to be worked at, 'take the rough with the smooth', and the responsibility usually falls on the woman... even now... to make it work. So it would be reasonable for the child of parents who don't have a good marriage, casting around for what a good relationship looks like, to pick up on these messages, formulate their own solution based on things they've read or heard about, and get it wrong anyway.

Yes I did think you had to work hard at marriage and looking back and never understanding why nothing was going right and utter utter confusion was all I felt! If you have no inkling your 'place' is to agree with the head of the household and to conform to his way of doing things and you carry on thinking you are equal, you end up being 'put in your place'.

Now that I understand all this I feel more at peace because nothing I could have done (short of surrendering my identity) would have made it work. It's putting all the pieces together that is giving me closure. My parents marriage has a place in it all but I also think it's more I am like my mother that has influenced me.

H certainly believed all he needed to do was put a rood over our head and food on the table and everything else was my job. Including boosting his self esteem by making all his views mine and putting up with selfish behaviour and ask for nothing for myself.

Never forget that, ultimately, you were unlucky and you did not deserve to be treated badly. If you'd met a different man may have taken your - let's call it 'traditional' - approach to marriage, thought he was the luckiest man on the planet to have such a lovely woman in his life, reciprocated with kindness and not subjected you to dreadful behaviour.

You are who you are. You learn from your mistakes.

It's a hard lesson but I think I've come out of it ok. I've never believed in revenge or holding onto anger and resentment because it hurts you more than anyone else. It's getting rid of the confusion that I felt at allowing things to get so bad before acting that I am trying to do by understanding the past and the present.

I don't think I will ever go so far as forgiveness for H because he made a choice to follow in his fathers footsteps. There was a time when he knew it was wrong and apologised but those apologies stopped and that's when his brain set in concrete. You can only forgive someone if they are genuinely sorry and though there has been a bit of lip service there he simply doesn't really get it, so the marriage is ending.

for the insight!

OP not sure how old you are now, but it would have been possible for your mum to have left and made a life for herself. Women did!
I wonder why you insist on seeing your dad as the 'bad guy' in all of this? He died incredibly young - at 50- so you would never have seen how your parents' marriage turned out in they have each lived to 80+. You mum had a choice and even though it would have been hard for her, women did divorce and make new lives.

I have seen and heard of so many marriages from our parents' generation that would not be acceptable to ours, but the truth is no one knows what 'deal' the people in the marriage came to.

You see your mum as a victim but that is you looking in from the outside. Others may have seen her as a sponger who was not willing to let go of the financial comforts your dad provided, even though she may have stopped loving him. That is not EA- it's a woman who decided to put money over the chance to move on with her life and allow him his.

I had a an old school friend whose parents seemed to have a 'perfect' marriage- church-going Methodists who never seemed to put a foot wrong. I learned some years later ( having lost touch with my childhood friend) that her father had left the mum for another woman. I was shocked and saddened for her. Shortly after it became known she'd been an alcoholic all their marriage and had made his life hell behind closed doors. Marriages are never as they seem to others.

To answer your question in your first post, it's likely you could have inherited some of your mum's personality and also without knowing it, modelled your own relationships on your parents, but as Cog says these things cam go either way. What has changed is that divorce is no longer stigmatised so you can't compare marriages and what women will put up with in 2014 with marriages in the 1940s- 1970s when divorce was rare and few women with children worked outside the home.