Many people have a tendency to put their parents on a pedestal. As the people that brought us into the world, we expect them to have a moral compass that can guide us through life and tell us the ‘right’ thing to do. So, it can be unnerving to discover that they’re actually normal people with flaws, just like everybody else.
And one woman was so shocked and disappointed to discover that her parent’s relationship was the product of an affair that she even disinvited them to her own wedding. Discussing the drama on Reddit’s Am I The Asshole thread, the 27-year-old detailed how the infidelity went down: My parents were telling me about how they met,’ she wrote. ‘[And] they started telling me how “romantic” their story was.
‘Long story short, my dad was married to someone else and they were trying to get pregnant but they couldn’t. He started having an affair with my mom, who worked with him and knew about his wife and them trying to get pregnant, and my mom got pregnant with me. When this happened, my dad left his ex-wife and married my mom.’
From this story, this woman’s dad is definitely giving off some Henry VIII vibes. Leaving one woman who couldn’t get pregnant for another who did is seriously dark. And it hurts to think of the abandoned wife who went through the emotional rigmarole of struggling to conceive to then be abandoned by her partner.
‘I was shocked when they told me this,’ admitted the original poster [OP]. ‘Not just by what they were telling me but they were so relaxed about it. I knew they met at work, but I didn’t know anything about this.’
‘I blew up at them and told them they were horrible people,’ she continued. ‘A few hours later I texted them that I was disinviting them from my wedding. This was yesterday. They’re telling me they thought I would be able to understand now (because I’m getting married I’m supposed to understand why my dad had an affair?) and I’m overreacting.
‘I don’t know if I made the right choice,’ the OP added. ‘They’re good parents. Honestly, I wouldn’t even care if they admitted they hurt people or showed any guilt. But they were literally bragging about how “romantic” it was and now I can’t stop thinking of the poor woman my dad left behind, and how I’m part of the reason this all happened. I can’t think of my parents the same anymore either. My husband is saying I should try to forgive them but he will support me either way.’
Undeniably, this is a moral conundrum and the resentment the OP feels at her parents’ lack of remorse is justified. Even if they’re happy, they should be able to recognise they hurt somebody else and the fact they’ve been together for almost 30 years doesn’t make the emotional damage they caused romantic.
But seemingly, the horror the woman feels also stems from the fact that she was unintentionally involved in her dad’s ex-wife’s pain through simply being the baby that resulted in him abandoning her. That’s a hard thing to realise, and she probably would have reacted better if she wasn’t informed in such a flippant way.
Ultimately, though, the OP will regret not having her parents at her wedding. As she specified, for the last 27 years they have been good parents and she’ll presumably want to share her memories of her ceremony with them.
For resolution here, information is key. There are two sides to every story and, clearly, there is more to her parent’s connection than simply a lustful affair that resulted in a love child. It might even provide closure for the OP to know more about her father’s first wife and whether she found happiness of her own.
It’s a hard realisation that your parents didn’t meet and couple up like the main characters in a Disney film. But the hard statistics are: sixty per cent of men and 45 per cent of women will cheat at some point in their marriages. So, unless most of us want to be estranged from our families, we might need to learn to see the nuances in infidelity.
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