SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Sigh. I’ve noticed that I’m a person that isolates and cries alone. I’ve been so conditioned to cater to the emotions of those around me that I hold mine in public, cry for them, and then once alone, maybe cry for how I’m feeling. I don’t really reach out. One of my cousins today said to me, "maise, we are here. Don’t isolate like you usually do ok?" Which completely caught me off guard because I literally noticed just that morning for the first time ever that I isolate.

My dad died yesterday. 11/8/2023. He was 56 years old. Today is his birthday, yesterday was his mom’s birthday, who is alive and well and was with him in his final moments.

My family gathered, my brother didn’t mend the relationship with my dad and so he did not go. My mother checked in on one of my dad’s brothers (my mom hasn’t talked to anyone in that family in more than two decades). She sent me, her daughter, a brief text saying, "I’m so sorry, I know this is hard for you." Before that she told me she would attend the funeral to be there for his family…not to be there for her kids which are his kids, for his family…sigh.

My dad had a very detached relationship with my brother and I. I guess that means to my mother that we shouldn’t care when he dies…

He was never fully absent…my parents were married, he saw us in brief moments, we were connected to everyone in his very large family, I would stay with my aunts and uncles and cousins…he just…he didn’t know how to be closer.

I was very angry at my dad for a really long time. I saw how he affected my mother and my brother and it made me so mad at him. I also remember wishing he was closer to us in his presence. He was always close in proximity but very detached in presence. I used to watch all those family shows as a kid and think, I wish I had a dad that loved and cared about me…that I could hangout with and have a close relationship with.

Anyway, after my experience with my ex’s very very painful infidelity in our marriage - I got myself into therapy and really learned how to not only recover from past traumas and from the affairs and learned how to grow in independence and walk away from my ex, and the marriage…

I also learned how to grow compassion for my dad and to make amends in that relationship. I forgave him for his brokenness and his inability to live up to the expectations I had of him as a father. I learned to meet him right where he was at and to have a peaceful relationship with him there. For the last five years of his life, he and I were at peace in our relationship.

Toward the end of January of this year, my dad was diagnosed with a Glio Blastoma Multiforme. Gosh….how painful it has been to watch him in that journey. How painful it has been to watch the fear in his eyes, the determination to stay in absolute denial about what this meant for him, to watch him in his final days ask me where my brother is…to have my brother not show, to watch him end up exactly where he feared and did not want to be….

My dad’s father ended up bed ridden and in a vegetated state for 9 years after a brain surgery gone wrong when he was 50 years old. Medical malpractice. My dad feared he’d end up in that same way…bed ridden, unable to do anything, in a diaper, not functional, suffering…how painful it was to watch him decline into that very state in a matter of weeks….

I am so heartbroken to have my dad die at such a young age…for him to have been fighting it the entire time and not have been ready. I am so sad that I don’t have a dad anymore…

Part of me is sad at the idea and fear that as a result of him dying, that I’m no longer connected to that part of my family also…

My 14 year old daughter sent me such a beautiful message yesterday. It was so warm, compassionate, empathic, loving, supportive. I’m so grateful for her. I thought to myself how great she is…then I realized how my little one can be so caring and empathic and present in how this affects me. I thought of my mother’s response in comparison. Y’know, with a detached father and an emotionally neglectful and emotionally abuse mother, it’s no wonder I ended up with a cheater….I mean sheesh.

Anyway, I’m grateful for what surviving infidelity has brought me. I’m grateful for the lessons, grateful for my new found relationships, grateful for the compassion and the forgiveness that I’ve learned, grateful for this platform of support. I’m so proud and happy at my new found very hard earned independence and my peace. Because of how absolutely fucking painful and triggering and god awful the infidelity I experienced from my ex was, I got into therapy and pushed to heal so many broken spaces within me. Because of my healing, I was able to have a relationship with my dad for the last five years of his life. I was able to find peace in that before he died, I’m able to process grief differently now.

I wanted to take the time to write this out. To post. As I mentioned earlier in this entry, I have a tendency to isolate. I have not told my friends, I haven’t really reached out to anyone. I’m up at 3:06am, crying silently, typing this out, reflecting.

I love you dad, I hope that you have peace. I’m so deeply sorry that you went out like this. Happy birthday.

[This message edited by maise at 2:37 PM, Thursday, November 9th]

I'm so sorry to hear about your dad, maise.

Recently, I'm getting a first hand view in my own life of the damage that poor and absent parenting can do. There are very serious problems in my brother's family. My great hope for my niece is that she will follow a path out like yours -- accept that my brother is who he is and will not change, decide whether she wants to make peace with him, and even if not, find a way to make peace with herself. Frankly, I wouldn't blame her a bit if she never forgave him and reconciled, but I want so badly for her to stop trying to substitute a series of unhealthy relationships for the safety and support she should have had as a child.

What strikes me about your post is how your 14-year-old reacted. Despite all your struggles, it sounds like you knocked it out of the park there, breaking the cycle and raising a child who feels secure and bonded to you. I know that one of my great fears during the early years post D-Day is that I was phoning it in as a parent to focus on the problems in my marriage. I can't imagine battling addiction on top of that, and yet you've come out the other side with kids who know they're loved. You're a role model, my friend.

Sending warm thoughts to you and your family.

I am so, so sorry about the loss of your father. That’s a terrible way to go and he was far too young. It sounds like you have some nice memories and a peace about your relationship with him. I think that is the one silver lining of infidelity: even though none of this was the fault of the betrayed spouse, it forces us to look at all the other areas in our own psyche and we get an opportunity to fix that. And we learn how to deal with very difficult things.

Sending you the deepest condolences. I’m so proud that you’ve broken that cycle and have helped your daughter be in touch with her emotions and have empathy and I wish you peace and healing as you grieve the loss of your dad. My dad died four years ago last month, but he was at a much more advanced age, and I still miss him every day. And losing a parent is hard.

Maise i am so sorry for your loss. He was far too young. Feel the feels. Bring in family and friends to help you walk this grief.
Hugs and strength.

Thank you all so much for your kind words and support.

BraveSirRobin,

I do hope that your niece finds peace. I also hope that in that peace she learns to choose a community around her that can give her everything she deserves in the most beautiful ways.

I, too, had a fear of how infidelity and all of that would impact my children. It’s been such a journey of learning and growth.

BarelyBreathing,

Im so sorry for the loss of your father. Losing a parent really has been very challenging, very different.

I’m so grateful for all of you reading my post and offering your words. Thank you 🧡

(((maise))) What a heartfelt and heartbreaking post; but know that you are not alone. I shed a few tears for you first thing this morning as I read what you shared.

It is a blessing that you did so much work in IC that you healed a breach between your father and yourself. A lot of people don't get around to doing that and I'm sorry your brother wasn't able to be there for his father.

In my family, I had to accept that I can't really know the nature of the relationship between my siblings and our shared parents, as each one tells such different stories and carries different wounds. Same thing in my WH's family. I hope some time in the future, you will be able to talk with your brother about his experiences, but perhaps not right yet, as it is all so acute. Sounds like you will have to forgive him, too. And your mother? I don't even know what to say about her reaction (I take it they Divorced?)

In my FOO my mother left my alcoholic father, he got sober but she'd remarried and they never spoke again; all 4 of us cast off kiddos ended up in early marriages with spouses who proved unfaithful. I think we were all coping with the loss of our family by latching onto other wounded people. The worst part about death, in my experience, is that we get no more chances to fix what somebody broke in our life. We come to realize how all along, we were hoping time would help heal those memories. You clearly found a beautiful pathway to doing that with your father, how admirable.

It's completely okay to let it out to trusted friends or even here, as you did. I agree, isolating is a coping mechanism that we use but it doesn't let us deeply heal. I wish you more healing, more insights into the Whys and most of all, peace.

Thank you so much tushnurse and Superesse.

I spent the day with family yesterday for what would have been his 57th birthday. It was nice to be around them, heartbreaking to see one of my uncles (his younger brother) struggle and cry.

Superesse,

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond. Your post made me tear up.

My parents divorced when I was around 3 or so. My dad was dishonest and unfaithful much of the time. As for coparenting, my mother never felt my dad was doing his part, which to be fair he wasn’t…he was doing the best he could with the tools he had and he loved my brother and I but he was not doing his part in the grand scheme of things. She seems to believe that because of that, that my brother and I shouldn’t be affected by his death. I don’t understand that way of thinking. She has a right to her feelings, but to put them on others - especially the children of said dying man is just…her approach lacks compassion for those that feel outside of her, and it feels very selfish to me.

I’m so sorry to hear that all four of you ended up in that space due to FOO and trauma. It’s so crazy how we do that, even despite trying our best not to end up repeating patterns. I found that it truly took guidance through therapy for me to stop repeating them…I wouldn’t have known how to do things differently otherwise despite my best efforts.

I am so sorry for your loss.

This is just so very sad. To lose a family member is so hard, but for there to be additional stress on top of that based on relationship issues, etc., it really makes it so hard.

I’m so glad that you were able to experience your dad‘s passing however you needed to, rather than letting your mom diminish the impact of his death on you.

That is way too early to lose your daddy. I’m so sorry for your loss.

maise,
I’m sorry I just saw this.

Your post is just like you. Beautiful and full of heart. I have no doubt that you have instilled that in your own daughter and I am not surprised that she was able to bring you some comfort.

Grieving is a process. It’s not the same for everyone and complicated relationships can make things well…more complicated.

Feel what you need to when you need to. It’s been 3 years and I can still get quite a frog in my throat when I talk about my mom.

Losing a parent is hard no matter how we felt about them when they were alive.

I am glad that you are finding some peace. Big hugs to you.

Jeaniegirl, WhatsRight, WalkinOnEggshelz,

Thank you all so much for your kind words and support. My father’s wake was on Monday. My brother showed up at the very end and acted like a complete douche toward me. My cousins and aunts and uncles were there and so I found solace with them and found myself grateful to have therapy the following day so I could find ways to process how my brother hurts me.

It’s just he and I, I think I have to let go of the hope that he will ever be my buddy. We have the same parents and grew up together so I thought we could lean on one another and be friends in that space. It’s not realistic, he’s never been my buddy in the past and in my dad’s death he showed me that no matter what’s happening he still won’t be. Logically I knew that. If he couldn’t do it before nothing changes now…emotionally it’s been hurtful to swallow and let go the "hopium" as we say here.

I’ll remain grateful for everyone else that I find support in and a buddy in and a wonderful, loving, caring community and sense of family with.

WalkinOnEggShelz,

🧡 thank you so much. I hope that you and your beautiful family are doing well. Sending you all so much love.

Thank you so much to ALL of you. ((((Hugs))))

(((maise))) I had a brother like that, too. He waited until our father had died in the local hospital to call me and demand we pay for our father to be cremated! He said "He's in the morgue and we have to get him out." He had denied me the chance to go visit my father on his deathbed and then acted as if it was my responsibility to pay for the cremation, after he'd manipulated our father to remove me as executor and have him appointed, which role included the responsibility for paying burial expenses. How's that for....cold and ugly?

When our other brother died a year ago this week, he couldn't be bothered to show up for the children's celebration of their father's life. He and that brother had always been buddies, too. But he just couldn't be bothered.

So when he was hospitalized this summer and died in October, I stayed out of all his family's drama, but nobody understood why. So I just keep losing family.

A wise professor who publishes about death and dying once told me that death either brings a family closer (as we all wish) or it brings out the fractures in a family that had been there for years before. I certainly found out about my family fractures, and it sounds like you are dealing with the same sort of thing.

Is it possible your brother was behaving like that because you had asked him to attend and he was being passive-aggressive about attending by showing up late and acting that way towards you, because he really didn't want to go in the first place? Just a thought.

Maise,

I wanted to offer my condolences on your loss. I lost my mom on Mother's Day, and we had a very complicated relationship. I am the child who moved away, and I had been back and forth for her last three hospital stays before she passed. The last days of her life, she was loving to everyone, but irritated with me and actually mocked me for trying to make her more comfortable in front of my siblings and cousins, and I was 12 all over again. I cried buckets later that night and tried to understand what I did to make her treat me this way in her last days. My cousin's theory is that I look so much like my grandma, her MIL, who she did not like, and that she was reacting to that. Who knows, I just think it sucks that I came across the country to be with her, and she managed to make me feel unloved even as she died. I thought I had let that childhood feeling of not being loved go, but the A betrayal and my mom's final shots really did a number on me. I am proud of myself for getting back into therapy to work on all this, because the mom thing was a huge infidelity healing regression for me. The crying has become problematic. Talking to a smart therapist who is helping me connect some dots I didn't see is helping, if for no other reason than it feels good to do something to help myself get better.

I don't think sMom meant to hurt me, but I don't think she's ever really thought of me as a person, just a reflection of her, but it still hurt. I did my best to be kind and loving and my last words to her were ones of love. But. Here I am, six months later, wondering why people and life have to be so complicated, frustrating and sad.

Anyway, I too have kids who are so thoughtful and kind and loving that it makes me cry for completely different reasons. They were a blessing getting through my mom's passing and the aftermath, and I wonder how I ever got so lucky to break the chain of disfunction and raise such great humans.

I hope you are doing all the self care you can and grieving in the healthiest of ways. My therapist had me do a grieving exercise that was really interesting and I think helpful, but it drug up so much from the past. Her theory is that incomplete grieving has to be addressed, so here I am addressing it. I hope you find a way to process and package this loss so you aren't crying silently at 3:00am feeling isolated. Hugs to you.

Hugs to you. I’m so sorry for the loss and the people you have to navigate with that.

maise…How are you doing? Such a tough situation to face..

🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

WhatsRight,

Hey there, so sorry for my delay in response. It’s been a bit chaotic at times over here. So grateful to have gotten past the kids birthdays and Christmas. Unfortunately, my daughter and I experienced a car accident before Christmas that has left me dealing with the after math of emotions, insurance claims, doctors, and a total loss on my vehicle. It’s been a bit overwhelming.

The grief itself from the loss of my dad comes in waves of course. I think about him all the time. I had to see my brother on holidays but he ignores me and I’ve done the same. *shoulder shrug*

Been taking it one day at a time. It’s the best I can do. Still in therapy also which helps me immensely.

I hope you’ve had a wonderful holiday season with loved ones!!! How have you been? Thank you so much for checking in. ❤️

Oh no! I’m so sorry about your accident. When it rains it pours!

And I’m so sorry that you have to deal weirdness with your brother.

I wanna say this about the grieving process. Everyone is different, however I can say that I think of my dad every single day. And he passed away in 2006. But as the time has passed by, there is less pain when I think of him. The initial pain turned into sadness, which turned into regret, and finally…contentment and gratitude. With the warmth and love I feel for the memories I have of him.
My memory of him now is endearing to me, rather than painful.

I would wish for you that you go through those stages very quickly, but each one is helpful in its own way… or at least was for me.

I wish you well on that journey. ❤️

My memory of him now is endearing to me, rather than painful.

I love this ❤️ thank you so much. I look forward to getting to this very place, it sounds beautiful and peaceful. I’m so glad that you were able to process through grief and get here in your loss. Wishing you a happy new year, sending lots of love your way!

And to you as well! 😘