A daughter wants fathers to recognize everything they pass on—adultery included.
Dear Fathers of Daughters,
I know most of you guys realize that your girls look to you to teach them what to expect from themselves and from others. You know that if you disregard them, if you treat them like possessions, if you value them only for their beauty or for their place on your holiday card, if you tease them for being dumb or for being blonde or for being too girly or too butch, they will believe that those things are the Truth, with a capital T, about them.
You may also know that how you treat their mother will teach them how they deserve to be treated by others. You know that if you value women, your daughters will learn that they deserve to be valued. If you shit-talk women, they will learn that they deserve to be regarded as shit.
But there’s something more insidious that happens between fathers and daughters, too, something complicated and profound. Something I’m not sure I can explain without telling you how my father is, in a way, responsible for me being an adulterer.
My father was a photographer in Los Angeles. True to form, he married a model (my mother) and became an addict. It’s a story as old as time … well, as old as Hollywood time. He was so unbearably whiny, depressed, needy, moody, and temperamental that when he found another model who was younger and prettier, my mother wasn’t altogether displeased to let him be the charge of this new woman, Elyse.
But I was very small, perhaps six years old, and all I saw was my mother being left alone by the father I adored for this young, vibrant 26 year-old. And boy was Elyse beautiful.
I watched the way my father regarded Elyse. Once she came downstairs in a pair of his beat-up old Levis, cut into shorts. He looked her up and down and was clearly mesmerized. He said, “nice legs” and she shot him a half-smile and went outside to water her flowers. I made a mental note: Always act like you already know anything a man tells you. Oh, and have great legs.
Based upon what I said when I opened this letter to you daddies, you’d think I would’ve married a cheater. I didn’t. I married an incredibly nice guy. A handsome guy who believes the sun wakes with me every morning and sets with me at night. He believes I am smart, strong, gorgeous, sexy and funny. He would wear a giant foam finger that says “#1 Fan” just below my picture if that existed.
He isn’t perfect, he can be distant and cold and quick-tempered. I’m often alone, emotionally and physically. But he’s about as good a husband as they realistically come.
Then one day I watched a man walk into a PTA meeting at my son’s school and everything changed. It was so clear to me that this man was special and important that I made a point to be invisible, avoiding him at all costs. And then one day he approached me, we chatted, and it turned out he was brilliant and funny and perfectly awkward and self-aware. I thought to myself, I’m thoroughly fucked.
I had not even had so much as a crush on a guy in the eight years before I met Mark. But when Mark walked through that door it was like a spotlight was shone on him and I couldn’t walk away. When we became friends on Facebook (mistake number one), I fell in love with his words. I am a word-nerd. A clever turn of phrase is seduction. We became great friends and spent time together at school volunteering. We laughed non-stop and within a short time we had a deep bond. We never talked of love or sex or attraction. We didn’t need to.
Mark adored his wife, Allie. She was a power player in The Industry and he was a freelance writer working from home with his kids. Every day was a new story about Allie, how Allie could name any song in the first five notes, or how Allie looked incredible in a trench coat. Allie was the best gift-wrapper, had the ass of a 20-year-old, and drank bourbon straight up.
We didn’t see each other for a few months in the summer but talked daily. When I ran into him the week school started, I could see in his eyes that he was in love with me. I hadn’t been trying to make him love me, but I loved him immediately and I should have known better than to be anything more than passing acquaintances.
We started an affair, but one purely of words. We avoided each other in person and went a year without seeing one another. We didn’t want to be cheating so we stayed away. In that time, we would “break up” over the guilt probably five times. We were both in love with our spouses but believed we were somehow meant to be together. I couldn’t imagine being without him. He was the other half of me that I hadn’t known was missing.
But then Allie found out about us, and it was over. Mark, rightly so, cut all ties with me. We had never touched, never been closer than three feet away, but we were in love, and in most ways that is worse.
I was wrecked. It was the worst breakup of my life. Worse than when I divorced my first husband, worse than breaking up with my live-in boyfriend after three years. Losing Mark was the worst thing that had ever happened to me, and I was crushed. For a very, very long time.
Every once in a while Mark would write me just to say hello. When I wrote him back he would disappear, which would gut me. I would reach out to him sometimes, I couldn’t help it, always in terror that Allie would find out and go ballistic and tell my husband or shoot me through the heart with a crossbow or something.
Finally we had a perfect moment of closure. We ran into each other at school and admitted that we had been in love, and that what we had was very real, very authentic. We knew there was no other way to go than to focus on our families. We parted ways peacefully and perfectly.
But it wasn’t enough for me. It should have been resolved. I am an incredibly strong person, and I should have been able to move on. What the hell was wrong with me? I Googled “genetics and infidelity” and found some interesting (very) early data about a so-called Cheater’s Gene, a variation of DRD4, that made me wonder if somehow I was predetermined to become my father: a charming, boozing, pot-head who would jump from relationship to relationship. It was sort of terrifying, but I had thus far resisted the boozing and the drugs. The key to living a different life just had to be within me.
Finally, while walking in front of a large reflective storefront window, I stopped. I looked at myself closely. I was in what my friends and husband call my uniform: tomboy-ish jeans, classic boots, a deep v-neck tee shirt that showed off my thin chest and prominent collarbones. I wear my hair in a severe chin-length bob. I feel good, unique, classic. But I look like her. Like Elyse, the woman my father left my mother for. I only wear grey, black and white as a rule. So did Elyse. I don’t wear heels or miniskirts or short shorts or anything trendy. Neither did she. I had somehow morphed into her and never noticed it.
And now I was the other woman. I realized, in that moment, that my love for Mark was very real, very much about how incredible he was. It was genuine, powerful, and authentic. But my inability to let him go was about my dad. I needed to feel powerful. I needed something from Mark that I never wanted and would never have asked for.
I needed him to tell me he would leave his wife for me. It was the only thing that would satisfy me. It felt like it was the only thing that would heal me. The fucked thing is, one reason I loved Mark was because of his commitment to what was best for his daughters and his wife. I would never want him to leave them. But some part of me was screaming for it.
And finally that realization was what started my healing process, nearly two years after meeting Mark. I wanted the power to pull a man from his beautiful family. I wanted to be Elyse, and not be my mother.
I’m still trying to find a way to let him go, to tease out what I’m doing when I start an email to him and then delete it, which is still nearly daily. It’s hard to know what part of me misses him and what part of me just wants to feel that power. If we were both single, I’m sure we would be an epic couple. That part of us was authentic. But for now I remind myself that I am powerful just by virtue of being my own, talented self, and by doing the work to be better.
No longer do I fall for the tricks of my subconscious that tell me I want Mark for myself. That fantasy is the quicksand in my heart, the part of my heart that was damaged by my father’s infidelity. I step into it and I sink, sink, sink into my old daddy-wounds. And that’s what I want to convey to you guys, you fathers of daughters. I want to tell you that where you put your love is where your daughters will want to go. Be it now or when they’re 35 years old and you’ve been duped into thinking your little girl emerged unscathed by your infidelity.
Dads, we daughters are a canvas upon which your behaviors paint a map of our futures. We can veer off that map, toward health and strength instead of your legacies of mistakes, but it’s very hard, like paddling up-stream on a raging river. I am certain any parent’s infidelity affects children of both sexes, and I don’t want to pass this legacy on to my own children. I want the Truth of me to be that I fought against my legacy, and ultimately made a better choice.
—Photo Spirit-Fire/Flickr
About Anonymous
Somehow, somewhere, in America there must be a person left of either gender under the age of 45 who wants to own his/her life and not place culpability for their behavior with their parents, their economic status, their gender, their race, or popular culture. Whenever anyone makes such a claim, they fail to account for the many, many more individuals from identical circumstances who do not transgress.
What shall we say to the millions of women whose loving fathers were adulterers who did NOT choose to become adulterers themselves? “We can veer off that map, toward health and strength instead of your legacies of mistakes, but it’s very hard, like paddling up-stream on a raging river.” No, sorry. It is not hard. Not if one wants to be faithful.
Moral choices like fidelity are not supposed to be easy. That’s why getting laid takes 2 bourbons, bad lighting, and 15 minutes, but a solid marriage takes a lifetime.
Looks like you changed your mind during the paragraph break.
While I can appreciate this being written as a letter to fathers of daughters to let them know how their behavior affects them I’m wondering why this isn’t perhaps also being written as a letter to daughters of fathers on what behaviors not to pick up (advice on how to “veer off that map”).
That’s a good point. That could apply to any addictive and/or destructive behavior that seems to be linked generationally. I think that’d be a brilliant piece for someone to write: A child of an addict or adulterer (or abuser, or whatever) and how they didn’t grow into what their parents chose.
Personally, my husband’s father was physically abusive and a drunk, and my father, too, was an addicted adulterer, like the author. I don’t know that either of us could write on how to grow away from these legacies perfectly due to the fact that neither of us did grow away from them perfectly. My husband is sober for fifteen years and has never hit any of us, and I have never had any problems or temptations with addictions (pure luck, probably), but have encountered issues of fidelity in the past.
For us, we use a term called “provocative” and we both know that this means, “This situation/person/conversation/whatever is bringing up old shit to me and I’m trying not to let it provoke me.” If I do something and he says, “This is really provocative to me,” I know this is triggering old wounds and try to give him space or help him resolve the trigger.
Recognizing the triggers of our historical issues is 100% necessary in healing old wounds. It isn’t an *excuse* for my husband to say that he drank too much partly because he has a genetic tendency and also because he was raised in alcoholism (and coping with the abuse he endured/witnessed), it’s simply a recognition of something that is very scientifically documented: alcoholism runs in families.
So while you could say my successfully sober husband would be a great one to write a piece like that, these posters above would probably call him out for having been less-than-moderate with alcohol for so long and then referencing his father’s alcohol abuse as a factor.
The person who has a legacy of pain, addiction, abuse or whatever, who never struggles and never faces that past, probably has a pretty ugly surprise awaiting them somewhere in their future.
Recognizing the triggers of our historical issues is 100% necessary in healing old wounds. It isn’t an *excuse* for my husband to say that he drank too much partly because he has a genetic tendency and also because he was raised in alcoholism (and coping with the abuse he endured/witnessed), it’s simply a recognition of something that is very scientifically documented: alcoholism runs in families.
I see this come up in talk about Domestic Violence a good bit. I have no first hand experience on how the counseling of (male) abusers goes but outside of the counseling office and on the street and in the forums people are often too quick to recognize those triggers. When a man who was abuased as a child is abusive to his own family a lot of people are very quick to write off his even mentioning his past abuse as an excuse (in fact I have actually seen pamplettes for DV support lines that literally call an abusive man’s past abuse an excuse).
Now that’s not to say that such past abuse should be used a justification for what he did. However as you say here it must be recognized. There’s a good chance that said man was abused as a child and never got the help and support he needed to properly heal from it.
I recall an episode of The View a few months ago where American Vice President Joe Biden was on talking about the VAWA. At one point after pretty much disregarding a point Whoopi brought up about abusive women Biden commented that nearly all the men in prison for violent crimes grew up in a home where they witnessed dad abusing mom. I don’t know how true that is (and frankly I’ve never seen any data on it) but thing that is true is that lot of the men in prison for violent crimes were themselves abused.
If nothing else doesn’t that serve as a warning to start paying more attention to abused children (espcially boys)? It just seems like when a boy is abused (especially by a woman) people don’t seem to care as much as they will 15 years later when that boy is grown up and is now abusing his wife/kids. Yes he’s wrong and should be punished but if we TRULY want to stop him from abusing again then why not give him a chance to heal from the pain he’s been carrying for so long?
This is getting closer to the truth about why letters like this are important. Whether you are a parent, we’re all children of someone. We learn things without realizing what we’ve learned until we are forced by our circumstances and/or personal resolve to see our behaviors in a larger context. It doesn’t excuse a bad decision to explain where it arose; it alerts me to the sorts of situations in which I am likely to make bad choices, so I can work at being more aware the next time I’m tempted. Whether your outlet is smoking cigarettes, cutting, some other kind of self-harm, or sending the abuse outward in some way, we shouldn’t judge people for figuring out the causes of their behaviors. It doesn’t automatically mean that a person is trying to squirm away from deserved guilt. I think it even helps separate harmful shame from useful and manageable guilt.
I am sorry BUT you had an affair, you knew you would, STOP BLAMING your father and take FULL 100% no questions asked responsibility for your own actions.
Jeez, I am so sick and tired of people of this generation blaming everyone else but themselves.
I try to take an objective approach to stories like this. I like to test some of the conclusions by seeing where they lead, to see how much of it I can agree with. With this piece, I kind of buy it, kind of don’t.
In this case, I couldn’t help but notice that the author is a parent herself. She has a son. If her father’s infidelity had a profound influence on her relationships, then presumably her infidelity will have a profound influence on her son’s relationships. Her son may be unfaithful someday because she was unfaithful.
In principle, it would be logically consistent for her son to be able to blame her if he cheats on his wife later in life. At some point in the coming decades, he could present a very similar story online, struggling with the role that his upbringing played on his development. He could write in to a women-centered site warning women about the effects of mothers’ infidelity on their sons. If he has children and they have marital problems, they can then write articles about him as well.
I think that’s what she means by this, wellokaythen:
” I am certain any parent’s infidelity affects children of both sexes, and I don’t want to pass this legacy on to my own children. I want the Truth of me to be that I fought against my legacy, and ultimately made a better choice.”
The title of the article made me want to read it. Kudos to the headline writer for that. The article itself seemed to say something substantially different, with much less blaming and deflecting of accountability. What I saw was the story of an emotional attachment that in the author’s eyes, and those of many women from what I’ve heard, was enough to count as an affair. However, they kept their distance physically and eventually cut off the intimate friendship altogether, which to my man brain, means no affair happened. Some boundaries were breached and I can see why the other man’s wife or the author’s husband would have a problem with that kind of relationship continuing or escalating, but it doesn’t strike me as adultery, or even infidelity since there were important boundaries they didn’t cross.
I also didn’t see any daddy-blaming except in the headline. It sounded to me like someone struggling with decisions already made, feeling accountable for those decisions, discovering some insight into what influenced her in that direction in the first place, and hoping to be more self-aware as a result to avoid making the same mistakes. Then there was something about paddling on a canvas, but YMMV (your metaphor may vary).
I think Anonymous had an affair, and that she knows perfectly well she did, and that so does Mark, the guy involved. Who knows what her husband is like, but he’s as likely to think, no PIV intercourse, no foul, as to agree with his wife that an emotional affair is a breach of the marital agreement. Monogamous couples are typically expected to not only reserve sexual intimacy for one another, but also other kinds of intimacy.
This piece nicely reminds those of us raising children that the way we live our lives, the way we carry ourselves, the way we behave and treat other people – it all has a great impact on our children, far beyond here and now. We show our children how life is lived. In our family interactions we show how to be a family, how to conduct loving relationships, how to be partners.
We can only try our best to set good examples, and hope we do not make too many mistakes that turn out to be traumatic for the kids.
OTOH, we must not demand perfection. We must not demand that our kids are perfect, and we must not demand that we ourselves are perfect parents. No parent can raise a child without making mistakes, even bad ones. No-one can live a perfect life. Yes – we hope that our relationships last and that we can give our children stable families, but not all relationships do. Even if you do your best, divorce happens. People fall out of love. Couples break up – sometimes initiated by the man, sometimes by the woman. And a man who has divorced will find a new partner more often than not.
All these mistakes, all these mishaps in the lives of parents have great impact on the children. Most of us carry childhood trauma to a lesser or greater extent. Part of growing up and coming to terms with yourself is realizing these trauma and learning to live with them. It’s unfortunate, but it’s how it works in a world of imperfect humans. And it’s why we must all learn to forgive – forgive other, and forgive ourselves. And it’s why learning to live with these imperfections, learning to reflect on who you are and understanding what drives you, and learning to pick your own course independent of your childhood “programming” is such and important life skill.
I agree that, as a father, I should try to be a good example to my daughter (and my son) for how to have a loving relationship. But I will never be perfect. So if I have to make a choice, I will rather focus on helping my daughter to be strong, independent, to trust herself and have integrity, and to be able to look at herself and reflect on what’s going on in her life – and to make changes if needed. I hope to do that in part by doing so myself, and by being able to tell her when I realize I did the wrong thing and talk with her honestly about the choices you make in life.
For 3 years the OP was MIA from her marriage because of a fantasy she never took full charge of. She dreamed of being with a bespoke man instead of her husband who she describes in terms so passionless that, were I he, would have me taking the door.
A wise man once advised that if you are going to indulge in fantasies of this sort then ride them (mentally) to their natural end. imagine the breakups, the divorce court proceedings, the look of betrayal in your childrens’ eyes, the tears, self-loathing and alienation, and the repeat – when the cycle starts over for one or both of you.
Imagine reading your loving/cheating e-mails in the divorce trial record. The whole sordid mess in all it’s likely outcomes.
That full-fleshed fantasy is likley less appealing and easier to shake than the illicit play-time romance for which th OP neglected her marriage.
Brilliant, simple advice:
“A wise man once advised that if you are going to indulge in fantasies of this sort then ride them (mentally) to their natural end. imagine the breakups, the divorce court proceedings, the look of betrayal in your childrens’ eyes, the tears, self-loathing and alienation, and the repeat – when the cycle starts over for one or both of you.
Imagine reading your loving/cheating e-mails in the divorce trial record. The whole sordid mess in all it’s likely outcomes.”