Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My husband of 30 years passed away last month after a lengthy battle with cancer. When I was going through his things, I discovered evidence of something awful.
He had been cheating on me for at least a decade. I cannot begin to describe the depths of how betrayed I feel. Now I am faced with the funeral and having to face friends and relatives expressing their condolences and taking turns speaking before everyone about what a wonderful man he was. This will be very difficult for me, as I’ve just experienced a knife to the heart. But my bigger concern is whether to tell our two adult children. Do I bear this pain in silence and preserve their memory of their father, or do they deserve the truth?
—Waylaid Widow
Dear Waylaid Widow,
I am so sorry—for your loss, for the betrayal, for your discovery of the betrayal only after your husband’s death, and after the long period of his illness, which must have been very rough for you as well as him. You were robbed of the opportunity to grapple with this information while he was alive. I’m sorry he wasn’t brave enough to tell you himself while he had the chance.
When it comes to all the people who will offer sympathy for your loss and tell you what a wonderful man he was, you need only to say, “Thank you.” You have suffered a great loss (greater than these people know). And your husband may very well have been wonderful to them—and, I’m guessing, to you for many years, in many ways; the last decade does not negate that. I’m not suggesting that you forgive him, dismiss what you’ve learned, or feel other than how you feel—only that a long marriage is a complex organism with many facets, twists and turns, and seasons, and that every human being is complicated, too. No one thing defines any of us (not even the worst things). See if you can take in what people are saying to you in the spirit in which it’s given. They don’t know the whole truth, but they feel for you. You can thank them for this.
As to your adult children: I think what you do depends on their temperaments—their own complicated selves—and on your relationship with them. How will they take this revelation? Will they be able to take it (somewhat) in stride, or will it devastate them? Do you have the sort of relationship with them in which you tell them “everything”—or do you have some secrets, or simply things about yourself, your husband, or anyone or anything else that you’ve not considered appropriate to talk to them about, or that you weren’t willing to/interested in discussing with them?
In your shoes, I’d worry less about preserving their memories of their father (that’s not your job) than what this information would do to them and to your relationship with them. I certainly don’t feel you have an obligation to tell them. I don’t believe that children, even adult children, “deserve” to know everything about their parents’ lives. But I also do not believe you should suffer in silence.
If you are not accustomed to talking everything over with them, and/or you feel they will be destabilized and deeply hurt by knowing this, staying silent is not your only option. Find someone you trust to talk to about this. See a therapist, talk to a member of the clergy, confide in a close friend or relative, or unburden yourself to a new friend or acquaintance—someone who didn’t know your husband, who can be outraged with and for you without having to contend with their own reconsideration (or even defense!) of a man they knew. Join a widows’ support group (I bet you won’t be the only one there who learned something upsetting/shocking/infuriating/baffling about her husband only after his death). In any case, there’s no rush to tell your children. Even if you do decide to tell them, because it’s too painful to keep what you’re going through a secret from them, give it a little time. Give yourself a little grace, too. This won’t be an easy conversation.
—Michelle
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