The big bad lie

LegacyUser

Hi all,
A regular member but going unreg for this one.
Basically, I need to vent somewhere as I haven't discussed this with anyone and after a few days of it doing circles in my head, I need to vent!

So quick back story, me a male (late twenties) with one younger and one older sister. Children of a broken home from years ago. Dad was alcoholic and his relationship with my mother was loveless and at times abusive. Mother left dad, taking kids with her. New life, new home, not too far away from dad so we grew up pretty happily.

Except for one thing, any time I visited Dad when he was on a binge, he would go on about how my younger sister was not his daughter and mother had an affair. Obliviously, being a child, this upset me so I would go home and ask mother what was daddy going on about. Each time she assured me it was just the drink talking. Dad had a convincing argument though, myself and older sister are much darker, brown eyes and dark hair. Younger sister was blonde with blue eyes. But mother assured me, younger sister was indeed daughter of my dads.

Fast forward a few years, me, now 25, visits dad. Dad is sober at this stage so I ask him straight out why he said those things about my sister to me as a child when he was boozed up. He still maintained mother had an affair all those years ago, and the result was my sister. I go back to mother, curious to hear her side of the story, and it was as it was when I was a boy, she denied any affair to the last.

Dad died a few months back, and low and behold, mom rings me, telling me to come home as she has something to say. She admits she did have an affair (2 odd years in total) and my younger sister is in fact my half sister. I'm gutted to think that technically she has a whole other family out there, as growing up I was very close to her.

But my mother is the one I can't get over. As a boy, I realised from an early age that dad would not be abusive to her in front of us children, so whenever I used to hear him raise his voice, I used to go into their room, pretend to be sick, and ask mammy to come to my room until I fell asleep. I was by all intents, her protector as a child.

I can understand her reasoning behind not admitting to the affair as I was growing up, but at 25, surely she thought she could tell me the truth and I would be able to handle it. I considered her not just my mother, but my friend too.

Then to hear that she lied to me all those years, knew full well that as a child I called dad a liar to his face, as a man told my dad he was wrong to be saying those things, when all the time he was the one telling me the truth, and now that its out, the man is lying in a grave and I can't do a friggin' thing about asking him for his forgiveness.

I am so bitterly disappointed in my mother, a woman I idolised for her strength to rear us as best she could single handedly, a woman who has been such a rock to me all my life. But held such a massive lie from me at the same time,

Jesus, what do I do?

looksee

I am genuinely sorry for your grief, but as far as the situation with your mother is concerned, it is not your business. I know your father made it your business, but he is now gone.

It is not your place to judge your mother, I would not say 'forgive her' because there is nothing for you to forgive. She lived her life and did her best for you, be glad of that. You have no reason to take offense about something that was between your parents.

Could it be that after a lifetime of maybe feeling anger towards your parents for breaking up, anger at your mother for being, as you now see, less than perfect, and for leaving your father, anger at your father for his alcoholism and for putting responsibility on you too young, you are now trying to grasp at something to pin your anger on?

Anger is part of grieving, but what is there to gain by allowing yourself all this indignation and despair about something that is done, is gone, and doesn't really make any difference to your life? Don't let it affect your relationship with your mother; she wasn't perfect, but who knows what the rights and wrongs of it were, what was cause and what was effect? None of us is perfect.

On the fact that your mother chose to wait until after your father's death, yes, it is understandable that you feel let down and betrayed over that, but it was outside your control, you could only deal with the information you had at the time. The family is grieving at the moment and it would be easy to say a lot of things that would be better left unsaid. She made an error in judgement in a difficult life, that is within your capacity to forgive, at least think about that before allowing your anger to speak.

ihsb

Hi OP, I agree with the above poster.

The only thing that I would add is that if I were you I would be upset for your sister. She is still your family but she has been denied knowledge of her father for her whole life and now she has been told this after years of being lied to.

Your mothers relationships had little or nothing to do with you, but because of the way that she conceived your sister, she had the right to know this from the start.

If I were you, concentrate your energy not on hating your Mam but being there for your siblings, become a tight unit and work through your loss and help your sister through this time.

tbh

need2vent wrote: »

I am so bitterly disappointed in my mother, a woman I idolised for her strength to rear us as best she could single handedly, a woman who has been such a rock to me all my life. But held such a massive lie from me at the same time,

Your mother is your mother, but she's also only human. She did what she did because she thought it was in your best interests, and the best interests of your sister.

Your sister has always been your half-sister - the only difference is, now you know. Apart from that, nothing changes.

What do you do?

You give your mother a break. You remember the fact that she's been a rock for you your whole life, your friend, your mother and your protector. You try to empathise and understand how your mother must have felt every time you asked her the question, and the feelings she must have had to be finally driven to come clean to you. And most importantly you - with the greatest respect, because I have a lot of respect for you - get over it.

SlowSprint

N2V,

on the face of it, I would have a lot of sympathy for your mother and would suggest that you can forgive her.
It sounds like she went through hell in her marriage, and I can understand why she looked for a way out, or perhaps someone to give her some solace.

I grew up in possibly similar circumstances to yours.
Even when I was young, perhaps oddly, I wished that my mother met someone else. I felt she had a lot of interests, a lot of love to give, and she was getting nothing from her disfunctional marriage.
She never did. They followed the traditional path, of staying together in the face of complete disfunction and lovelessness.

They are both now dead. When they left, I felt a massive frustration, that they left behind so many questions unanswered, that I couldnt even begin to tackle. Not the same question that you are grappling with, but many others which dragged me down for years.
Its all pointless, they are dead, and I have my own life to live.

My main point is this: your dad is dead, and your time with him is over - time for forgiveness, for getting questions answered, for sorting out stuff that is bothering you.

Your mother is alive, and that is a blessing. I suggest that you put all questions of the past aside, and any resentment, and give her all of the hugs and massive love that you can possibly summon from your heart each day that she is still with you.

If my mother was with me for just one more day that's what I would do.

Best wishes,
SS.