If one of your parents is probably having an affair

How would you handle it? What about having strong suspicion vs having solid proof?

My mother and stepfather are both really immature in certain ways. My stepfather is a major flirt, and is also very needy when it comes to female attention. While I have never thought this makes him automatically cheater material, I have always thought his tendencies are red flags. Then there's my mother, who also easily feels insecure, but instead of acting outright needy, she masks it by trying to make others feel insecure, too.

So over the past several months, my mother has been making a point to work it into conversations with her husband that she shares sexually inappropriate jokes with her male boss and coworkers. Because of how well I know my mother, to me this is a blatant sign that my mother feels insecure in her marriage, and is trying to make her husband feel insecure, too, as a result.

Then over the past few months, whenever my mother is out of town (she is often out of town for days to a week at a time on business), my stepfather is out very late. Normally they are both home between 6-8PM on work nights. When my mother is out of town, my stepfather doesn't come home until very late, like 10PM or even much later, and recently he didn't come home at all, meaning he spent the night somewhere, but not at home. He didn't return until late the next night. When my mother is back home from a business trip, he goes back to coming home at normal hours after work.

So the situation is that I have a strong gut feeling that he is having an affair. So not only do I have no proof, just a gut feeling, but I'm not sure what the ethically right thing is to do about a situation like this. On one hand I feel that it's not my problem and none of my business. On the other hand, what if he gets my mother sick? My biological father cheated on my mother and have her an STI. Luckily it was an STI and not an STD, so she was able to have it taken care of at the doctor's. But what if she gets an STD? Will it have been morally wrong of me that I didn't say anything, that I could have prevented it, but didn't? Yet the feeling that I should mind my own business and not cause any drama is equally strong, especially since I have no proof.

PLUS I live with them both, and probably won't be able to have my own place for quite some time, due to a series of mental illness related events and current problems. If I did say anything to my mother about what I've been observing, I would have deal with any fallout and blowback 24/7.

What are your thoughts on a situation like this?

This.

Which is not to say that I don't feel for your situation - I do.

So how would you handle the other side of the coin. Like for example, if you were in my shoes, and it turns out an affair is happening, you saw the warning signs, and then your mother gets an STD, and confronts you about never telling her what you saw - what would your response be? Would you feel guilty? Would "it was none of my business" be a cowardly cop-out?

In other words I am looking for your reasoning as to why not saying anything would be the ethically right thing to do, so that I can understand it for myself. I want to feel that what I choose is right, but I need to understand it before I can feel it. I have to be able to explain it to myself and make sense of it.

Part of it is that if someone were cheating on me, and a loved one had strong suspicion but never said anything, I would feel extremely betrayed. If I got a disease in the process, I don't think I would ever forgive the person who didn't say anything. I would feel like they were just cowardly and not a true friend. So part of me is projecting that onto my own position.

What would be an explanation on how not saying anything is the right thing to do?

So, there is no right answer here. All the options will in some way have negative effects. Your parents' relationship should justifiably be afforded some level of privacy.

That said, your father just brought it to his kid's attention by not coming home one evening. In effect, he made it your business. I would be so pissed at the man - he purposely put you in that position. What a selfish thing to do - now it gets to weigh on your conscience, not his. If he is in fact not cheating, he owes you an explanation as to what-the-h3ll! It's out of the ordinary and I would have been worried about him being a no-show all evening. Car accident?

If you are going to say anything to anyone, start with him. And if he confesses to an affair, give him h3ll - how dare he put you in this position. Then, I don't know . . . If he was adult enough he would be working on things with your mother directly so you don't have to witness all the dirty laundry.

Frankly, anyone who cheats is going to get caught. It's inevitable. And, people who cheat KNOW it, too. Maybe he is ready to "be caught" cheating to get things moving between him and your mother.

You could keep your concerns under wraps - you have no obligation to speak up, nor do you an obligation to keep it to yourself. But not speaking to your father privately about it could really build resentment in you. But, you could be resentful even then. Your mother already suspects. This is a bad situation all around.

Anyway, from my POV, the bottom line is that if something inappropriate comes to the attention of one person by the offending party, then there is no obligation for the other person to do anything one way or another. The offending party is ultimately responsible for brInging down the house of cards.

Good luck with this.

Thank you for your input, Onward.

Ultimately I don't want my mother to get sick.

I'm also intimidated by my stepfather, for various reasons, I wouldn't have the guts to confront him about something like this.

Right now it's 11PM where I live and he is still not home, my mother is out of town on business all this week. If he doesn't come home at all tonight (again) then I'm going to feel convinced he is having an affair and that much more terrified that he is going to get my mother sick.

My mother is a fragile, dysfunctional being, in some ways sinister due to how warped her mind is, but there is still some good in her, and still some hope for her, and I still love her in spite of everything. If she gets another huge blow to her psych/emotional health by going through the same **** again, she might implode, and it will cause me immense pain, too, because I love her, and I don't get to choose that, it simply is.

But at the same time I know it is likely to blowback at me hard, as family problems always have, I am the scapegoat, always have been and likely always will be. It's always like this.

Not sure if it was a good idea or not but I emailed my brother and asked him for his thoughts/advice. My brother has always been the more tempered and level-headed one, whereas I am more impulsive and emotional. I think I am going to wait and see how he feels about the situation and what he thinks we ought to do / not do.

I believe that like attracts like. Your mother and stepfather are both immature and have issues. They are compatible. You know, rarely do I say exactly what I think because frankly, I don't think people really want to hear it - but I'm going to go out on a limb here and trust that even if you don't - you'll appreciate the honesty.

Your biological mother married an insecure, immature, unfaithful and potentially abusive man and brought him into your life. She has a responsibility to you first and she failed when she married this guy. Now I stand behind the idea I presented before that like attracts like and however different they may be - they have about the same level of maturity.

Rather than fix herself, she tried to marry a solution. She failed. You are suffering now because she put her wants before your needs. Would you try to help a drug addict who was still using drugs or would you require, at the very least, that they put the drugs down first before you helped them? Well mom is an addict. Instead of putting drugs into her system to make her feel normal or acceptable, she uses emotional games.

If she was in therapy, trying to talk your step-dad into marriage counseling, making any positive step in the right direction of becoming more healthy and stopping with the same ineffectual and unhealthy behaviors that led her to this man in the first place - then yeah, tell her. But she isn't. She brought this on herself and it is not your responsibility to save her from herself. When the drug addict spends their rent money on drugs, do you pay their rent for them?

I pretty much said it all above but we do not help the people we love by shielding them from the consequences of their actions. She picked him - at both her and your expense. Let her pay the bill. I'm feeling a lot of co-dependency in this family.

I understand, but your position and hers are different.

Okay so failtastic conclusion to this story, for the curious. I couldn't stand it, emailed my brother, then couldn't stand even waiting for that so emailed my mother my concerns and was very emotional. My brother gently explains to me that my stepfather is out of town and that is why he hasn't come home. Apparently there were conversations about this, about him going out of town for business, and I have no memory of them. My whole reality is apparently distorted as **** and now I look like a nosy fool. I should have taken yagr's advice - word of example-based caution to others in a similar situation. Didn't use self-control and was impulsive, this is what happened.

Hi,

My advice would have been that you should tell your mother about your observations without suggesting anything (i.e. tell her that he has not been home a lot for unknown reason). It looks like you did that already.

You shouldn't feel like a fool at all! She is your mother, it is only natural to care for her and her safety! Not caring about this would have been worse.

Your brother's explanation doesn't fit so well to your observations. Why is your stepfather working late and taking business trips only when your mother is away? And why didn't he talk to you himself? I think you have all reasons to be suspicious.

Don't feel like a fool. You were understandably concerned.

If you live together and he is not home at night it is fishy.

On the other hand when my ex was away on business trips I often used that time to socialize with friends or relatives as I had no need to go home early. When your mom is gone he might not want to be home. I am not saying it's because you are there but my ex's adult daughter lived with us at the time and neither one of us wanted to be home if the other person wasn't there. We weren't cheating. Just had no interest to be home.

It is not unusual for couples not to rush home if their partner isn't there (unless there are young children home).

Not coming home at night at all is s but weird but who knows

Also I think there is maybe too much meddling in each other lives takes place and bad boundaries. I and my adult daughter are pretty close but she doesn't know if I ever have STD. How do you know?

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Fishy, indeed.

CopperStar - are you often told you have a bad memory? I ask not to stir things up, but based on yagr's responses, it sounds as if the adults in your life are really dysfunctional and I question if they like to twist the truth to their advantage.

You acted quickly on this. You should have made sure first what is going one with your stepfather. Your mother happiness and health are your business, in my opinion, but you need to make sure he is having an affair, first. My two cents.

Just a bunch of messy dysfunctional crap from my childhood. I didn't understand it all as "dysfunction" while growing up but I was in charge of protecting my mother, making sure she was okay, literally and emotionally. It was my job to protect her from my father and be her therapist and help her make decisions. Etc. She would tell me everything and has always been an over-sharer and a bit inappropriate at times.

I think I still have a subconscious knee-jerk reaction after all these years, because when we were kids, if my mother ever got overwhelmed she would get in her car and leave, leave my brother and I with our drunk abusive disgusting father, and we never knew when she would be back. He was worse to us when she wasn't around.

Lots of reasons all combined but I still get strong impulse reactions when I think she is being threatened by something.

Perhaps you know of the term gaslighting?

How likely is it that your brother would participate in gaslighting you so as to harm your mother or protect your stepfather?

My fiance's family is going through this right now. There are 3 children, all have handled it differently so I'll tell you which actions yielded the best result.
His one sister lives very close (almost next door) to his parents and she's involved in EVERYTHING. If their dad wants her to "stalk" their mother on FB she'll show him how. It's really affected this sister, more negatively than I think she thinks it has. He relationship has kind of fallen apart as a result of all the tension.
My FI has taken a side. The "rightful" side, IMO, but he's been a constant ear for his dad, however, his dad doesn't LISTEN to any advice given and it's an overall depressing atmosphere.
His other sister has completely ghosted. She went and lived her own life and leaves them to deal with their issues. We haven't heard a peep from her in over a month.

My advice? Be the other sister. It's not of your business and they need space to work out their issues.

Gaslighting . . . Bill3, you knew where I was going with my last question, didn't you?

Yes, I did.

Have you ever heard of something called a "Drama Triangle"? Google it and see what you think, vis a vis your own situation.