Can you forgive the cheater and the mistress?
This is real. Not a made up story. I will not waste my time sharing this if it is just a fake story. I'm also not asking for someone to comfort me. I just want to know your thoughts and what you would do if you were in my situation.
My father has been cheating on my mom since I was 5 years old. They fought almost every day. There was never a day without arguments, but they never separated. When I was in Grade 2, my father cheated with someone my mom personally knew. That woman even deceived my mom by telling her that my dad’s mistress was another girl, when in reality, it was her all along.
My whole family knew about their relationship, but we couldn’t do anything. My mom didn’t want us to grow up without a father. She also had loans because she supported my father’s business, and she was still paying them off. She believed that if she left him, she wouldn’t be able to give us a complete family or a better life. So she stayed. She cried every night and went to church every day to pray.
When I turned 16, my mother died. She became sick, and we believe the stress contributed heavily to it. Deep inside, we knew that everything she went through because of the affair broke her emotionally.
Only 8 days after my mother died, my father openly started flirting with the mistress. Just one month later, he brought her into our home, and they even slept together in my mom’s room.
At that time, I was still in school. One day, I went home early after taking a half-day leave, and I saw them together inside the house, acting sweet and happy. It hurt so much that it filled me with anger and dark thoughts, but I couldn’t do anything because I was terrified of my father.
A few months later, the mistress became pregnant, and they decided to live together in our home. She brought her entire family with her — her siblings, her children from a previous relationship, her nieces, and nephews. They all stayed in the house, and eventually, it felt like they were the ones controlling everything.
I felt like I was constantly walking on eggshells inside my own home. I couldn’t even eat or use the bathroom comfortably because I didn’t want to cross paths with them. There were so many things she told me not to do. She also started using my mother’s room.
She never hurt me physically, but both she and my father hurt me emotionally for years. She would often play the victim and cry to my father, accusing me of things I never did. My father would then shout at me, insult me, and say painful things, including telling me that I ruined his family.
I had no choice but to endure it because I had nowhere else to go, and I desperately wanted to finish school. Until I graduated from university, I lived with that emotional pain almost every single day.
Even after graduating, I stayed because I wanted to protect the house since it was also my mother’s home. But eventually, my father and I had a huge fight because of the mistress again. I told him that what he did destroyed our family, and he responded by saying, “The same thing will happen to you. You will never have a happy family.” After hearing that, I decided to leave.
A few months later, my father decided to sell my mother’s house. I tried to fight for it at first, but eventually I gave up because I was already emotionally exhausted from everything he said and did to me. We were supposed to split the money equally, but I only received 1/8 of the total amount while he kept most of it. I let it go because part of me still felt sorry for him. He was old, starting a new life, and raising another child.
My mother also had a survivorship claim because she worked her whole life so her family would continue receiving financial support from the government after her death. My father never worked, yet he became the one receiving the money every month. He even called it his “salary,” and he used it to support his mistress and their child.
Despite everything, I still talk to him sometimes. I’ve continued to be kind to them, and whenever he asks me for money, I still help him. But lately, I’ve been questioning myself and wondering if I should continue doing this or if I should finally cut them off completely.
I still love my father because he is my father, and he is already old. But at the same time, I carry so much pain because of what he did to my mother, to me, and to our family.