r/ACOD

I cannot believe I am typing this, but as I wait to speak to a therapist, my siblings and I (all adults) have nowhere else to go. Here it goes:

Growing up my parents have never had the best relationship and they would often get into heated verbal arguments and fights, and my siblings and I often thought they would be better off separated or with a divorce. Now more than 20 years later when most of the kids me included have left the house and we (siblings and dad) find out that my mom (34 at the time) cheated on my dad 20 years ago with my dad's own half-nephew (24 at the time) and even got pregnant with his baby and they got an abortion behind my dad's back. My dad even said my mom told him she was so in love with the nephew she was ready to have his baby if he was willing to marry her and she would leave behind me and my siblings (we would have been age 8 and under) and my dad to be with the nephew. Dad's nephew declined this "offer," hence the abortion.

It sounds like I am making it up typing it up but it's true. My dad is devastated and has slept only 12-13 hours the last week or so. They're tried going to marriage counseling but it seems my dad wants the divorce which is understandable. My mom is somewhat of narcissist and she apparently told me sister she is "always the one to dump people, not the other way around." She does not work/is a homemaker (which I know is a worthwhile path),but my dad has worked extremely hard to support our big family. Anytime I talk to my mom she brings up all of these excuses, like her sexual abuse as a child, my dad's cold and distant personality and overworking throughout the marriage as reasons that contributed to the cheating). I don't buy any of this. My siblings, dad and I have always felt bad for my mom because of her abuse background that happened when she was a child, but it's really hard to connect that to her actions she took as a married adult woman or even pity her. She claims that because she was an abuse victim, she has always chased love and affection (maybe also validation from men) as she lacked that growing up. I don't really know what to think or do. She sure didn't provide us with much love or affection growing up.

My siblings and i all found out about this over the phone, as we are quite far from home. Any advice is appreciated

my parents (together for 26 years) have always been perceived by everyone (including me) as the absolute perfect marriage - our family is relatively popular in our specific niche community in our small town. they own a small business together, and things had been stable for the vast majority of my life. in fact, i've had a very close relationship with both of my parents as long as i can remember; i have always been genuinely good friends with them.

important things to note:

1. my mom (46) has severe CPTSD, which causes her to be very emotional and insecure - this can cause her to be controlling. naturally, our relationship has always been slightly more strained than the one i have with my dad, as i have been a teenage girl for the past six years
2. my dad's family has a strange obsession with him and has always hated me and my mom, which he does not realize or acknowledge
3. i still live at home

some time last year, my dad (43) started going through a midlife crisis. he started excessively working out, wanting to change his career (though decided against it because of the booming business they've established), and vastly changing his appearance. i knew their marriage was sort of rocky at this point, but didn't think it was too bad.

then yesterday morning (may 13), i wake up to a text from my mom giving me a heads-up that my dad was divorcing her. this is all of the information she told me:

in january, my mom found out he was apparently having an "emotional affair over text," and my dad confessed that he doesn't even know if he wants to spend the rest of his life with her. the obvious solution to this was couple's therapy, along with individual. it went well for a few weeks until he stopped talking to her at all other than the therapy sessions; it was clear that he was already emotionally checked out. nevertheless, she kept trying to fix things and make him as happy as possible.

in this time period, my dad would go on almost daily 3-hour walks in which he would call his own father (who has had 5 wives and cheated on all of them) and talk about their marriage, to which he pushed for him to leave. he would also talk to his good friend, who suggested the same, saying that he shouldn't be "tied down" anymore (even though he is married with a young son himself).

as i mentioned earlier, my dad's family has been hoping this day would come for many years, and has not been good at hiding it. his mother convinced him to go on this "spiritual journey retreat" with her best friend (who my dad has known his whole life). he reluctantly agreed, and he was given drugs to "open his mind." according to him, his body has been under so much stress that the drugs "didn't work properly" but he still just talked and talked to her for 10 hours. she decided that my mom has BPD and he needs to leave her (and consequently me) immediately.

then yesterday morning, he told her he doesn't love her anymore and has been pretending to be in love with her for years; that his love for her was more familial, like a parent to a child. she begged and pleaded for him to keep trying until the end of the year, but he refused. he said he never wanted this life, and never wanted to be responsible for anyone.

since he didn't know i knew at this point, i left the house and just drove aimlessly and wept. eventually i came home so i could "find out," and it went about as poorly as you can imagine. he doesn't know where he's gonna go, but he's leaving both my mom and i behind in our house. he assured me that we won't struggle financially, which i guess is a win, but that's not what i'm concerned with right now. it was a terrible experience because my mom was obviously breaking down on one side of the room, while my dad seemed very nonchalant and just annoyed by this whole thing.

i've been trying to be out of the house or otherwise physically isolated from both of them as much as i can, but they've both been texting me a bunch about how sorry they are. somehow that makes it worse - if you're so sorry, why are you abandoning me? what do you mean i'm not gonna hang out with my dad every day because he doesn't want to be responsible for me anymore? i know this whole thing isn't my fault, and that is painful in itself because i can't do anything. i just won't have a dad anymore - at least, not in the way i've had one for 19 years. :(

i think my mom and i are gonna sell this house and move across the country to be with her extended family. she said it's up to me, and i don't think i could handle being in this house and this town any longer than i need to be.

my mom has only allowed me to tell two people: my boyfriend and my best friend. of course, this is better than nothing, but since it's only two people, i worry that i'm being too much of a downer all the time. it's been like 40 hours since i found out, but i just don't want them to leave me too. how long and how sad should i be to them before they'll get sick of me?

anyway, this is gonna be a logistical nightmare with the business, prior commitments, the house, etc. how do i survive these next several months as this transition happens? how did you handle it?

I’ve recently separated from my husband and we have a 2 year old daughter. I feel incredibly heartbroken about the state of things. I want to get the perspective of adults who grew up in this sort of environment especially before you were old enough to really remember your parents together, the fights or the tension leading up to the divorce. If separation was simply the “normal” structure you grew up with, what was that experience like for you?

Were there things that affected you emotionally, or in how you saw yourself? Were there things your parents did that helped you feel secure and loved, or things you wish they had done differently?

I’m genuinely concerned about my child’s emotional and mental wellbeing, and I want to do everything I can to make life feel as stable for her as possible.

Hi reddit. Need to vent.

I (21M) am a university student and live with my parents. My parents and I live in the United States. This year, I got the news from my mom that my dad is planning leave us and go back to our home country to "retire." He plans to leave after I graduate. My mom said "retire" and my dad said "go back home," which is why I put them in quotation marks, but I think the reality is that they are separating. I came to that conclusion just now on my own. My parents are not the type to discuss the full extent and emotional impact of this with each other, and they are not the type to discuss the full extent and emotional impact of this with me. I don't even know if they realize that this is separation, but I know better not to have that discussion for them. I kind of wish my parents would handle this like adults and just be more transparent with each other and with me about separating, instead of me connecting the dots on my own, but whatever. Exhausting family dynamics is the norm in our family unfortunately, and it's one reason why they aren't formally discussing about separating. After over a decade of my mom nonstop yelling with my dad because of his narcissism and irresponsibility, she is too exhausted to deal with my dad leaving. My mom told me that she "no longer wants to bother him." She is liberated by it and has shared with me what she wants for her future on her own. The other reason why my parents aren't formally discussing about separating is because the church they follow places a taboo on couples separating and divorcing. The word "retire" acts as a cover to do it discreetly. Divorcing, on the other hand, would be too obvious, which is why they will likely not do it.

As for me and how I feel about my parents separating... I feel stressed. If they separate, I'm worried about my mom since she does not drive and relies on both my dad and I to get around, but mostly by my dad. I offered to help get started on driving, but she's still thinking about and is scared to drive. I'm worried about whether or not we can live financially without my dad. Although my mom is the primary breadwinner of the house and is paying the bills and groceries, my dad is the one paying for our car insurance, gas, car repairs, and my tuition for university. I'm worried that I currently do not have a final education and career plan to tell my dad, so he can know when I have "finished school" and can then leave. I'm still figuring it out, although I fortunately have narrowed it down to either a career in Public Health or medicine as a PA. There's a lot I am worried about on how this new family rearrangement will look like. On the other hand, I am super relieved that my parents are planning to separate. My parents separating has been something I dreamed of when I was younger. I’m lowkey stoked in a messed up way haha.

20m uk

Ill try not to pour to much but I have known for a while that my parents divorce when I was around 10 has scarred me (im 20 now), I feel bitter that I went through it and it really impacted my ability to socialise in school which lead to bullying and loneliness. I feel like I can pretend to be a normal functioning person (confident and approachable even) now but the truth is I never feel truly comfortable around other people and often feel like im making up social interactions as I go along in an anxious sort of way.

I recently had a bad exam and I found myself crying in the shower in a ball for my mother and the pain was visceral and so much like when I was younger. I have trouble remembering anything from before I was 16 I feel my mind has just blocked it out. I love both my parents, but I struggle with knowing my mother had an affair on my farther with her current husband (I was never meant to find out I overheard it one day), I dont know how to handle the part of me that hates her for hurting my dad.

Sorry for a bit of a trauma dump, im hoping to see a counsellor soon, wondering if anyone has some kind words or advice since im new to exploring this part of myself

I am pregnant with my first child after multiple long, tortuous fertility treatments, and when I finally got pregnant, all I wanted to do was share the joy I was finally feeling with my parents.

For context: I am a two-time child of divorced parents—my mom remarried when I was 11. My dad was pretty much out of the picture, so my stepdad really stepped up and raised me. However, ever since the divorce between my mom and stepdad, I feel like the man I have only ever known as my father figure is now treating me like I’m just the daughter of his ex-wife. He has two biological children with my mom—my two younger half-brothers.

To be honest, I’m not really sure what kind of response I was expecting when I told him I was finally pregnant, but it feels like it wasn’t the one he gave. Maybe I’m still in denial about feeling the sting of the divorce two years later, but when he replied via text after I sent the first ultrasound picture and audio recording of the baby’s heartbeat, it read: “That’s fantastic!!! You will be a great mom!! Sending all my love and positive vibes your way!!!”

He hasn’t texted or called me since.

Again, maybe it’s just the pregnancy hormones and I’m being dramatic, but to me, that reply felt hollow 😔 Someone please talk me off this ledge. Tell me I’m just being dramatic and overthinking this.

First time poster here…

So…I (26F) found out yesterday that my parents (51) are getting divorced and I’m getting married in 6 months.

My mom filed on Thursday after finding out my dad cheated….again (first happened 5 years ago when dad was going through shi mentally, I saw it coming from a mile away) but this time it completely came out of left field. They had just retired, moved back to the U.S., bought a beautiful forever home, and honestly…it felt like they were falling in love again. We had finally gotten our family back. The four of us were talking again, having dinners together, laughing like we used to.

Now I feel like the ground disappeared beneath me.

I don’t know how to process the wedding side of this. How do I ask a man I’ve dreamed about since I was little to walk me down the aisle when he’s now broken the vows of his own marriage? I’ve had my daddy-daughter dance song picked out since I was 9 years old: “Butterfly Fly Away” by Miley Cyrus. I always imagined ending the dance with my mom, dad, and brother joining us on the dance floor. I was planning on doing a king’s table with both sets of parents sitting beside us instead of a sweetheart table. Now I’m wondering if my parents will even be able to sit at the same table….damn.

What makes this harder is that my dad has genuinely always been a good father. He’s supportive, intelligent, dependable, and has always shown up for us. My mom is truly an angel on earth. She’s devastated and furious, and her family is too. It breaks my heart hearing everyone speak about him with so much anger while I also see him sobbing and falling apart over what he’s done.

My brother is currently deployed in a war zone and won’t even be home until a month before my wedding. We haven’t told him yet, likely won’t until he gets back….hes going to be furious.

Selfishly…I’m heartbroken for myself too. I feel guilty even saying that because obviously my mom is the one going through the real betrayal here, but I feel like I’m grieving my family and the version of my wedding I’ve imagined my entire life. I’m struggling.