What a weekend...

[AlexEN]

Carlos,

Which is to say...I think it's important to let your children know that there were problems - and also let them know that you didn't do anything bad...but telling them that might not be as effective as inviting them to talk with you about what they're feeling and what they're afraid of...

Short of telling them I didn't do anything bad, I have done the above... I don't want to smother them with it, but they each know they can talk to me about what they are feeling... They are liberal with that (except for D11), but this came as a surprise to me...

I talk with my S12 a lot about what happened with my marriage - and how it fell apart - but I've never told him about her affair or about the possibility (almost certainty) that she had a second affair around when she dropped the bomb...

And you think telling him that it is even more difficult for you to be friendly (or friendy as @Smiley would say) with her because she had inappropriate friendships with other men would be harmful to him in what way? Would it not be truthful? Would it not help him make more sense of the situation? It need not be expressed as ill-will; it isn't d*mning, but it is factual. Stated in the negative; isn't it possibly more unhealthy for him not to have enough of the story to make sense of it?

I try to keep him away from the dark stuff - focusing his attention instead on the odd ways in which we're sometimes given opportunities to improve ourselves throughout our lives - and how sometimes those opportunities come through/with a lot of pain and sadness...

Not sure why, but that strikes me as a very heavy message for a child to understand. There are many of us who have been told similarly on these very boards that still wrestle with that very concept...

How do you think you'll proceed?

Gonna have to sleep on it. Don't want to give the Dr. up, so I don't want to probe the matter with S9. I guess when the opportunity presents itself, I will let him know that, as far a I know, I didn't do anything "really bad". Hope W present if and when this happens and she has "decency" to so offer on her own (or second if I have to say it), but that is not in my control. I get the impression Dr. will try to probe on this one, as she was clearly taken a back by it. Maybe I can even ask her to have him ask me or W if I did something bad... Still thinking... But, my eyelids are drooping...

-AlexEN