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1 - iamthelorax
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Not proud of myself. Told my son about my business
I messed up. Last week was pretty rough:
1 - My daughter was sick and I had to stay home from work.
2 - My phone crashed and prevented me from connecting to work VPN.
3 - I was reconciling with ex girlfriend and it ended over stupidness.
4 - My credit card was put on hold because someone used it for fraud.
5 - An amount of cash I really needed was confirmed to be arriving 2 weeks later than I originally expected.
6 - And LAST BUT NOT LEAST!!!! my son snuck out to go hang with his friends. One of them broke in a car and the cops found them. He was arrested for prowling.
After I completely freak out on him, I got his phone and started reading his texts to see exactly what the story was. He had the nerve to try and act innocent and I got to the bottom of it. As I'm reading his texts, I see a weird one talking about his siblings and asking when he'd be home.
Me:"Who the **** is this number!?"
Son: "That's *insert homewrecker's name here*"
Me: (already furious enough not to hear her name) "Why is that stupid piece of **** texting you?"
Son: I don't remember. Why do you have such an attitude about her!?"
That was the wrong answer for my mood. I went off and I mean OFFF!!!!!!! I ended up telling him about how she's not just a girlfriend, she's a homewrecker, she's a worthless loser who can't get a family of her own so she came and broke ours like the parasite she is, on and on and on and on and on. He knew well enough to be quiet at that point.
I don't regret the words and descriptions about her, they're accurate. They're also, however, none of his business. I feel bad about bringing him into that. I don't know if I caused some kind of issue with him and his mother or feel bad about his family situation but I shouldn't have done it.
Don't know what's to come of this, just needed to vent and this seemed the most logical place.
- Grace
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Re: Not proud of myself. Told my son about my business
I believe you should give yourself a break. Don't be too hard on yourself. We straight spouses are also entitled to our anger about the cheating and betrayal that happened to us. Sometimes those feelings need to be expressed too and it just so happened that it was infront of your son. But it was the truth maybe too much information but it was the goddamned truth. I also find it hard to keep a lid on all my anger at my ex ive pointed out his shortcomings to my teen daughters on more than one occasion (not helping with their expenses and always wailing he has no money but does not work hard enough in my opinion aside from cheating). Dont beat yourself up you had a hard day and you just needed to blow off some steam. BTW i think our teen age kids know the real score they are perceptive. Maybe when you are more calm you can talk about it with your son.
- Rob
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Re: Not proud of myself. Told my son about my business
Lorax,
Omg, after your week..dont beat yourself up. Teenagers..sometimes they need to hear the truth. They need to be taught respect for their elders and morals. Barring that I would tell then they get an old voice phone with no texting or data..sadly its hard to get our exs to back us up with discipline.
I hope someday these kids look back and realize what happened to us..but for now we have to be the parent..our spouses or ex spouses are simply other teenagers.
"For we walk by faith, not by sight .." 2Corinthians 5:7
- iamthelorax
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Re: Not proud of myself. Told my son about my business
Thanks guys. He no longer has a phone to speak of for a loooong time. I just felt bad for putting additional weirdness on the situation in his head.
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Thread Starter- OutofHisCloset
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Re: Not proud of myself. Told my son about my business
Lorax,
What I see in your tale is a displacement of the sort we straight spouse chumps/empaths often make. After a series of events we/you didn't cause, but to which we/you react, we/you then focus/ed on our own behavior and what we/you did wrong rather than on the precipitating event.
Yes, you blew. But why did you blow? You blew because your son snuck our at night and was part of a group of boys, one of whom, on their joint escapade, was breaking into cars. And you are worried about what damage you might have caused to your son for speaking as you did?!?!?
I think you need to focus on your son's behavior and to take steps to find out why he is hanging out with a group of boys engaged in such behavior, and do whatever you can to disentangle him from this group. I say this as someone whose son, at age 15, engaged in similar behavior that I failed to discern was a sign of a larger problem. (And your son's "acting innocent" is a sign, too.) Taking your son's phone is a punishment for sneaking out, but it doesn't address the underlying reason he's sneaking out and why he's associating with kids who would engage in this activity. Sneaking out can be innocent, yes--we've probably all done it. But when sneaking out is coupled with being with a group of boys at least one of whom is breaking into cars it's in a different category.
I don't mean to over-interpret or to force an interpretation on your situation from my own experience, and of course you should ignore what I say if it doesn't fit (you know your situation, after all). But the similarity in your son's situation/behavior to mine makes me want to speak up, so as to save you and your son from what we had to go through.
- phoenix
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Re: Not proud of myself. Told my son about my business
Lorax,
You might not be proud of the way you conveyed the message to your son, but I don't think it's bad that your son knows the truth about his parents.
We all have differing opinions on this so I won't say mine is correct and another person is incorrect. I'll just share my own thoughts.
My personal belief is that I owe my kids the truth about what happened in their life and what people are in their life. I told my sons the truth.. their mother left me for a woman.. she isn't just friends with that woman, she is in love with that woman. Since they already knew the woman and will certainly see more of her in the future, they deserve to know the truth about who that woman is. I also feel it's very important to teach my sons about the value of marriage and the responsibility it takes to be successful in that venture. I want them to know how important honestly is and how important faithfulness is. I didn't want them to experience divorce as kids, but I can't change that now. What I can do is use this as a teaching opportunity so that I can help them avoid divorce as adults.
Lorax, perhaps a follow up conversation would be a good idea? Maybe you can use this as a chance to connect with him.
-Formerly "Lostdad" - I now embrace the username "phoenix" because my former life ended in flames, but my new life will be spectacular.
- iamthelorax
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Re: Not proud of myself. Told my son about my business
I may have a follow up conversation with him, hadn't thought of that. It is the truth though, I won't be hiding it. I just regret blurting it out in anger over an unrelated topic.
As for the cause of his behavior, I did think of that. I scheduled an appointment for him with a psychologist that' he'll follow for a while. His mother disagreed with the idea so I made sure to schedule it when he's with me.
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Thread Starter- maresyd
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Re: Not proud of myself. Told my son about my business
Go easy on yourself here. Your son's dishonesty triggered a sore spot for you and it sounds like your day sucked. True, you are the adult parent, but you are also human.
Once things calm down you can talk to him about everything in another way. Acting out is not abnormal for teens going through things they don't know how to deal with, especially if they don't talk to their friends about it (as most boys don't). They often fall into the trap of doing "cool" things for attention, as they get lost in the shuffle of *h*t when we are focused on the rollercoaster ride from hell.
The bright side? It gets better.
“Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely of places.”
- iamthelorax
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Re: Not proud of myself. Told my son about my business
Follow up. Ex called me yesterday morning to talk about son's recent behaviour. As soon as she was done, she mentions "son said you were talking about me. I think that's really rude, I don't talk about you, he doesn't need that stress etc. etc." As soon as she's done, I began speaking but of course she pulls her usual trick which is to cut me off mid sentence and hang up on me because there's a super important call on the other line.
I texted her later that day to be clear that I'm not in the habit of talking about her but I won't be keeping her secrets for her. This resulted in a back and forth for the evening about how I'm officially just a bitter ex and I'm hurting the kids. As you can imagine the back and forth went on but didn't really lead anywhere other than causing my kids to have problems, take drugs, etc.
I don't entirely blame her for being mad. She worked very hard to keep her infidelity a secret and it's not working. Too bad for her.
I have to wonder about the mindset of the homewrecker these days. How is it normal for a person to be ok with being the other woman and then be made to keep her relationship a secret for years afterwards.
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Thread Starter- phoenix
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Re: Not proud of myself. Told my son about my business
Lorax,
Nobody wants to be exposed for being a cheat, a liar, a destroyer of families. They want the joy of fulfilling their sexual lust without the accountability of other people knowing what they have done.
My ex wanted me to keep her infidelity a secret from the world. I told my sons. They deserved to know what happened in their lives. That made me evil in her mind.
Be prepared for your ex to start blaming you and making up a lot of things to make you out to be a bad person. It's something my therapist warned me about and it absolutely came true. It's called "deflection". When a person does something shameful their guilt will eventually creep up on them and their shame will grow, especially when it becomes more public. When that happens they will try to invent ways to make you the bad guy so that they can justify their actions. My wife came up with the most ridiculous things to paint me as an evil controlling husband and a bad person. I'm not perfect.. far from it.. but the things she tried to tag me with were laughable. I literally laughed at her a couple of times.
anyhow.. just know what is coming and why, and don't let it get to you. You are the good guy and the truth will come out.
If she didn't want her kids to know she should have thought about that before she slept with someone who wasn't her husband.
-Formerly "Lostdad" - I now embrace the username "phoenix" because my former life ended in flames, but my new life will be spectacular.