If you’ve ever been faced with a moral dilemma, you’d know doing the right thing isn’t as easy as everybody thinks. Yes, you could just follow the straight and narrow path, but there can be times when things happen and we end up making the wrong choices.
It’s worse when you can see someone struggle with the wrong decision and want to help them out. For parents, this is doubly troubling because they only want to make sure their children don’t get hurt or hurt others. But sometimes you have to let people make their own mistakes.
More info: Reddit
Man caught his daughter having an affair with their married neighbor, he threatened that she’d have to confess or else move out
Image credits: RDNE Stock project (not the actual photo)
The poster found out his daughter had been sleeping with their married neighbor for a couple of months, so he told her he’d kick her out unless she told the guy’s wife
Image credits: RDNE Stock project (not the actual photo)
His wife felt he was going too far even though she'd been cheated on by an ex and understood the feeling, but the dad thought his daughter was “helping to ruin a marriage”
Image credits: Askar Abayev (not the actual photo)
The father decided to have a talk with his daughter about the situation and he told commenters that he raised her to be independent and accept the consequences of her actions
Image credits: Belle Co (not the actual photo)
Giving more context to the situation, he shared that the neighbor’s wife was a sweet woman, but that they had to watch out for the husband’s reaction
Image credits: Pavel Danilyuk (not the actual photo)
The daughter said that she knew the husband through babysitting his kids and that the affair happened after they met in a bar while she was going through a breakup
Image credits: NastyaSensei (not the actual photo)
The father told his daughter he didn’t want her to do things like this while she was living under his roof and that he would accompany her while she confessed to the wife
Image credits: stressedoutdad3
The daughter broke down over the realization that she was the other woman and had “helped to break or at least hurt this marriage”
The Original Poster (OP) shared the challenging situation he found himself in when he stumbled upon something while getting a drink of water early in the morning. He noticed his 21-year-old daughter sneaking into his house from his neighbor’s place at 3 a.m. When he confronted her about it, he found out she had been having an affair with the 30-year-old married man from next door for the last few months.
The father was angry at his daughter’s actions and told her that she helped ruin a marriage. Although it might have been shocking for him to find out this news, research on infidelity has shown that around 20-25% of married men cheat and around 10-15% of married women cheat.
Bored Panda interviewed Dr. Becky Whetstone, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) to get insights into why people cheat and how to deal with the aftermath of an affair. She stated that it’s “usually, one of two reasons. The rarest reason is there is [an intercourse] addiction present, and the person has a compulsion to pursue others for [intercourse]. The whole game of meeting someone, pursuing them, and landing them in bed is like a [high].”
“The second reason is that a person has become discontent in the marriage. If it takes seven positive interactions to every negative in a marriage to maintain goodwill, this sort of marriage usually has seven negative interactions to every positive, or at least the future adulterer perceives it that way. They may have asked to improve things or requested therapy, but whatever actions have been taken, the end result has not improved things, and a future adulterer loses hope and then becomes vulnerable to positive interactions with others,” she added.
The dad shared he confronted his daughter and told her to inform the neighbor’s wife about the situation or to move out of his house. The woman’s mother felt that he was going too far even though she had been cheated on by an ex. The man was disappointed with his daughter and sympathized with the neighbor’s wife who he said was a “sweet” woman. He mainly wanted his daughter to take responsibility for her actions.
The daughter found it very hard to even think of telling the wife about the affair. When asked whether cheaters ever tell the truth about affairs, Dr. Becky stated: “almost no one does that. I know of a handful in 20 years of doing marriage crisis therapy, maybe two. It’s not always the best idea. If the situation happened way in the past was meaningless, then why upset your marriage apple cart and create a major, unnecessary problem, and literally torture and traumatize your spouse? Especially if there are no feelings or threats to the marriage whatsoever.”
Image credits: Polina Zimmerman (not the actual photo)
Dr. Becky also said that: “the nature of the cheating beast is to be covert and lie, then when caught, they gaslight, minimize, and cover up. If Mother Theresa or the Pope cheated, they would lie about it. Everyone does. In fact, that secrecy and danger aspect is part of what makes it appealing. Things will never be the same once the news is out there, so I would weigh that choice very seriously.”
The dad eventually took his daughter out for a drink and they talked about the tense situation. He said that “nothing she could ever do would make me love her less.” The daughter told him she knew the guy as she used to babysit his kids and then bumped into him at a bar one day. The affair began because she was going through a rough breakup at the time. The dad stood his ground and told her that she was responsible for her actions and shouldn’t be doing things like this while she lived in his house.
They decided to inform the neighbor’s wife about the affair while her husband was at work. The woman also decided that she wanted to move out so the dad planned that she would stay at his sister’s for a while. Many single women who have affairs with married men don’t often think about the consequences of their actions and the impact it can have on the other parties. This type of infidelity can lead to severe emotional dysregulation for both the victim and perpetrator.
Dr. Becky shone a light on how a person might feel after being cheated on. She said, “to see the hurt, agony, devastation, and absolute soul-crushing reactions of people who have been cheated on makes my heart ache for them. That pain is going to take time to lessen, and it may never fully go away. Sadly, the person they need to comfort them is the one who cheated, so their emotions are from sad to okay to rage to all over the board.”
“We do an assessment of the seriousness of everything. If the cheating spouse is remorseful and ends the affair, we might have a best-case scenario as far as healing goes. Seventy-five percent of marriages survive infidelity, and many of those come out better and stronger than before because a lot of honest conversations take place, but unless the cheater themself is able to be humble, truthful, remorseful, mortified with themselves, and willing to do whatever it takes to earn their trust back, then it won't happen,” she added.
Just like the daughter mentioned, she did not truly realize the damage she was doing to someone else’s relationship. Luckily, her dad confronted her and forced her to reflect on her actions. The post got 17k upvotes and 6.6k comments with people confirming that the OP wasn’t overreacting and that he was right to set a strict condition. Do you think he should have handled it differently? Share your feelings in the comments.
Netizens were glad that the dad was holding his daughter accountable for her actions
