his parents. The fury he heard transfixed him to that spot, warning him to go no further.
So he simply listened, his mind in utter confusion. His racing thoughts and their fervent yelling prevented him from hearing exactly what they were saying. Perched on the top step with his elbows on his knees, head in his hands, he focused his attention and listened. First he discerned isolated words, swear words he was forbidden to speak and fragments like “another woman, betrayal.” The words slowly took the shape of sentences in his confused mind. Then suddenly, the startling idea, Dad was seeing another woman, and Mom could not stand it. Ryan didn’t know what that meant but he knew it was not right by the intensity of their arguing and what he had learned in Catholic school about marriage for life.
As Ryan sat there alone, lost in his perplexed thoughts, his mother bolted out of the kitchen to run upstairs, tears streaming down her cheeks. When she raised her head, her eyes met Ryan’s. In that instant, he sensed she wanted to hide as badly as he did. He wished he were invisible, because he had witnessed what he sensed no child should ever have to see and hear. At some level, he felt the life he knew falling apart. He was being cast into a dark, scary future. His mother’s expression instantly transformed from tearful rage to fear and sadness. She was exposed. Ryan felt as startled as she did for being an intruder in his parent’s nightmare. Frozen with shame and embarrassment, his mother said softly, “Ryan, you need to get back to bed.”
Imagine the impact of that bombshell on Ryan’s fragile, preadolescent psyche. He returned to bed, his mind whirling with disturbing thoughts and his sense of safety lost forever. Perhaps his parents tried to explain their argument to him the next day, as they sorted out the confusion and madness of their own lives. Or maybe they pretended it never happened, to spare Ryan the pain and suffering, imagining that if they ignored it he would forget about it.
But he never will. His parents will continue to argue about the affair, but will be more discreet so Ryan will not be exposed to their bitter arguing. Nevertheless, he will feel the tension in the home. His parents may eventually work out their problem, deciding either to divorce or stay together. However, the explosion of that night and the events that followed will be etched permanently on Ryan’s young, impressionable brain. He will live through the rubble of his parents’ ruined marriage for the rest of his life. How will this childhood experience affect his future?
Working with individuals and couples for the past thirty-five years, I have observed the frequency of infidelity in marriages and its impact. Current research indicates that nearly 40 percent of men and 20 percent of women have had affairs while married.1 Witnessing the pain and sorrow these couples experienced as a result of the betrayal and the long process of healing, I have come to believe that spouses who discover their partner’s betrayal are deeply wounded and often experience symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder. They experience the betrayal as a life-threatening event, a threat to destroy their marriage and their own mental well-being. Like those traumatized by war, they alternate between feeling numb and being overwhelmed by feelings of loss, rage and fear. They become anxious and hyper-vigilant, waiting for the next bombshell discovery. Their sleep is often disturbed by nightmares and their daytime tranquility interrupted by flashbacks. They live in terror as their familiar life and their images of their spouses and themselves crumble before their eyes, destroying any sense of security they found in the relationship. They no longer trust their spouses or themselves. And they are filled with a nearly all-consuming rage.
I described the traumatizing effects of infidelity and the process of healing in my book Transcending Post-Infidelity Stress Disorder: The Six Stages of Healing, using the acronym PISD (pronounced “pissed”) to indicate the rage that all the betrayed experience.
Counseling with these distressed couples, I have been surprised to learn that most of them, though not all, had parents who were unfaithful. They seemed to carry a cheating gene. They were the victims of their parents’ infidelity and often had only vague memories of it, if they remembered it at all, and little insight into the impact it had on their own marital life. I came to believe that, just as spouses are traumatized by the discovery of their partner’s infidelity, the children who witness their parents’ distress are similarly traumatized. Like their parents, they suffer a form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the impact of which often becomes evident years later as they attempt to engage in intimate relationships. The time bomb of discovering their parent’s infidelity often does not explode until years later, when confusion, fear, rage and infidelity emerge in their own relationships and when they become parents themselves.
The pain and sorrow that infidelity causes in relationships is highlighted in the popular press, news media and professional journals. What is not so clearly seen are the other invisible casualties, the children who witness the chaos caused by their parents’ unfaithful behavior and the troubled adults they often become. These children are the walking wounded who may appear to function normally for years. But sooner or later, cracks appear in the armor and they are flooded with overwhelming feelings, the origin of which escapes them. They get in relationships or find themselves always angry and argumentative with their partners. They become excessively attached, longing for closeness, losing themselves in their relationships. Or they become aloof and detached. They marry those who betray them or they become irresistibly drawn to others outside their committed relationships. When they become parents, they feel confused about what is normal in parenting and inadequate to respond to their children’s needs.
For many years I have also worked with families caught in the web of addiction. I observed that growing up in an alcoholic family has a lasting effect on children as they grow into adulthood. Their views of themselves and relationships are inevitably shaped by the experience of the out-of-control drinking of their parents, along with the denial, hiding and open conflicts. These children grow up not allowing themselves to feel or express themselves openly, not talking about what really matters in their lives, and not trusting themselves or others. They have been described in literature and popular press as a group with identifiable characteristics called adult children of alcoholic parents.
I have begun to observe that children raised in homes in which one or both parents were unfaithful develop similar characteristics, not unlike those raised by alcoholic parents. Just as alcohol and its effects become the central focus when parents drink uncontrollably, the betrayal of the parent dominates the household when infidelity occurs. Parents become trapped in a web of deceit and mistrust. Fighting breaks out and the sense of safety is lost. Preoccupied with their own problems, they have little time or energy to pay proper attention to their children. The house becomes filled with shame, which the children absorb like sponges. And the shame follows these children into adulthood, infecting all their relationships, especially with their partners and their children. Furthermore, just as children of alcoholic parents are genetically predisposed to abuse alcohol, it appears that children of unfaithful parents are predestined to follow in their footsteps. Here are some characteristics I have observed in adult children of unfaithful parents:
• They are confused about what is normal behavior in relationships and parenting.
• They have difficulty creating and maintaining boundaries.
• They lack self-confidence in their ability to resolve conflicts in relationships and in the family.
• They either provoke confrontations or avoid them at all costs.
• They have difficulty trusting themselves and others.
• They are either over-controlled or under-controlled in expressing anger.
• They are confused about their sexuality and its appropriate expression.
• They are hyper-vigilant about being betrayed or lied to.
• They are extremely loyal or disloyal in relationships.
