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When a parent cheats, it shakes the whole family to its core. As a kid—and, let’s admit it, even as an adult—you have certain ideas about your parents. You believe they’d do anything to protect the family and nothing to harm it. A parent who is unfaithful goes against all of those notions. It makes you feel like your parent is quite selfish, after all, and puts his desires before the good of the family. You can feel that parent is a monster. You can feel that the other parent was a completely innocent victim who was just going along, being a model spouse, and was completely betrayed by the evil parent.
However, sometimes, we find that it’s not as simple as all of that. You have to remember that your parents, just like you, are just a couple of people who wanted to find love. They were once out there, dating, trying to figure things out, just like you have done—and perhaps are still doing. You’ve probably been involved with the wrong person before, right? Maybe you were involved for a very long time with the wrong person—lived with him, and even got engaged to him. You’ve taken things too far with the wrong person. So, could you conceive of the fact that, perhaps, your parents did the same with each other? That they married the wrong person and had kids with the wrong person?
If your parents weren’t wrong for each other, per say, there could be something else at play—something you may not be quite as familiar with, if you’re still young. And that’s this: life is very, very long to spend with just one person and it will throw some sh*t storms your way that make it hard to be perfect all of the time. Your parents have probably experienced that. So, your parent probably isn’t evil or selfish or a monster. He may have just fallen into one of these scenarios I described. Here are reasons you might want to forgive your unfaithful parent.
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Holding onto the anger won’t help you
I once said I’d never forgive my father for cheating. I couldn’t possibly conceive of it. And then, I went onto be a very angry person for quite some time. I developed a drinking problem and an eating disorder. I dated some terrible men. I was holding onto all of this anger, hoping that it would hurt my parent—but it wound up hurting me the most. You don’t just get to stay angry with someone and expect that it won’t affect you.
