Chip Chick
In 2016, this 22-year-old woman and her sister, 25, discovered their father, 68, was having an affair. They stumbled across emails between their father and mother, 64, while looking at their family computer, and in the emails, their dad confessed to the affair and told their mom the details.
Their father wrote about how he’d been cheating for a year and a half, took his affair partner on many dates, and hung out with her on Valentine’s Day.
“My mom often responded to my dad’s emails that hearing this upset her, and she wished she could be better and more attractive,” she said.
After accidentally coming across these private emails, she and her sister talked about it and chose not to tell their parents they knew about their father’s affair. Since their parents were trying to reconcile, they didn’t want to get in the way of that.
Eight years later, she doesn’t know if their father is still cheating or if he and her mother repaired their marriage. From her perspective, her parents seem happy and buy each other gifts for anniversaries and Valentine’s Day.
Her mother had mentioned in the emails in 2016 that she wanted them to celebrate special occasions with gifts, so it appeared to her that her father listened to this.
Over the years, she’s witnessed her parents hugging, but she hasn’t seen them hold hands or kiss. After talking about the emails initially right after they discovered them, she and her sister never mentioned them again. It was as if they’d repressed the entire situation.
“I have recently been blunt and cold to my dad when he talks to me, even when he asks simple questions like, ‘What are you having for lunch today?’ or ‘Do you have plans for the day?'” she explained.
While she doesn’t know how long she’s been acting like this toward her father, she became aware of it not long ago, and so has her father. She can’t help how she talks to her dad, but she wants to treat him with respect.
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