"My Husband Got My Sister Pregnant..."

[MissAnne]

Sorry to post another Prudence letter but this one was just too good...

Dear Prudence

Is It Time To Get Over It?:

When my ex and I were married, we had trouble conceiving and years of heartache. I thought our marriage was strong enough to survive this, then I discovered he was having an affair with my sister. We had a huge, traumatic confrontation and my then husband and I decided to move and make a fresh start. A few weeks after we moved, my sister gave the news that—surprise!—she was pregnant. My ex then divorced me to start a family with her. Because I'd just started a new job and had a mortgage, it was financially impossible for me to leave. I stayed in the new city by myself and eventually made friends and settled there. My parents were also very hurt and angry, but when the baby came they mellowed and reconciled. My niece is now 5 and I have never met her. We take turns attending family functions because I can't bear to be in the same room as them. Recently my parents gently asked if I would consider having a Christmas dinner with my sister. I told them I would think about it and I really did. I took a deep breath and went on my sister's Facebook page for the first time. There, I saw hundreds of happy pictures of them as a family. My ex-husband kissing her after she'd just given birth, photos of the happy first birthday party, family trips, etc. She was tagged in a status update from my ex: "Celebrating another amazing anniversary with my beautiful wife, thank you for giving me so much happiness and our perfect daughter." I literally vomited after reading that. After five years, is it time for me to get over it and try to force myself to at least tolerate their company?




Dear LW

It's no wonder what you saw made you sick to your stomach. The violation against you was enormous. However, I don't think you should conclude that the only way you could be with them is to have a bunch of air-sickness bags with you. You have been in a bubble of denial for the past five years, so a tidal wave of evidence of the happy family life you feel these cheaters stole from you is bound to be overwhelming. If over the past few years you'd had some minimal contact with them and knew your niece slightly, you would be in a different place emotionally now. Yes, you might have still concluded you want nothing to do with them, but you would have made that decision from a more rational place. So give yourself time. You may want, possibly with the help of a therapist or even a friend, to give yourself some desensitization therapy. Instead of consuming pictures of the past five years at one gulp, over the next few months you could look occasionally at pictures of your niece. She is the innocent party here, and focusing on her might enable you to see that painful as it is, something positive has come out of all this. But Christmas is too soon for this. If you are going to find yourself being able to be in the room with this reconstituted family, it would be better to do it at a less loaded time—say a weekend in February with no connotations of holiday joy. Whatever you decide vis-a-vis your sister, be proud that you have moved on and built a happy life for yourself. (And how often do brothers- and sisters-in-law get it on? Just a few weeks ago I got a letter from a woman whose fiancé impregnated his brother's wife, but the brother remains none the wiser.)

[bankside]

Oh, those heteros….

[DigitalFudge]

They are going to need her one day, I mean really need her. I know what it's like to be shown something that makes you literally throw up, happened to me about a month ago.



If I was her I'd show up to EVERY family function, happy, excited, and filled with life as if nothing ever happened. However, if the Husband or the Sister even tried to approach me I'd pay them dust.


They abandoned her, left her helpless, and in a horrible situation. Not to mention a new home, a new job, a new city which is enough on its own to hire a therapist.


Both the Husband and Sister don't deserve to have her in their lives and have shown no effort in mending fences, doesn't mean she can't enjoy the company of her less douchey relatives.

It's not this woman's responsibility to fix a relationship/s she did not destroy.


I wonder who will tell the kid how her existence came to be.

[MTLDude]

Viva la Vasectomia!!!!

[MissAnne]

Both the Husband and Sister don't deserve to have her in their lives and have shown no effort in mending fences, doesn't mean she can't enjoy the company of her less douchey relatives.

True. Her staying away is beyond understandable. However, it makes it easier on them.

[DigitalFudge]

The facebook status would have killed me.

[Axxess]

For some reason when I read the title I thought this was going to be about someone the OP personally knew.

If I was her I'd show up to EVERY family function, happy, excited, and filled with life as if nothing ever happened. However, if the Husband or the Sister even tried to approach me I'd pay them dust.

...

Both the Husband and Sister don't deserve to have her in their lives and have shown no effort in mending fences, doesn't mean she can't enjoy the company of her less douchey relatives.

Spot on.

[GiancarloC]

This story... ugh... shows total betrayal. And I don't mean to make a joke out of a bad situation... but this headline... reminds me of this man's show:

[aaronxp]

they would be dead to me, parents included.

[HunterM]

Obviously, the issue is still not resolved after 5 years from her point of view. She needed closure that she didn't get while busy building a new life on her own in a new city. She needs to, once and for all, put it all behind her and truly move on with her life. Why should she continue to give her sister's family so much power to upset her emotionally? Here's what she should do.

Show up for the holiday dinner, drink a glass of wine or two or a bottle. Then start a god-damn-knock-down-drag-out-hair-pulling fight with her sister and her ex like the Jerry Springer show. By showing them there are consequences for their actions, she is getting the closure that she so desperately needs. STICK IT TO THEM!!! Uh...wrong choice of words 'cause that's what her ex husband did to her sister...but you know what I mean.

[rareboy]

Her parents are morons.

[Hard-up1]

Sadly, there is a similar situation in my immediate family.

I am the middle of five children, the youngest sibling is my younger brother who is 14 years younger, btw. He was always a spoiled child, although poor, but was indulged in discipline matters, so he grew up a good deal more willful than the rest of us, and was in trouble with the law from a pretty young age.

Mother deliberately lived away from family during his childhood and the resultant lack of connection and support seems to have made him prone to things like vandalism, stealing from my grandmother, getting on drugs, and other delinquency in general.

Like my other three siblings, he began being truant around the 5th or 6th grade to the degree he failed those years in school and began the unmistakable pattern of dropping out. By the time he reached the 9th grade, he did quit school. None of the rest of my siblings went any further than the 10th grade.

He wed a girl who was also pretty limited in the intelligence department, and they settled down to a subsistence lifestyle in which she worked as a health aid in nursing homes and he did bit work between brief stints in jail from drugs charges and other minor crimes. They had a child, then another and then two more. She seemed to have them as a diversion or a hobby, as she seemed to love babies, but not so much caring for children. They were as poor as could be, but lived in the same town as her family, so her parents helped out a lot with the kids, as did her only brother.

Both she and her brother's family had four kids apiece. My brother and his wife fought constantly, so I hated it for his kids.

As my brother tended to use the rest of us siblings as a revolving loan center, he and I didn't really have any rapport, but there was a big age gap even before the mismatch in values, so it wasn't like I had lost a brother really.

About six years ago, my other siblings began hinting that my brother and his wife were separating. I figured she had gotten tired of carrying the load in working minimum wage jobs AND taking care of four kids. That may have been true, but it was worse. My brother had taken up with his sister-in-law.

During the messy separation, he made matters worse by threatening his understandably irate father-in-law with a live chain saw when he was supposedly in process of returning it. He went to jail briefly for the threatening behavior.

To make matters worse, he and his mistress had yet another baby, now the 9th child between the two households. Just as in this web story posted, there is no way for this to be healed. I counseled him at the time that men who abandon their first wives often abandon their first children (he was wanting to gain custody of them at the time.)

Since then, I just have no use for socializing with him. It is not really so much a matter of contempt as it is just a complete lack of love. Often, people say things like "you love your family no matter what." In actuality, I don't believe that is really true for any of us. When something highly egregious like incest happens, or other severe transgressions, it just reveals a breach that is already there in a profound way.

My family knows I will never attend anything where he is present, which is not really a challenge since he rarely even has the gas money for the 5-6 hour drive to where my other siblings live. I tried to help his children via his first wife, but she is obtuse and quickly began to try to abuse the situation, so I had to stop.

I sincerely hope some of his kids make it out of the mire that has become their family. If any of them make it to college, which is very unlikely, I hope to help them along once they are out of the home.

To Miss Anne's point, staying away is indeed the right thing. It is one thing to be hurt or not to want to have to see the mess another has made of your family; it would be another to attend and add insult to injury by waging war within the family and showing up out of spite or trying to outdo them somehow. The kids are in the middle, and do not deserve that sort of tension.

As AaronXP said, it is better just to accept the loss as total, and let them be dead and try to rebuild another life, as the letter writer in the posted article did. Her mistake was ever looking back.

[bankside]

It does make the case for spaying and neutering, doesn't it?

(And before anyone jumps on me to say I'm insensitive for speaking in that kind of hyperbole, I actually mean that literally.)

[Hard-up1]

No, I rather think it makes the case for loving and helping those around you.

When I was a child, neighbors and teachers and church members all helped in various ways. My mother had raised us in privation and want, and was so dead set on turning us against most of society. But, our upbringing was made better so many times by people bringing food and clothes, or paying for a summer camp, or driving us to school.

When irreparable breaches occur in families, and they do happen, there are neighbors and those close to the orphaned family who do fill in the gap, if we are doing our job as a society.

So, even though there may be an irreconcilable difference within a family, one may find redemption in yet helping those nearer, as that is really a charge we all have, to love the ones we are with.

Is it compensating? Most certainly. Are needy and hurting people helped when they need it. Also, most certainly.

[G-Lexington]

I don't even consider that "compensating". I had one FB friend start complaining about having to go back home for Thanksgiving dinner when she hated nearly everybody in her family, and I asked her why the hell she went. I think what I said was "Family is as family does. I'm sorry you got a bad deal in the family department, but you know what? Discard and draw again. You're under no obligation to hold those cards. Go find some people who DO like you, who DO support you, and THERE's your family."

Lex

[HunterM]

I agree there is absolutely no need to mend fences or keep in touch with her sister's family. However, she needs to get over her anguish and be able to face her sister's family without going through an emotional pain. She needs to heal old wounds. Say...she is walking down the street and spotted her sister's family (her ex, her sister, and her niece) walking toward her. Does she always have to duck and run the other way? Always changing direction because of her sister's family? If she does, she is giving her sister's family so much more power over her own life. Her niece (by her ex and her sister) is not going away from this world any time soon.

She needs to be in control of her life. She should be able to go anywhere she wants to regardless if her ex or her sister or her niece will be there or not. It does not mean she has to accept them into her life though. She should be able to face them and not feel the hurt. That's when she knows she's healed.

It's like breaking my leg while snowboarding. YEAH painful!!! It took me 6 months to heal. But it didn't stop me from going snowboarding and enjoy my life after that.

[bankside]

No, I rather think it makes the case for loving and helping those around you.

When I was a child, neighbors and teachers and church members all helped in various ways. My mother had raised us in privation and want, and was so dead set on turning us against most of society. But, our upbringing was made better so many times by people bringing food and clothes, or paying for a summer camp, or driving us to school.

When irreparable breaches occur in families, and they do happen, there are neighbors and those close to the orphaned family who do fill in the gap, if we are doing our job as a society.

So, even though there may be an irreconcilable difference within a family, one may find redemption in yet helping those nearer, as that is really a charge we all have, to love the ones we are with.

Is it compensating? Most certainly. Are needy and hurting people helped when they need it. Also, most certainly.

You have called me out on the unwarranted cynicism of my tone. My apologies. However is not part of showing kind regard for people the commitment to stop them from taking on burdens for which they are demonstrably unprepared? I do not believe unhindered freedom of action is better as some kind of absolute. I do not believe leaving people to their own devices is by definition the best possible universal way for them to learn, grow, mature, discharge their responsibilities, find satisfaction in their lives, or bring satisfaction to their families.

[thatgirl]

This story... ugh... shows total betrayal.

This.

I feel terrible for this woman. Reading that has me seething...

And I don't mean to make a joke out of a bad situation... but this headline... reminds me of this man's show:

It really does.

[borg69unimatrix]

I believe family is more then blood relations.

In my own family, there are some "black sheep" who just can't behave civilly, and as a consequence aren't invited to that many family functions. Being in the same gene pool isn't enough to make my family put up with their crap and be taken advantage of on a continuous basis.

Yes, we would all like the stereotypical 50's/60's TV sitcom perfect family. But in all reality those kind of families seem pretty rare.

I think people should spend time with those they CHOOSE to, whom they like to be around instead of those they feel obligated to.

If I was the woman in the OP's post, I would have disowned the whole family.

[MissAnne]

The grandparents are in a difficult position. I think that they are angry with their daughter for hurting her sister like that but they also have a new grandchild in which they want to get to know.

[rareboy]

So let them get to know their new grandkid.

They just shouldn't have to expect the kid's auntie to join them.

The wronged woman doesn't have much choice here except to forego all the high family holidays where everyone is supposed to attend. So she can see her parents on the off holidays. Like Boxing day, President's day, Good Friday, Veteran's Day, 3rd of July and Black Friday. Let her lying sonofabitch husband and her 'now dead to her' sister have Valentine's, Mother's Day, Father's day, the 4th, and, of course, Labour Day.

[aaronxp]

The grandparents are in a difficult position. I think that they are angry with their daughter for hurting her sister like that but they also have a new grandchild in which they want to get to know.

They kept into their family the unfaithful ex-husband of their daughter just because he and her other daughter gave them the grandchild the cheated daughter tried and failed to provide.

I don't see any difficult position, I wouldn't allow to have him first over any of my children on christmas.

[Harke the Boeotarch]

This story... ugh... shows total betrayal. And I don't mean to make a joke out of a bad situation... but this headline... reminds me of this man's show:

The Mexican version of that show is even more amusing...

[Cafe69]

I don't see any difficult position, I wouldn't allow to have him first over any of my children on christmas.

Most grandparents go nuts over grandchildren. They have to be civil towards their daughter and the ex-husband so that they let them see the kid.

[vacancy3]

this has to be florida

[MissAnne]

They kept into their family the unfaithful ex-husband of their daughter just because he and her other daughter gave them the grandchild the cheated daughter tried and failed to provide.

Its not like they can kick the man out of their family. He is the father of their grand-daughter.

[Ninja108]

Sad to say but just because someone is family doesn't mean they can't be scum..or that some things they do just can't be forgiven. I sadly know(as I'm sure many people here do) people whose families have disowned them for being gay or lesbian.
This falls into that same level. The betrayal here is something that can't be undone.

[thatgirl]

Its not like they can kick the man out of their family. He is the father of their grand-daughter.

If she was cruel enough to steal her sister's husband, I can see her manipulating her parents by limiting access to their grand-child if they were to side against him or ask him to not attend certain family events (so as to make it easier on her sister).

[GregKII]

I cannot imagine being betrayed in such a way by a sibling.. that's absolutely ridiculous! What a terrible thing to do. I wouldn't be interested in having a relationship with any of them after such a sick, disgusting betrayal.. and to do it to a family member of all people. That's despicable.

[DigitalFudge]

I mean, could she not find another man

[MissAnne]

If she was cruel enough to steal her sister's husband, I can see her manipulating her parents by limiting access to their grand-child if they were to side against him or ask him to not attend certain family events

Yes, my thoughts exactly.

LOL, the people on Prudence's advice column are dispicable. I just read one about a LW (a white man) who has an infertile Asian wife. He says that now that he has the option, he wants all White children. He would like his kids to look like their cousins and the children in their neighborhood. He says that he doesnt think that his wife has experienced racism but she should still understand his point of view.

Prudence laid into him.

[HunterM]

I mean, could she not find another man

Yeah...and start her own family. The best revenge is to live a better life that they thought you couldn't.

[Hard-up1]

I don't even consider that "compensating".

No, I meant that if we are loving people, we don't stop loving just because life gave us a shitty family that was ultimately unlovable. We compensate for that loss by deliberately choosing to love those people, nearer us (once we have left family), exactly as you have described in your redefinition of new family.