Dad Considers Going 'No Contact' With His Daughter After She Admits To Helping Cover Up His Wife's Affair
"I realized my daughter betrayed me and masterminded the affair along with my wife."
Fizkes / CanvaPro Healthy relationships are founded on trust, loyalty, and respect. When someone cheats, has an affair, or is disloyal in a relationship, that foundation is often irreversibly altered.
When we think of these cases of infidelity, it’s typically an exclusive discussion between two partners — sometimes in a marriage or a serious relationship. However, what happens when there are more than two people involved?
A man’s vulnerable Reddit post about his daughter’s involvement in his wife’s affairs has people questioning exactly how they’d react.
Can you forgive your child for being loyal to one parent, but not the other?
Is it okay to knowingly influence your children to do horrible things, on a misguided basis of love? This man’s post indulges all of those questions — as he contemplates how he’s going to move forward with his teenage daughter, after leaving her mom.
After his daughter confessed she’d helped her mother 'cover up' affairs, this dad is considering going completely 'no contact.'
It was a seemingly normal day for this Reddit poster until his daughter came into the room looking uncomfortable and nervous. Before he could say anything, she was confessing.
“[It was] so out of the blue… she couldn’t handle the guilt,” he wrote.
His 18-year-old daughter revealed that for the last five years, she’d been helping her mother conceal a horrible secret of infidelity from him. Not only that, she’d also agreed to accept gifts in exchange for her loyalty to her mother — a partnership she’d blissfully agreed to at just 13 years old, despite her ignorance of the situation.
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Therapists and other professionals acknowledge the emotional toll that children experience when their parents have affairs even when they’re not involved. Not only does it encourage short-term consequences like insomnia, depression, shame, and anxiety, but it can also foster a great deal of other severe long-term consequences.
For this dad, the situation is ten times more extreme because his daughter played a role in the affair.
His teenage daughter admitted to aiding her mother by hiding text messages and evidence of the affairs in exchange for gifts.
“She told me for the past 5 years, she has been aiding her mother in cheating on me in exchange for gifts,” the dad wrote. “She also confessed she knew my wife had been in affairs with six guys and was currently in contact with her co-worker.”
While the poster previously confronted his wife for cheating with a co-worker years ago, he was confident that it was over, that their relationship had returned to some form of normalcy.
“I should have divorced her [then], but I was too reluctant to pay child support, as [the kids] were a couple years away from turning 18.” However, he wasn’t going to make the same mistake this time. His daughter’s confession made one thing very clear for him: his marriage was over. “I’ve been secretly cheating on her as a type of closure/revenge,” he confessed. “I was feeling guilty… I was advised to stop, so I did. But, I still feel no regret.”
Amid his controversial “revenge” and the upcoming end to his marriage, there was one thing that wasn’t clear: his relationship with his daughter.
“She was the one that helped to hide the infidelity and I was destroyed,” he wrote. “I realized my daughter betrayed and masterminded the affair along with my wife.”
After trying to leave clues for her dad, she finally ‘confessed’ because ‘she couldn’t handle the guilt’ anymore.
In her confession, his teenage daughter admitted to hiding her “old phone” — one that her mother adopted as a way to communicate during her affairs.
“She was the one that was supposed to hide it away from me and delete conversations,” he wrote.
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Soaking in all this information, he recalled several times when he found this old phone under his pillow. Although he didn't realize it at the time, his daughter was trying to get him to discover the affairs on his own.
“I realized it was her…," he revealed. "She put the phone under my pillow and unlocked the passcode.”
After several attempts at trying to nudge him to the truth, she couldn’t handle it anymore. She’d been manipulated as a young child, by her own mother, to conceal the truth of her parent’s marriage and now that she was nearing adulthood, it was too much to bear.
“I might have snapped at my daughter… I told her ‘You mean nothing to me’ along with a bunch of other stuff about her mother,” the dad continued. “I may regret it now, but it was the best [I could do] at the moment.”
Despite understanding his daughter was initially ‘manipulated’ by his wife, this dad still felt betrayed and debated going ‘no contact.’
“I know she was manipulated by her mother, but as she got older she would have realized what her mother was doing was wrong,” the dad wrote. Even despite her attempts to reveal the affair, and her ultimate confession, this dad couldn’t shake his hurt.
Therapists on TikTok shared the unfortunate reality many families deal with when children find out about their parent’s infidelity. While many situations are quite different from this one, the truth is that children need honesty from their parents. They need open conversations, a healthy boundary of space, grace, and love — even when the relationship is strained.
It’s exactly the opposite of what this dad wanted to do with his own daughter — going “no contact” to avoid the overwhelming disappointment, anger, and mistrust he feels in their relationship.
“It was my daughter’s idea for her mother to hide the affair on her old phone.”
Ultimately, it seems this father is undecided on whether or not he wants to mend his relationship with his daughter. However, he needs to remember one important thing: life is messy and his daughter’s involvement was founded on the love and trust she had for her mother, something that ultimately spiraled out of control, putting strain on the entire family.
As many comments suggested, this is absolutely “not his daughter’s fault.” It would be unfair for her to lose her dad forever, over the mistakes and misguidance of her mother.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a news and entertainment writer at YourTango focusing on pop culture analysis and human interest stories.