I spoke quite bluntly on a recent post, citing honestly around having an affair.
So I thought, in the spirit of being honest and open, I’d explain where my “views” come from.
I’m an only child, my mother married someone in her early 20’s that she met in the services, and they eloped.
As was the case, back in the day, she had to give up her “job” and be a service wife.
When based in Singapore, at 24, she gave birth to me. A year on, they relocated to Malaysia and a year after that Düsseldorf, in Germany.
By all accounts it was a very unhappy marriage, my biological father was abusive and also addicted to gambling.
Rather than continue her marriage, she took the very brave decision to return home to England, with me, when I was three years old and asked her parents to house us both, which they did.
She returned to Germany, with me, the following year, to ask my biological father for a divorce and to sort out visitations. He was dead, by suicide, in their army flat.
My mother returned with me to her parents, and remarried the following year to a man she’d known from both primary and secondary school and been friends with of part of a group. He subsequently adopted me.
They wanted more children, but my mother miscarried, following this she then had an ectopic pregnancy and was very unwell and subsequently had a full hysterectomy. Then they tried to adopt but were told they were too old (in early thirties).
So happy ever after…..
Mmm, not quite, my new Dad was absolutely amazing, a kind gentle and generous man, but he had one huge flaw, he was also charming and very good looking, sadly he had several affairs during their long marriage.
My mother knew of two. I didn’t really know of any of this, his job took him travelling at least 50% of his working life, and to be, until my early teens, he was the perfect husband and father.
My teens were horrendous, my mother was very angry most of the time, my dad calm and measured. I blamed my mum!
Of course I discovered around 16 that all the arguments were around his “affairs” and my mother was deeply distressed and unhappy.
They didn’t stay together for me, they stayed together because, despite my father’s appalling behaviour with other women, he truly loved my mother and me.
My mother was devastated by his death in 2016, when he was 80 and she cried every night until her death in 2022.
I never properly forgave my dad, whom I did love, for the misery and sadness he caused my mother due to these affairs, it was a very odd and strange marriage, but they stuck it out and it lasted over fifty years. They clearly loved each other and were great parents to me.
So these events have shaped my views around infidelity.
I still don’t understand, to this day, why my dear father, and in every other respective he was a decent man, continued to have affairs, and I guess I never will.
My own DH had a brief affair when our children were very young. I found out purely by accident and initially he denied it. I was utterly devastated and asked for a divorce. In turn he was devastated as he didn’t want to leave me or the children.
After much soul searching and talking, we decided not to end our marriage. It took a very very long time to repair the damage this affair caused and for years I never fully trusted him. However, we’ve been together now for 33 years and are pretty solid now. To the best of my knowledge he did not have any other affairs, I made it very clear he’d have to leave if this ever happened again.
Our lives are shaped by those things we experience and for me, infidelity is so soul destroying and damaging.
Keir Starmer stepping down as an MP
