[Two Pronged] Teen daughter hates father for cheating and won’t respect him

Rappler’s Life and Style section runs an advice column by couple Jeremy Baer and clinical psychologist Dr. Margarita Holmes.

Jeremy has a master’s degree in law from Oxford University. A banker of 37 years who worked in three continents, he has been training with Dr. Holmes for the last 10 years as co-lecturer and, occasionally, as co-therapist, especially with clients whose financial concerns intrude into their daily lives.

Together, they have written two books: Love Triangles: Understanding the Macho-Mistress Mentality and Imported Love: Filipino-Foreign Liaisons.

Dear Dr Holmes and Mr Baer,

I told my husband to leave our house when I found out he had been unfaithful.

This is not the first time he was unfaithful, but this is the first time I saw proof of it. Since then he has been courting me, phoning at all hours asking for forgiveness, and swearing he will never do it again.

He is very nice to our two girls, and takes them out once a week. My younger, 8 years old, misses her Dad and wants him home. My elder, 15, does not. She says she hates him.

I am worried about her. She hates her Dad. She doesn’t want to go out with him when he invites our girls out. I have to force her to do so. She always comes home from these events angry.

Once, when I was telling her she should forgive him, she shouted at me: “I didn’t know you could be so stupid!” I was shocked. We never brought up our children to be disrespectful to their elders.

I tried everything so that she could forgive him, but nothing seems to work.

Please help,
Very Worried Mom

Dear Very Worried Mom (VWM),

Separation can a difficult time for all those involved. The family’s natural balance, often built up over years, is abruptly upended and everybody is left scrambling to interpret the results and find their place in the new reality. The fact that the ensuing situation is fluid (in your case, with your husband pleading to return to the fold) only serves to complicate matters further.

It is understandable that your younger daughter simply wants normality to be restored. At 8 years old, she sees things in a less nuanced way than the rest of the family and concepts such as infidelity and forgiveness are difficult to comprehend. They are also less immediate realities than her father’s sudden absence from his role in her daily life. Reducing his presence to a once a week outing is an emotional blow for which she was not prepared and probably cannot understand, especially since from her perspective he has done nothing, at least directly, to harm her.

As for your older daughter, she has a much better understanding of what’s happening. She probably fully comprehends the significance of your husband’s infidelity and how the fallout is likely to impact each member of the family. She seems to have aligned herself with you, hence her dislike for her father.

Her, and your, immediate problem is how to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable: your refusal to forgive your husband and your insistence that she forgive him.

If she supports you in the first instance, forgiveness in the second must seem contradictory and even a betrayal, hence her confusion and inability to understand why you want her to forgive her father when you are doing the opposite.

In the midst of all this upheaval, perhaps the best course of action for you is to try to guide your daughter in grappling with her inclination to support you and the resultant desire to put distance between herself and her father. Herein lie the roots of her current distress (and by extension her so-called disrespect).

Perhaps one way to achieve this could be to draw a distinction between the forgiveness of a wife and the forgiveness of a daughter. If this is well enough explained within the context of your family’s situation, it could help her understand that she can have a loving relationship with both her parents while not condoning her father’s infidelity.

All the best,
JAF Baer

Dear VWM (Very Worried Mom),

Thank you very much for your letter. There are many ways you can handle your problem with your daughter.

In my view, one of the better ways is what Mr Baer has suggested: “to try to guide your daughter in grappling with her inclination to support you and the resultant desire to put distance between herself and her father.”

The operative word here is TRY, meaning your aim is NOT to convince her to think as you do, but to share with her how you view things:

1. That you appreciate what you view as her unqualified support of your current decision – because you do, don’t you?
2. But you also have to take into account that she views her anger as something entirely different.

Teens are funny creatures — sometimes wise beyond their years, and at other times, as myopic as a two-year-old having a meltdown.

Of course, many adults are also the same way, but at least adolescents have a reason: Adolescent brains are not as fully developed as the adult brain; thus their amygdala (that part of the brain that processes emotions like fear, anger, anxiety) takes center stage more often than an adult’s which is more guided (one hopes) by their prefrontal cortex which takes care of impulse control, planning, etc.

In time (approximately in 10-11 years), your daughter’s brain will become more similar to yours. She will then be more able to control primitive anger (sometimes unreasonable) and a more nuanced reading of reality.

In other words, dearest VWM, cut her some slack: she is doing the best she can under the circumstances.

While you’re at it…

• Cut yourself some slack too. You are not responsible for anyone’s feelings but your own. If it takes her more time to forgive him, then so be it. You do you, and she does her. Forgiveness is also a funny thing. It cannot be forced or even rushed. Plus, it has to come voluntarily, and pressuring your daughter to do so might lead to resentment.
• The most you can do for your daughters and for yourself is share your point of view and give them the space and safety to share theirs.
• AND… when you have enough breathing space, you can provide your daughters and yourself with not just the space to share feelings, but the freedom to express them too! Perhaps immediately following (or better yet, preceding) with the caveat that “while your feelings come unbidden and hence you cannot be blamed for them, you are held responsible for what you do with them.”

In other words, perhaps in time your daughter will forgive him, but that is in her own time, in her own space. However, she can remind herself that how she feels need not determine how she behaves, and feelings are no excuse for diminishing another person’s dignity.

My dearest VWM, choose your battles. You are going through one of the most difficult crises some wives have to go through. Do not rush yourself into the decision of whether you should take him back or not. Take your time to suss out what really matters to you. Give yourself the space to figure out what sort of life you and yours daughters will have if you take him back and if you don’t.

I do not envy your position. However, you have a heart and soul big enough to consider not just your feelings, but even those of your daughter (and consequently of your husband and how her anger might affect him). That will serve you in good stead, even when times seem darkest and most bleak.

Wishing you courage, steadfastness, and a sense of humor (if possible),
MG Holmes

– Rappler.com