Frank Pittman, one of the best writers ever on the subject of infidelity has some wonderful insights. Here in his book Private Lies he talks about what effect parental affairs have on children’s adult lives:
“Parental affairs can be the training ground for their children’s
adult lives. Crises of infidelity disfigure the pretty domestic
fantasies about falling in love and living happily ever after. For
children these are indelible lessons about what they can expect when
they grow up–from men, from women and from marriage.
Children do survive divorce, but they pay a heavy price for their
parents’ infidelities. Perhaps the most common effect of parental
infidelity is the children’s subsequent infidelities. For the next
generation, I think it would be a good idea if we had self-help groups
for Adult Children of Adulterers. The impact and the the problems of
people who grew up amid secrets and deceits and constant threats to the
marital stability are not greatly different from those faced by
children growing up with alcoholic parents. Children are not likely to
grow up normally surrounded by dishonesty, disorientation, gender
obsessions, or the temporary insanity and fugue states of high
romance. But if infidelity and divorce are considered normal, normal
children can grow up expecting it and preparing for it.
Adult children of adulterers may have identified with the betrayer
of the family….As children see it, adulterers are out having fun,
getting the excitement the folks back home are missing. Children of
infidelity, especially the sons of philanderers, are very much at risk
to become philanderers themselves.”