Adult Daughter's Confusion

She doesn't sound "confused" at all.
It sounds like she's taking many steps for her happiness.
I understand she left some destruction in her path.
That's for she & get husband to work past.
As for her education & car & job...I don't see the connection.
I think you would feel the same toward anyone that helped break up her marriage--man or woman, right?
You don't have to like this woman, bit you have to respect the relationship, I suppose.

She could not have been that happy if she strayed. I always think people should deal with the mess they have made before starting another. Huge age difference also. I think as a Mom that would really bother me. I would not pull back, she might need you. She wont be with this women long. Just be waiting for her when this happens.

I need to understand why you are upset.
This has nothing to do with you. She is a grown woman, making grown decisions. She hasn't done anything wrong to you.
The person she has wronged is her husband.
Are you upset that she is seeing a woman? That your daughter is a lesbian, or at the very least bi-sexual?
Your daughter is an adult and got into an adult relationship. You can't be mad at the boss either!
What would I do?
I would let my daughter know that I love her. I would help her find an apartment so that she can figure herself out.
She is her own person. And while it's fabulous that you and your husband have been married 27 years.....none of this is about you.
L.

My dad distanced himself because of religious differences. His love and participation in my life was CONDITIONAL on what he thought I should be doing. A whole lot of judgement on my life, which made it impossible to have a relationship with him from 18 on. I'm 38 and he's never met my six year old daughter. Be very careful about distancing from your daughter. You are making a choice as to how to handle the situation, today, but you may not be taking into account of long term consequences of being parents to an adult making her own choices.

I urge you to stay out of this. Your daughter is an adult. When you pass judgment on the situation you are not supporting her. Support means that you say in words and actions that you love her and know that she will be able to work this out for herself. You have taught her your values. Trust that she will be able to do the right thing for her.

I do wonder why you were angry with her boss and not with her. She made the decision to get involved with her. She is an adult. She is equally culpable with the decision. I suggest that you are angry with her and are not allowing yourself to be aware of your feelings. And that your anger, since it's not on the surface is causing you to say things in such a way that she feels your anger. Look deep inside yourself and see if there is anger buried there. Recognize the anger, accept it, and work on letting it go. At the same time, change your focus from blaming the boss to accepting that your daughter is an adult and has made decisions that you don't approve of. Then let go of the need to approve of what she does. She is an adult. Love her for who she is, warts and all.

You've let her know that you don't approve. Now it's time to accept her as she is and stop trying to influence her to make different decisions. And now is not the time to pull away. Telling her you won't be as close is removing some of your love for her. She needs you in her life as long as you can love her as she is and allow her to figure this out for herself. Loving her and being in her life as a positive force can help her more easily make a decision that will reflect her upbringing. When you push her away you are creating an atmosphere which causes her to push back and takes away your influence.

I suggest that moving out while deciding what she wants to do with her life is a good decision. Support that decision. Give her as much positive support as possible while downplaying your negative approach.

She has not done anything wrong to upset you. She is an adult, living an adult life. It is not our children's role to make us happy. I suggest you do some reading on co-dependence. I suggest that much of this pain is related to your families dependence on each other for happiness.

I would step back, hold my tongue, keep my feelings to myself and let her make her own life choices. She has to live with them, and has to pay whatever consequences they bring. I would be loving and supportive of my daughter. While I agree that the boss WAY overstepped, since your daughter is an adult it is not your place to address it. It is also not your place to punish your daughter any longer. If you want to completely alienate your daughter, by all means forbid her and the female lover to visit. While it isn't your choice for her - it is HER choice for her.

Sorry about your life being turned upside down over your daughter's choices, but truly, they are HER choices.

I have to ask, would you have withheld a college education and a car if you knew that she would down the line, not love the man she married? I think that's harsh and short-sighted.

She probably did not date enough and felt trapped with this man. She shouldn't have married him, but she didn't know it at the time. It is wrong to have an affair behind a spouse's back, but quite frankly, she didn't do this to YOU. She did it to him. You are taking this far too personally.

Next time she gets married (if she does), she does the wedding on her own dime. I suspect that if her "addiction" were with another man, you'd be upset, but not nearly as upset as you are about this woman. Regardless, if she has married the wrong man, she's married the wrong man. Wishing you hadn't paid for a wedding isn't helpful.

If you can't see wishing that you hadn't spent money on a college education, a car and a wedding, then it sounds like you expect your daughter to live her life to please you, and you aren't really understanding that she was not brought into this world to please YOU. She is here to live her own life. She needs to learn from her mistakes. She is an adult now and has to stand on her own two feet and PAY for her mistakes.

That doesn't mean that you need to be supportive of this choice. You can tell her that you are too upset with her to be supportive. But that doesn't mean that you throw your daughter away. Yes, she's being selfish for going with her heart in a love relationship. That's what happens with MILLIONS of people who leave their spouses for someone else. But it's far MORE selfish of you to tell her you won't be close to her as long as she is with someone she loves.

Stay out of her love life. Tell her you are disappointed that she has not given her marriage much of a chance, but at least be glad that she didn't wait and have children involved.

Your job as a parent, D., is to love your children. You might hate how they screw up their lives, but it's not YOUR life they are screwing up. It's their's. If you persist in acting like her bisexuality is a personal affront to you, you will end up losing your daughter. If you would rather stand on your principles that she is supposed to live her life for YOU, then you will end up with no relationship at all. Maybe that seems okay to you now. However, there are mothers on this board whose children have nothing to do with them for many reasons, and they are SORRY that they lost their relationship. Think hard before you lose your daughter. You may not get a second chance with her.

Dawn

Are you upset with her because she is a lesbian or maybe a bi-sexual? That's the way your post comes off. Have you been pushing her to be heterosexual? Or are you just uset that she and her boss had an affair?

First of all she is an adult and gets to make her own decisions. Second of all she doesn't owe you any apologies.

She is your daughter and right now now needs your unconditional love and support. She needs you to accept her as she is.

If you put conditions on her being a part of your family or not, you will lose her. Forever, or for many years. And you will alienate her.

She got married after knowing her Husband for 5 years. She is now leaving her husband of 1 year. Within that period when she was married, she had begun an affair and that relationship is still ongoing.
She told you all.
But you are angry at her Boss. But remember, your daughter MADE UP HER OWN MIND and chose... to be a part of this relationship.
She was not forced.

Your daughter wants your support for her relationship.
She feels she did nothing, wrong, to anyone or to her Husband.
But I am sure, her Husband feels lied, to. Or who knows, what their relationship was really like, maybe he knew about her other life or not. You do not know. Only the two of them really know, what their relationship was.
But like any shock, it is hard to figure things out, so suddenly.
So in the meantime, sure, people are "upset." It is a shock coming out of left field and so unexpected.
So... let the storm pass and you all have to figure out your reactions.
But if you pull away from her, she may never come back, to the family.

You said you and your Husband have always been close to your children. Thus your daughter TOLD you all, what her life is now. But she is being turned away. She is being rejected. That will not, create bonding, but alienation.
And if you/your Husband have always been close with your children... did you not know.. that she is or always has been Lesbian or Bi-Sexual????
If you all knew this, it should not be a shock.
Did her Husband know this too all this time??? Or did he marry her anyway? And maybe they both had their own issues.

In any event, your daughter does not know what to do with her life.
Now. Nor with her personal relationships.
She will not figure this out overnight.
And her relationship with that married woman, may or may not work out.
Who knows.

But again, if you reject your daughter, you may never have her back.
She may veer away from you all... permanently.

This is your Grown up daughters own life.

She will always be your daughter.

You can be disappointed, sad, upset at what choices she makes, but don't you still love her and want to be there for her no matter what?

People get married for a lot of reasons. It would be interesting to allow your daughter to be truthful about WHY she got married.

Let her be honest.

I would rather my daughter make some mistakes in her life, than to live in a mistake for the rest of her life, because she was too afraid of suffering a failure and upsetting others and their expectations.

Your daughter was young when she met her husband.

24 is very different from 18. Could be she feels she needs some time to figure out who she is, but right now she knows that being married is not fair to her husband and she is not able to love him as he deserves.

I do encourage you to suggest, is marriage counseling and for her to go to therapy to work through all of this. .

After a little over a year, my husband and I were ready to split up. Even went to some sessions of counseling and told the therapist we were not coming back, it was over. We went outside and had a discussion about how we would set to divorce in motion and realized, we had learned how to communicate with each other!

Therapy has helped me work through my own issues, especially since I do not like to hurt or disappoint my family. Therapy is a safe place.

Decided to give it more time and now we have been married for over 30 years. We married when we were 20.. We had been friends since we were 13,,,

She will always be your daughter, this is a time when she needs you more than any other time in her life, please try to be there for her.

I understand that this is a shock to your system. You thought your daughter was on a clear path and well-lit path to adult happiness. And now, wow. Things are completely upside down and confusing. Who knows where they'll go from here. So if you're shocked and taken aback, that's reasonable.

The part I don't understand is where you talk about what she's done to you. She does not owe it to you to remain in her marriage, to be faithful to her husband, any of that. You can express to her that you're disappointed because you thought you had taught her the importance of fidelity or something, but that's as far as her obligation to you goes.

Long-term, as shocked and disappointed as you feel right now, you are going to need to come to terms with having a lesbian or bisexual daughter. PFLAG has some good (nonjudgmental, nondidactic) lit on this.

I married at 25 after dating my ex-husband for seven years. It just seemed like the next logical step after so long, maybe your daughter felt this way as well.

This is your daughter's situation to deal with and I think your anger at the boss is misdirected. Not the ideal order obviously but the boss certainly wouldn't be featured on "to catch a predator". Are you going to hold this grudge forever, even if they are both divorced and in a loving relationship?

The man I am with now is significantly younger but neither of us were in relationships when we met. Sometimes people just click.

I think it's perfectly all right that you're disappointed in your daughter's philandering. She did something morally wrong when she cheated on her husband and decided to leave him after a having a continuous affair that she's still having. The fact that she's having an affair with a woman is a moot point. I'm guessing you would be disappointed and upset over her blatant disregard for her husband and marriage if it were a man she cheated with.

What your daughter wanted to hear was that it was all right for doing what she did, there was nothing wrong with it and everything will be all right no matter what she decides, because she was following her heart. She might even have some excuses about difficulties or doubts about her relationship with her husband. What she didn't expect was for you to make her take accountability.

I'm having trouble deciding if that was your place or not. It most definitely is her husband's place. They both probably have said some hurtful things to each other and she's going to need to hear some positive things about herself from someone who is supposed to love her unconditionally no matter what crappy decisions she makes.

Gay or straight, your daughter and the older woman are cheaters. Until they resolve/end their committed relationships nothing is going to be right.

Yeah, I'd be sad if my son or daughter suddenly declared they had a same sex relationship (it would be a shock)....STILL I would love my child no matter what.

Gay or straight, they both need to do the right thing.

I don't have anything to add about your daughter but i would be upset about the cheating and the age difference.

I got pregnant in college, my parents told me to marry the guy....it was over a year later. I got remarried 5 years later, that ended 5 years later when he was an alcoholic and got physical with my oldest daughter. I was a successful single mom with 2 girls living 5 hours from my family.....they wanted me to quit my job and move back home. I was happy where i was, with my newly defined family. I was in counseling and was in a good place. I met a man at church (very different from my other two husbands). My family has never given him a chance (well, my mom and sil like him), they do nothing but talk bad about him and to my children. We got married and my dad asked me not to because 3 marriages is embarrassing, he asked me to not get married ever again, just move back home. I got married without my family (my very religious family at that). I'm not proud of being 38 on my 3rd marriage, and yes im embarrassed and it's even very hard for me to write it (ive erased it a few times now). But it is what it is, it doesn't define me, ive made mistakes and have learned and grown and couldn't be happier. When i got pregnant my family was the last ones i told, we were so happy and excited that i didnt want my "bubble" popped. They were less than thrilled but do love her, they havent seen her much.

Its hard for me, i feel like im in the middle. Ive seen my husband try and try with my family and they obviously be rude or ignore him. So here we are my family on vacation in florida us here alone because it would be a horrible week.

I dont know if this helped from maybe yours daughters perspective.

For me, the issues here would be the cheating. I'd have a hard time supporting my daughter cheating on her husband and helping someone else to cheat on their husband. She did the right thing leaving her husband if she wanted to be in a relationship with someone else. You need to be supportive of her finding out what she wants to do with her life, but she's an adult and she shouldn't expect you to support her financially, only emotionally.

I had a relative who was sleeping with a married man for a period of years and she knew that I did NOT support that decision, but I still loved her and wanted her in my life. But he was never allowed over, not that he ever would have come.

The more you show disdain for the older woman, the more your daughter will be drawn to her. It's a shame her marriage didn't work out-and you're right, bosses shouldn't prey on their employees-especially ones that are married.