Dear Emily,
My father has been a womanizer since forever, but my mother had no concrete proof. With the accessibility of the cell phone, she was able to catch him in flagrante delicto with a married woman we thought was a friend.
I was so pissed at my mother for not showing her anger at that moment. She was badly hurt, so I talked to my father about it, and he just said, “It’s been over a long time ago.” I thought he would be faithful to my mom after that, but we found out that he was having a simultaneous affair with another married woman with two kids who is 28 years his junior. Their affair has been an open secret in their office, with the woman’s husband working in a building just a few meters away.
My mother never confronted my dad about his philandering. She just made side comments and sent text messages, which she thought would wake him up. One time she left the house without any of us knowing where she went.
My mother’s pain has affected her health. She had a heart attack six months ago upon learning that the young woman and my dad checked into a motel. She’s lucky she was brought to the hospital in time.
My father is now retired, yet this woman keeps calling, texting and “borrowing” money from him. The thing is, my father believes it’s “normal” for a man to have affairs as long as he does not abandon his family. I am thinking of having a sisterly talk with this woman who is younger than I am, to hopefully awaken her conscience.
—Concerned Daughter
When you say in flagrante delicto, you do know that it means “in the midst of sexual activity?” Did your mother just stand there and watch? Couldn’t she have thrown a table at them or raised the house from the ground with her bare hands? Was she in a coma at the time? Sleepwalking, perhaps? Wow, she certainly didn’t act like a normal wife, considering the circumstances!
This whole drama is actually between your parents and nobody else, since you’re all grown children now. You can confront your father and scold him until you grow feathers, but as you already noted, he has this distorted belief that he can do whatever he wants to do below his belt, as long as he doesn’t abandon his family.
Take the high road and do not have anything to do with this woman or the others he may be seeing. It’s your father you should focus your ire on. You may put an end to this affair, but how about the next, and the next, and the next, ad nauseum? He has money—the aphrodisiac and magnet to many women! If he has been doing this since you can’t remember when, then be assured he will be doing this till his last breath.
Convince your mother to have a life of her own and start enjoying other activities, with or without her husband, who is killing her slowly. After this last heart attack, fate could be telling her to let go of her attachment to him without ifs and buts, and take hold of the life remaining in her. She should remember that this incorrigible husband will not be joining her in the box, no matter how much love she had shown him all their life. She’ll go on being alone for all eternity, with not even the flimsy hope of him looking for her.
Wake her, shake her, make her come to her senses, to take control of her life for a change, and to love herself more this time, no matter how late in the day it is.
E-mail emarcelo@inquirer.com.ph or emarcelo629@gmail.com, Subject: Lifestyle