I know my mom had at least 3-4 APs - which have had lasting consequences that I'm still dealing with, even though she's been dead 20 years.
First off, she demonized my dad and bad-mouthed him pretty much all the time. I should note that they had been married for almost 30 years by the time she died, with no talk of divorce. Though he wasn't the best dad, I didn't realize until recently how deeply she hurt any possible relationship I had with him because I could only see him through her eyes/lies. Even further, I have no doubt now that she was lying about certain events and manipulating our opinions and time with him so that we would be on her side (whatever that meant to her). After she died, I didn't talk to my dad for over 15 years - in very large part because of that anger she'd helped me cultivate.
One of the other issues is that she would tell me about the person she was cheating with (in one case, her boss - whose children she had me babysit. How messed up is that?) and have me keep her secrets from my dad. Which, of course, was okay because he was such a bad man, right? It's just so twisted.
Our relationship changed because of that particular "relationship". As we were very religious (supposedly!), I questioned her cheating. She didn't like that. She grew paranoid. One day she misplaced the card she was going to give her AP and accused me of stealing it. I think she was afraid that I took it and was planning on outing her to my dad. While I was out babysitting one night, she tore apart my whole room looking for the card, upturned the bed, shredded all the posters, ripped down all the clothes from the hangers, dumped out all the drawers, etc. To cover up what she did and why she did it, she had to make up a story about how I'd done something to deserve it (wish I could remember what) and of course apologized profusely afterwards, helped me clean up, and begged me not to tell anyone about the card or the affair.
She did things like this with subsequent APs - like going berserk on me, hitting me and accusing me of smoking when my brother found her AP's cigarette butts outside the house. Chasing me around the house, screaming about how a certain t-shirt (which was sent to her by her old AP a couple of years after we moved to another state) got under her pillow, and why it smelled like men's cologne. Why, I must be crazy and doing all these things to torment her! She had to have an audience for this, of course.
Her faux rages really damaged the relationship I had with my brother, too. Since he wasn't privy to insider information, despite the fact that we had been the best friends (how sad is it that we were living every parent's wish and she tried to destroy it all), he started to believe that I was a crackpot, doing all these "bad" things - and doing them to hurt his mommy.
We caught my mom and her last AP red-handed at one point. By this time, she was, thankfully, no longer confiding in me about her APs (since I clearly disapproved), but was in full gaslight mode. We walked into the house after school and our mom was sitting in the AP's lap and they were kissing. She tried claiming they were just horsing around. I mean, really? My brother believed it because the AP was female. When I told him what was really going on, finally, relieved that someone else was seeing what I was seeing and could back me up, he was so angry - at ME, because it couldn't be true and I was just making stuff up.
That relationship never recovered fully. We talked about it recently, but the cold fire was burning in his eyes the second I brought it up and he remained icy until the topic was changed.
Yeah, by day I was a nerdy, library-loving youth group enthusiast - but by night, I was a smoking, card-stealing, cologne spraying, t-shirt stowing rebel. I wish i could look back on my teenage years and be able to see my family relationships more clearly, without the foggy lens of the madness wrought by dirty secrets. I have no idea what a relationship with my mom would have been like without her cheating and everything she did to protect herself while throwing the rest of us, and especially me, under the bus.
Though there is a light in all of this. My oldest half-brother and I got back in contact recently and it turned out that he knew exactly what was going on in the few trips he took to visit us. So all these years of feeling crazy or like I just imagined things or overreacted or maybe I was just a horrible kid after all... At last someone's got my back.
I've said to my IC "how can I trust anyone? If you can't trust your own mother or your life partner NO ONE can be trusted." I still feel that way and don't see it changing. My IC and I seem to be at an impasse on that.
Ain't that the truth.
[This message edited by carnelian at 9:16 PM, August 26th (Monday)]