My fathers secret

22523 Views 123 Replies 57 Participants Last post by bandit.45, May 8, 2014

dogman

Discussion Starter · Oct 18, 2012

I write this as I sit next to my fathers hospital bed as he suffers through the last of his life.

I learned this week that my father is a very strong man. He was always a bad dude and many people feared him. I'll summarize the story then fill in the new detail later. The story I tell is new to me because it was never spoken of till recently. I'm 46 now.
When I was 6 my parents were the center of a lot of neighborhood parties in North Jersey. We moved from there when my mother was raped during one of these parties by her sisters boyfriend when they went out for cigarettes. By the time I was 12 they were separated and my dad had slept on the couch for about 6 years.
My dad left a great job in jersey and has struggled ever since. My mother has always said she left because of being tired of struggling financially and my dad was bad with money.

The truth is we left Jersey because my father, upon learning what happened at the party the next day, went to guys house and waited hours till he came out. My father never asked him anything, he beat the man into a coma. The guy was out for a month and he had to be told what happened and he never fully recovered from the beating.
The story I got was that my father couldn't handle the rape of his wife and he kept bringing it up for years. Making my mother hate him eventually. Again none of this info came from my father. He never spoke of it till now.
My mother has dated many men and had a 6 year relationship with a married man while I was a teen. I remember going into a bar at 16 to find him to punch him out. Because of this sort of thing I moved out while still in high school.
My father has not one time in the 34 years dated a woman or even mentioned one. When I told him he should find a woman to be with he said he had a wife already. So he believed in his vows.

After coming to TAM, I looked at all the details of their breakup and I formulated a guess as to the truth of what happened. Armed with this I bagan asking some questions and here is what I found out....

At the party my father saw my mother flirting with this guy at some point they disappear and my father is pis sed off. He grilled her. She was afraid to tell the truth knowing my father is sometimes violent and she told him she was raped by this guy. My father handled him and we moved out of state shortly after that.

My father didn't believe the rape story and continued to bring it up. The facts did not match. He got trickle truthed and it made him crazy. My mother eventually left and began dating a married man. She became an alcoholic.

So during a fight after they are divorced she admits to cheating that night at the party.

I learned my mother has asked my father to reconcile several times long after they were divorced. My father said no. He told me he could never trust her again after all that. He loved her but he could not live with her knowing all of that.

So till this last hospital stay for my father! he would drive to my mothers house every day and get her paper from the end of the driveway and walk it to her door, set it there for her and leave without a word. They still visit family at the same time on holidays and are both living alone, both in their seventies.
Through the years if my mom had a problem with a man, she would call my dad and he made sure the guy never returned. He was scary.

Today I am amazed once again how destructive infidelity is to everyone involved. I can go on all day listing the ways it has affected my life. It would bore you. Let's just say I'm on TAM for a reason.

Thanks for reading the truth about my father.

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