My wife and I are trying to make an ethical decision about truth-telling within our family. We’ve been married for decades and have two teenage children. For most of our marriage, I lived a double life driven by compulsive sexual behavior that escalated over time. My wife discovered evidence of it a few years ago. The discovery shattered her trust and nearly ended our marriage.
We chose to stay together on the condition that I enter a 12-step recovery program for sex addiction, which I’ve successfully maintained. My wife pursued her own recovery support, and we have each engaged in individual and couples therapy. Over time, our marriage has improved measurably. Our home today is happier and more connected than it ever was.
Our children are doing well — happy, engaged, thoughtful teenagers on positive trajectories. They know their parents’ marriage has been under strain and that we’ve been in therapy; they do not know the nature of the betrayal, the addiction or our recovery. They experience our family as secure and loving.
My wife and I struggle with whether we have a moral obligation to tell our kids the truth about what happened — not in graphic detail, but in substance. My wife worries that withholding such a significant fact becomes an ongoing deception that could undermine trust if they ever learned of it from another source. I worry that telling them would burden them with an adult trauma that doesn’t belong to them, destabilize their sense of identity and cause cascading harm at a developmentally sensitive time — and also that it would damage my bond with them, perhaps beyond repair.
We’re not pretending to be perfect. We’re trying to weigh our desire for transparency within our family and avoiding harm to our children, who did not cause this and cannot do anything useful with the information right now. Our family is finally experiencing real healing, and we wouldn’t want a well-intended “confession” to harm them more than it would help them.
Do parents owe teenage children the truth about a betrayal that profoundly shaped the family, even if disclosure risks causing harm that secrecy has so far avoided? And if some disclosure is ethically required, what does responsible disclosure look like in practice? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
Transparency can be an important value, but it isn’t the only thing of value, and more of it isn’t always better. As the German philosopher Georg Simmel observed more than a century ago, knowing whom we’re dealing with is a precondition for having dealings with people at all, and yet any disclosure we make is necessarily a small selection from an enormously complex mental whole. If we tried to lay everything bare, he ventured, we’d all be driven to the madhouse.
These days, people extol familial ties by insisting they’re elective ones too: You often hear someone avow that a parent or child or spouse is also “my best friend,” as if the bond is exalted by being made to do double duty. This isn’t necessarily a development to be encouraged. Some modes of relating are better kept distinct. The relationship you have with your children, in particular, is not a relationship of peers. Yes, children come to understand, in the squeamish abstract, that they may be the product of coitus — but as a rule, that’s about the limit of what they wish to know about their parents’ sex lives.
It would have been dishonest had you told your children that your relationship has never been in trouble. It isn’t dishonest to refrain from delivering a full marital account that they have no expectation of receiving and no right to know. We can agree that adults are generally entitled to know significant truths about their own lives, but this doesn’t resolve the situation. For one thing, your children aren’t yet adults, and it’s unclear how far along they are toward adulthood. For another, the relevant truth may be the truth they already know: that, as you write, “their parents’ marriage has been under strain, and that we’ve been in therapy.” You say you’re debating whether to reveal what happened “not in graphic detail, but in substance.” But then you must decide what level of specificity you think is appropriate to provide “substance,” and the continuum of disclosure doesn’t come marked with perforated lines. “There was a breach of trust” is substance. “I was unfaithful” is substance. “How many women? I’ve lost count” — also substance.
You might try to get a sense of what your children actually want to hear. Your wife worries about ongoing deception; you worry about destabilizing their sense of identity. But on a less elevated plane, your wife may simply want the kids to understand that you’re the reason the marriage has been troubled, and it’s unsurprising that your inclinations run in the opposite direction. Of course, your own preferences aren’t the only things to consider. There’s a difference between information that helps your children orient themselves in their own lives and information that enlists them into a marital drama.
If you both believe the kids are mature enough, you could begin by acknowledging that you know they’re aware of the difficulties and asking whether they’d like to know more about what happened — giving them time to think about it. Then, if they do want to know more, you can get a sense of how much more and (within limits) calibrate accordingly. I suspect you’ll find that there are drawers they’d rather not open. And I don’t recommend exposing details for the sake of it. As Simmel observed, our closest relationships depend not only on a measure of reciprocal knowledge but also on “a certain not-knowing.”
Readers Respond
The previous question was from a reader who wondered whether to tell her estranged brother the truth about his paternity. She wrote:
Through a commercial DNA-genealogy website, I discovered that my youngest brother has a different father than I do. My brother is not a subscriber to this site, but his daughter is, and it’s clear that she’s a half-sibling’s child with no relation to my father. … I’m less troubled by the affair itself — the marriage was miserable — than by my mother’s decision to join a site where this could so easily surface. I haven’t bothered to confront her; I suspect she’d only deny it. My quandary is whether to tell my brother. … The complications: We are estranged (due to his drug use and criminal history), and he is also estranged from his daughter (she was raised by her mother and none of us have seen her since her infancy). … Do I keep this to myself, or will I regret denying my brother the chance to know his real father and maybe heal his past? — Name Withheld
In his response, the Ethicist noted:
You say that you haven’t bothered to raise this matter with your mother. Well, do bother. You can make it clear that you’re simply letting her know that you’ve come across this information. It might ease her discomfort if you let her know that you’re not especially troubled by the news. The information you have bears directly on your youngest brother’s life, and he is entitled to it. She should be prepared for the idea that he — and, independently, others — will learn what you’ve learned. And because your brother has a right to seek his biological father, he may want to know whether he has other relatives, or learn more about his origins. There’s value in having a realistic understanding of one’s circumstances. Your mother is the person best placed to provide that.
(Reread the full question and answer here.)
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I have to disagree here. The letter writer says the estrangement with her brother is the result of some serious offenses by him. Who is to say this information won’t destabilize him? Who is to say he won’t seek out the biological father, only to be rejected by that man because of his past? In this instance, it seems more prudent to let this information stay undisclosed. — Courtney
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I would add one thing. Consider that the letter writer’s mother may not have had an affair. There are other possibilities, such as if the writer’s parents separated temporarily or if her mother was sexually assaulted. Human relationships are messy, and DNA discovery illuminates this. — Jenny
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Should he be told? In my opinion, yes. However, given your estrangement, you may wish to consider how that news is likely to be received. I wouldn’t advise dropping a bomb and then re-exiting his life. I’d suggest you seek out counseling with a psychiatrist who understands addiction and can help you construct a strategy for sharing this information in a way that increases the chance it will be heard. Those seeking recovery need a strong support group. In a best-case scenario, perhaps there is a way for you to be part of your brother’s, while protecting your own boundaries. — Donna
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As an adopted person, I cannot overemphasize how very important getting information about your genetic roots is. Today, many new methods of cancer treatment and other evolving medical procedures require knowledge of one’s genes. This trend will only accelerate. Many families have secrets like yours. Our mother and father are the people who raised us and they may not be our biological relatives for a host of reasons. But genetic information can save someone’s life. — Janet
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It’s also possible that your mother was artificially inseminated with your father’s full knowledge because he might have become infertile — and they didn’t want to discuss this very personal matter with the kids. Unless you ask your mother, you are making assumptions about the circumstances of your brother’s birth. — J.
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The Ethicist is correct that the estranged sibling should know. My issue: It is not necessarily the duty of the letter writer to tell him. This situation is between the mother, the estranged sibling and the natural father (who may or may not be aware of this son). I agree the letter writer should inform his mother that she knows her brother had a different biological father; it is the mother’s duty to inform the man who his father is. As long as the mother lives, this is her secret to keep, or not. — Jenny
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