Tonight I found out my grandfather has cheated on my grandmother with male partners over the years.
I am totally devastated by this. I adore my grandparents. They were a very important part of my childhood. They bought me my first Bible, took me to their (Protestant) church every week, shared their faith with me. If it werenāt for their presence in my life, I doubt I would be Catholic today.
To find out my grandpa is gay and has been living a double life for so longā¦ I just want to cry (and now I am). Everything Iāve ever thought about him was a lie. I donāt know who this man is. If I donāt even know him, how can I love him? I idolized him and now I donāt even know if I love him. Who can I trust???
I canāt stop cryingā¦ please tell me what I am supposed to think.
Jaredā¦first of all, I am sending you and your family so much love and strength. Please know youāre in my prayers.
Itās a tough place to be. I canāt say Iāve been through something like that, but in my life I have had to deal a lot with someone I admired cheating on someone elseā¦sadly enough Iāve had to dealt with that in my family twice. Itās a terrible thing to deal with, and I imagine in your case itās much tougher. I can only be honest with you: itās likely that the hurt will never fully disappear, but you still have to work towards that. So have I. I hold an incredible amount of resentment towards both my father and my brother for having been unfaithful to my mother and ex-fiancee respectively. What makes everything worse is that neither of them know I know they were unfaithful, so all the anger and resentment and pain Iāve felt and feel is something I keep to myself.
When something like that happens in your family, you suddenly find yourself having to carry an ENORMOUS burden. Itās horrible, and all you want is for it to go away. But it doesnāt, so you direct that pain, anger and frustration towards the person that caused you to have that burden, butā¦we are all human. We all make mistakes. We all have our struggles and our battles to fight, and sometimes we lose. Step outside of your own perspective for a while, and try to see things from your grandfatherās perspective. Try to feel his confusion, his loneliness, the pain heās felt throughout the years. Try to
love him, as tough as that may be.
When I went to Confession over a moment of rage because of my brotherās unfaithfulness, the priest said to me āforgive himā. He said a lot more things, but the most important thing was that, āforgive himā. It struck me as odd because in my mind, he hadnāt hurt me per se, but his fianceeā¦so why would I have to forgive him? How would I have the ārightā to do so? And then I saw what he meant: whether my brother wanted to or not, he hurt me, and he hurt me pretty bad. I did, and do, have something to forgive him for. This priest also suggested that I talked to him, that I explained how it all affected me, without attacking him, without showing anger towards him, without even telling him I forgave himā¦just to let him know āI am going through this, and I needed to let you know.ā Itās tough, I never found the courage to do it, though I feel Iām just taking the time to build up enough courage to do soā¦but if you find the courage, give it a try, it might just be the first step towards healing.
I donāt know if thereās much else I can say. I know itās hard, but donāt lose faith. Rely on God, cry as much as you need to, and let it all out. Remember that your grandfather is still the man youāve always thought he wasā¦think of the times youāve made a mistake. Sure enough, you may have doubted yourself, you may have considered yourself to be a different and/or bad person because of that mistakeā¦but youāre not. Youāre still you. You are just someone who didnāt know how to deal properly with something, and that led you to hurt either yourself or others. Your grandfather is still the same man.
We are all human, we all make mistakes. Look for God, ask him for the strength to love and forgive your grandfather. I wish you the best of luck, and I will keep you in my prayers.
