Mom In Adulterous Relationship

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My Dad left my Mom after 33 years of marriage and 4 kids about 8 years ago. It has been devastating to our family. My Mom recently had her boyfriend move in with her and it seems they are active together. I feel anxiety every time I visit her and her new boyfriend who now lives there. My wife and I have 6 children and I know it could be confusing the kids on what is right and proper.

We usually get together for Sunday dinners at my Moms but I’m starting to feel like I should avoid her house until the adultry stops. My Mom is a fallen away Catholic and attends Church occasionally.

Any advice is appreciated. God Bless.
 
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I know that it’s adulterous technically, but please try to imagine the loneliness and pain she must feel after being tossed aside like that after so long.

If she lost her son too, that would be devastating.
 
Aside from being devastated, deal with today’s reality. Have you discussed this with your pastor? Have you encouraged her to attend Mass regularly? Have you encouraged her to seek counseling? I would maintain a relationship with your mother. However, I would be hesitant about taking young children to her house where her boyfriend is living with her. Can you invite them to your home for dinner?
 
PaulfromIowa said:
I would maintain a relationship with your mother. However, I would be hesitant about taking young children to her house where her boyfriend is living with her.
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^^^ I agree. Don’t teach your children, by passively accepting this situation, that it’s OK for unmarried people to play house. In addition, remember that if this man’s morals are such that he’s ok with playing house with your mom (hey, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free!) I would not allow him to be around my children unsupervised. No, I’m not saying live-in boyfriends are pedophiles, but you must judge their actions and behavior and you must be smart and protect your children.

My good friend’s son has a great girlfriend whose mother has a live-in boyfriend. (Didja follow that???) So this guy lives in a house with the mom…and there are 3 teenaged girls still living at home. Something I learned years ago sticks with me even now. I was told that most sexual predators don’t wake up one day and decide to assault someone; the assault is a decision of opportunity that occurs without a lot of pre-planning.
 
invite her to your house for food. we cannot be responsible for the sins of others. Your mum would no doubt have had a great shock when your dad left.

be kind to her and show her love. maybe suggest an annulment
 
All I know is that if my parents separated or divorced and then “shacked-up” with someone, I’d be pretty disappointed. Actually, I would be ****** off 🤨

I would make my feelings on the matter known and then probably withdraw for a time to settle down. Regardless, unless there’s an annulment, I’m not dealing with any “live-in-lovers”.
 
That is very difficult! For everyone.

I guess u have to draw some lines, huh? Try to stick to some lines that show her and the bf that you know what is right and wrong, and u want your mom to overcome.

I believe a second relationship while you still have a living spouse will eventually show it’s poor nature, even when the two are “happy” together.

I should never want to bring someone I respect and love into a relationship with myself, if I have a Christian marriage with someone else.
 
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Come on, there is no reason to assume wild odds!
 
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I pray for my Mom everyday, I have encouraged her to go to Mass and have invited her, I have suggested a annulment.

I would never stop having a relationship with her, my question is should I be going to her house with her boyfriend living there especially since I have young kids?
 
Catholic_Guy1 said:
We usually get together for Sunday dinners at my Moms but I’m starting to feel like I should avoid her house until the adultry stops
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I would suggest you talk to your mother, by herself, in person— maybe the two of you go to lunch or something. This isn’t something to just spring on her or to suddenly just get too busy every weekend.

She deserves a straightforward conversation about how the boyfriend situation is concerning and you don’t want to confuse the children. It’s going to be a difficult conversation.
 
Catholic_Guy1 said:
should I be going to her house with her boyfriend living there especially since I have young kids?
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It’s a prudential matter. We can’t really tell you that. We don’t know all the details, nor could we. Advice from your pastor may be helpful.
 
Ultimately you have to make the best decision for your family. I don’t see how discontinuing your visits could have any positive outcome. Are your children of the age where they can understand the nature of their relationship? If not, there is no need to explain yet. If they are, you can explain the morality of the situation and our call to love one another while still hating the sin.
 
This situation is more common today than when I grew up and couples stayed together in bad marriages, for the sake of the children and their obligation to Church teaching.

My position is to keeping the door of love open is far better than shunning a loved on because of a failed marriage.

Jim
 
I used to think as you do, so I handles a lot of situations in front of my now-grown children badly.

Your children are going to meet people doing all sorts of bad things in their lives. They need to learn to handle that. They need to learn that people have virtues and vices. Even a person trying to be a good Catholic and doing everything outwardly well has vices; are you going to shield your children from them as well?

What I wish I had done was to explain that the person lacked (whatever) in their lives, and that we should pray for them very non-judgementally.

something like: Grandmom has been very hurt by Grandad’s leaving her, and she doesn’t understand about loving Jesus. She is trying to be good as well as she can, and when you are older, you will understand this better. In the meantime, let’s pray for Grandmom.

I would, however, keep a strong eye on the situation and not let them spend the night If the couple were to come to stay with you overnight, I would offer separate rooms, then you will have done what you need to do, even if there is some sneaking around.
 
Your mom’s sins aren’t some contagious disease you need to keep your kids from being infected by. If anything, see this as an opportunity to teach your kids what loving the sinner looks like. It does NOT look like treating your mom like a leper who must be ostracized for losing faith in the Church and moving on with her life.

Don’t teach your kids an anti-gospel where God condemns us for being imperfect. Rather, teach them that marriage is special and sacred. That a true marriage is indissoluble. That it thrives when both people dedicate themselves to finding the resources they need to make the marriage work, that they have a duty to the wellbeing of their marriage and each other. It’s not merely about remaining under the same roof and not sleeping with other people. The commitment goes deeper than that.

The point of Christ pointing out our lesser sins (that to look at another woman with lust in your eye is to commit adultery in your heart) isn’t about making us neurotic about avoiding sins. It’s about humbling us so that we stop ostracizing the sinner. It’s about reflecting on our own weaknesses and imperfections and meeting people exactly where they’re at without a condescending attitude.

We’re all on this journey together. You will be a better witness to the faith by demonstrating unconditional love to your mother. And then affirm marriage to your children. Talk about the goodness of the marital commitment and how people fear marriage because so many are abandoned and hurt in our society. Loving people is hard. We all bring our wounds and our poor coping mechanisms. Teach them that the Church isn’t a club for the special moral elite. It is more like a hospital. The gospel comes before the moral law. The Church’s moral teachings challenge us to be committed to our spouses and to really persevere through trial, especially when people fall short.

And so, yes, your mom has fallen short, but if you abandon her, you’re not teaching your children about love and commitment. You’re teaching them that getting to Heaven is about checking all the boxes and being a member of the moral elite. You’re teaching them that cutting people out of our lives is about taking the moral high ground, not about upholding healthy boundaries in a relationship and ensuring you do not enable people’s vices. You’re teaching them that spiritual vanity that motivates such actions is a virtue, and that being a good Catholic is about that vanity. Thus, when they fall short and go through something as hard as what your mom’s gone through, they’ll say screw it. They won’t go to their priest (who they presume will condemn them), they won’t go to the marriage tribunal to get an annullment (They’ll see it as scrutinizing and micromanaging). They won’t wait for a ruling over whether they’re considered single and thus able to move on with their life or not. No, they’ll think about how their father’s self-righteousness motivated a sin he failed to recognize as a sin and feel that the Church is a terrible moral guide to follow and not Divinely inspired at all.

Sheltering them from reality and raising them in a fantasy world where people don’t sin will not guard them from sin.
 
I agree with others who have posted here expressing that your kids are going to meet all kinds of people in life. They need to learn how to process, manage, and accept relationships (read: love) with people who don’t share the same values they have. This is a good opportunity to teach them how to do that. I would not isolate them from their grandmother. I also wouldn’t put fear into them for her situation, or for that of her boyfriend. The posters here who suggest he may be a sexual deviant are way off base. If that is the case, and annulment and remarriage wouldn’t change that fact. An ubsubstantiated attack on character that way is wrong.

In any event, please consider that if you keep your children from their grandmother over this issue, it may quite possibly backfire on you as they approach adulthood. It is a real possibility they will resent you for impeding their relationship with their grandmother. It would be valid, because allienation in this case is not necessary at all. Share your values with your children, without denegrating their grandmother. Encourage them to pray for her, not pity her. As the Catholic Church teaches, we are all sinners. That is where you should start and it is where you should finish when dealing with your children on this issue.

It is fine for you to have a conversation with your mom about how you feel about this. I would encourage that, also. But only to the extent you would like her discussing with you the personal aspects of what goes on in your home. The door swings both ways.
 
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Dacinom said:
I believe there is a false narrative out there today. The falsehood if we don’t embrace everyone in all their sins that we’re judgmental and if parents, we’re sheltering our kids.
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“Dacinom said:
I believe there is a false narrative out there today. The falsehood if we don’t embrace everyone in all their sins that we’re judgmental and if parents, we’re sheltering our kids.

I can love someone without loving their sins, that is the message hard to accept today. Where is the line? Where would I NOT take my children if exposing them to sin and acceptance is good?
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Yes, it is possible to love the sinner and hate the sin. I wasn’t advocating that the OP teach his children that what is Mom is doing isn’t sinful. Nothing that I said has a THING to do with expressing ANY approval. It has to do with recognizing that we are called to love each other despite our sins.

You ask “Where’s the line?” The line is about being able to distinguish your responsibilities from other people’s responsibility. While morality is MORE than just refraining from hurting others, admonishing and ostracizing people is a penalty only appropriate when people’s sins DO effect others.

It’s not appropriate here. If she or her boyfriend were molesting or abusing him or his children, it’d be appropriate. But he is not morally responsible for her decision to leave the church and live with her boyfriend. There’s nothing about visiting her that enables her sin or participates in it. There’s nothing about visiting his mother and treating her like a human being that remotely encourages the sin. It doesn’t remotely enable the sin.

The Church as a whole needs to learn this lesson, because this same level of codependency is what is at the root of moving priests around who’ve harmed others, thus enabling their sins. The whole Church needs correction here, but it gets morphed by the belief that to correct this means to fail to acknowledge fornication and adultery are gravely sinful. We get lost in this false dichotomy.

There are two ways to sin. Virtue is the mean between the two. It’s a narrow path. We all fall off because it’s humanly impossible to stay on the narrow road. That’s why we depend on God’s grace. As we try to stay on the road, we have to continually adjust our aim. Sometimes we fall into errors on the left or the right, but BOTH are sinful. Both miss the mark.

The temptation is to see things as black and white, to believe that if I just avoid one side of sin, I will be on solid ground. But this belief denies that virtue is a narrow path to begin with. Unless we recognize that we are always falling, that everyone falls and recognize that we’re all in the same boat and have things to learn from each other, we’ll never get it.
 
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Tall with her but don’t forget - she’s your mum! You are connected to her in ways you won’t really understand until she’s gone.
Take her aside and explain what you have to explain but tell her you love her and the only reason you can’t come over is because the kids are asking and you don’t know what to tell them to sound right. As a wife who has been abandoned I am sure your mum has no soft feeling on adultery but she was just too lonely and probably just tired to get it proper. Sometimes when we are sad the world just seems to disappear and rules all seem wordly even if they are not. It will be good for your mum if she could concentrate get the annulment and marry her boyfriend. It will also be finally getting over your dad (who might still be the reason why she lets things vague and the door cracked open even if she says she hates him now the heart is a complicate thing).
 
There is likely no real reason to discuss grandma’s sex life with the kids.

By the time they are old enough to figure it out, they will also be old enough to see how you have treated your mom over the years. If you have been aloof and shunny, talking about your mom as an adulterer, the kids will figure out that should they ever sin, you will shun them. On the other hand, if they have seen you love your mom and treat her and her partner with dignity, your kids will know they have a dad who, like the father of the Prodigal Son, will run out to meet them should they wander off into sin someday.

All comes down to what you want to teach your kids.
 
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