How would you feel if your sibling asked you to lie to their kid about why their spouse left them? Would you do it to protect your sibling?
This woman’s sister had a husband who left her six months ago, but it’s not like he disappeared into thin air or anything like that. He simply moved to a new town and spends every other weekend with her niece.
However, the reason her sister’s husband left them is pretty terrible. It turns out that he had an affair with one of his old coworkers, and her sister uncovered the affair in a way that left her embarrassed.
“Their daughter is 12, not a baby, and she knows something happened because adults are terrible at whispering and because her dad suddenly went from living at home to having a mattress in a rented room,” she explained.
“My sister has been telling her that he ‘needed space’ and that they both decided this was healthier. I didn’t say anything because it’s not my marriage, and I figured parents get to decide how much a kid knows.”
“But last Saturday, my niece was at my place and asked me straight up if her mom made him leave because she’s ‘hard to live with.’ I asked why she thought that, and she said her dad told her sometimes people leave when the house feels too negative.”
That made her see red, but she kept quiet and didn’t tell her niece that her dad cheated, and that’s what broke up the marriage. She did inform her niece that relationships between adults are complex, but that her mom was blameless in what happened.
Her sister did hear about what she said and got mad at her! Her sister accused her of opening her niece up to ask more questions while insisting that they need to stick to the story that they had just grown apart.
She promised her sister not to say anything to her niece about the affair, but she refused to protect her loser of a husband since he’s going around trying to make the end of their marriage all her fault.
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“Now my mom says I overstepped and that children don’t need adult drama. I agree with that, mostly. But I also don’t think ‘protecting the child’ means letting her build a whole false memory where her mom was the reason her dad left,” she continued.
“Am I wrong for refusing to stick to the softer story if it means my niece is blaming the wrong parent?”
It is curious to me that her sister is willing to have her husband throw her under the bus to prevent the truth from coming out. Her sister really does need to be honest with her daughter, since the truth always leaks out eventually, and I’m sure she will be more upset to hear about it in the future instead of right now.
Her niece is old enough to handle the truth; it’s not like she’s too young and needs to be shielded from that. It’s unfortunate that her sister is letting her husband get away with more of his lies, but at the end of the day, it is up to her sister to take the lead on this one, as it’s her family.
What do you think?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
