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BEL MOONEY: My mother's secret has upturned my life. How could she abandon her child? By BEL MOONEY FOR THE DAILY MAIL Published: 11:54, 9 November 2024 | Updated: 12:06, 9 November 2024 e-mail Dear Bel, I’m 40 and grew up with my parents and a younger brother – a standard family. My mum grew up in another country, moved to England at 18, met my dad at 30 and went on to have me and my brother.
She was three months pregnant with me when they married, and has pretty much admitted she got pregnant to keep Dad, who would do the right thing and support her. But a year ago I found out she had a whole other secret life no one (apart from close family on her side) knew about. It turns out she’d married, had two children and divorced in England before meeting my dad.
She now admits she married that first time to stay in the UK but her partner knew – and they were together about eight years. Their son and daughter are respectively 11 and eight years older than me. Illustration: Neil Webb It was a year ago that my mum confessed about her first daughter and wanted to trace her.
I assume getting old finally prompted this. Still she lied that she only had one child. It was only when I found my half-sister that I discovered there was a brother too.
He wants nothing to do with us – which is understandable. Mum had no photos of her life before us, which I always found strange. It turns out my half-sister has all the photo albums.
It was crazy seeing my mum in this whole other life. What I find unforgivable is she kept her two older children a secret and left them with their dad. She says he stopped her from having them – but I don’t believe that.
Anyway, you don’t keep them a secret. Worse, she seemed to turn her back on her son altogether. Our half-sister continued to see my mum weekly or so until she was 18 and knew of me and my brother.
At 18 (when I was ten) my sister told my mum she should tell us about her or she’d cut her off. Mum refused to and ended up losing contact with her. Until last year.
I have many emotions: anger, guilt (that we had Mum and they didn’t), frustration that she kept this secret for so long, not allowing any of us to build relationships – and now the feeling that I don’t know her at all. Then there’s my dad. He knows nothing.
He’s nearly 76 and has become quite a recluse since Covid. My parents have never had the best relationship, and lead separate lives in the same house. I feel guilty keeping this secret from him, but should I burden him with information he can do nothing with? I try to carry on as normal, but this has completely upturned the foundation of my life – everything I thought was real.
What is my next step? LAURA Bel Mooney replies: How can we ever know what secrets lie beneath the faces of those we know well – yes, even those we love? When I was about 19 and I discovered a secret about my own family, I can still remember that unsettling feeling of things falling strangely into place, explaining behaviour and revealing generational pain. In your case, the reason for the lack of your mother’s early photographs is finally revealed, but with that answer comes a deluge of other questions which make you wonder who this lady you call Mum really was. I feel great sympathy for your sense of confusion, which is (as I am sure you’ve come to realise) something you will live with for a long time, if not for ever.
On that note, your uncut letter asked me about counselling – and I certainly think it would be worth trying. As well as couple counselling, Relate deals with family issues, or you could try to find a counsellor through the website welldoing.org.
A process of trial and error might be needed to find the right person, but the process can itself be a useful step towards making sense of your emotions. Read More BEL MOONEY: What's the point of my life if I can't have children? Your instinct about your father is surely correct. What is the point of presenting him with revelations that will only make him unhappy or angry or, at best, as full of questions as you feel? It does sound as if he was almost trapped into marriage by somebody ready to lie about her past in order to gain security, and who perhaps never truly loved him.
Of course, it could also be argued that by keeping silent you are colluding in her secrecy, but on balance I think it the kindest course. You don’t want to hurt a vulnerable man with the shock of discovering that his wife lived a massive lie. Did any of you really know her? To conceal the reality of the two children your mother had left behind in order to start a new life shows a determined and manipulative nature, but we should perhaps try to be generous and assume she had her own good reasons.
Perhaps things went on within that first marriage which fed her decision; you will never know because she is unlikely to tell you. Now, of course, you are left with a half-sister – and plenty of time to get to know her. Is it possible for you to look at this as the one positive within your upsetting story? I hope so.
And in time I hope you find it’s possible to continue loving a deeply flawed human being, even if she’s not the person you thought she was. I’m disgusted by my friend’s affair Dear Bel A close friend is having an affair with her best friend’s husband. I know her as well, although our relationship is not as close as theirs.
I am very shocked, in fact, quite disgusted with my friend, who doesn’t seem at all remorseful. I can’t understand how she could continue doing this, while looking her friend in the eye and acting normally. She babysits their two children a lot, and has told another mutual friend that the wife phoned her, jealous of her obviously close friendship with the husband, but afterwards rang back to apologise for her misplaced paranoia! I’m not sure whether to just mind my own business or, whether I have a responsibility to try and talk her out of continuing this affair, even though I know it will probably be unsuccessful.
I’m not sure where my loyalties lie. I’m also, with hindsight, just a little concerned about her behaviour with my own husband, which at times I have felt was inappropriately flirty. But then I feel guilty for thinking such awful things about her.
Do I tell her how I feel about her shocking betrayal of her best friend, who is also my friend? Or keep out of it? And if I keep out of it, how can I resume our formerly close friendship, when I no longer trust her? JANE Bel Mooney replies: For so many reasons (some deeply personal) I found this email hard to read. The situation you describe can only end in tears. And if those tears are shed by the woman who is betraying her best friend – that is, if she’s in love but is subsequently ditched by a man who chooses the status quo, as men so often will – then in my opinion she deserves to cry.
Quote of the week Since they have died to give us gentleness, And hearts kind with contentment and quiet mirth, Let us who live give also happiness And love, that’s born of pity, to the earth. From Since They Have Died (February 1916), by May Wedderburn Cannan (Red Cross nurse and poet, 1893-1973) Advertisement But if the affair continues and the wronged wife finds out, then a whole family will be engulfed in pain, anger, recrimination and bitterness, and the tears become a tsunami. All this happens because of the old demon, sex, which drives men and women mad and has caused misery and exploitation for thousands of years.
Believe me, I have experience in this game. I’m not sure why you find doing the right thing such a problem, when it seems pretty clear to me. Let’s start with your strange admission that you’ve worried about the woman flirting with your husband, but then feel ‘guilty for thinking such awful things about her’.
Most people reading this might think that a woman with no moral scruples about having an affair with her best friend’s husband is quite likely to be addicted to casting a sexual spell on any old husband who passes her way, including yours! Yes, her cheating hypocrisy certainly is a pretty ‘awful thing’, and I’d say you have the right to be wary. These days people are very afraid of being judgmental about sexual matters, even though they think it’s absolutely OK to weigh in with opinionated aggression over political affiliations. You are shocked at your friend’s cheating behaviour, while not being sure what to do about it.
Of course, you’re correct to think that anything you say will change her actions. Yet isn’t it the right thing to express your revulsion for the massive act of betrayal? Would it not be honest to express moral scruples, even if realistically we know it happens all the time? I happen to believe in the concept of sisterhood, which means not making another woman miserable. At least if you make this clear to one friend who is transgressing, you are showing yourself to be on the side of the other one who is not.
That seems simple to me. Of course she’ll almost certainly tell you it’s none of your business, but at least you’ll have spoken the truth. Although some will disagree, I don’t think you have a duty to tell the wronged woman what is happening.
But if the whole thing blows up, you’d better face the fact that you may be blamed for not revealing the betrayal. The whole thing is a miserable business and I doubt your friendship with the sinner can ever be as it was. How could it, when you look at her and don’t much like what you see? In the words of the great poet T.
S. Eliot, ‘After such knowledge, what forgiveness?’ And finally..
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