<p>Is it a secret or just something that never came up? Sitting down with an announcement might make it a bigger deal than it needs to be. Any chance it can just come out “naturally”?</p>
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<p>It seems clear to me that this was a secret.</p>
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<p>I don’t understand why a divorce would need to be a “secret.” It’s not anything to be ashamed of, it’s common as can be, and even if not something you would have chosen to put yourself through, certainly contributed to making you the person you are. It seems you are fine with them knowing, but you have allowed your husband to dictate how this has been handled.</p>
<p>I think telling them would provide them with a teachable moment, and once they get past the surprise (largely due to being deliberately kept in the dark about it), it won’t be a huge deal.</p>
<p>My father had a brief marriage in his early 20s. My parents told me at 12, and I was, initially, very upset - not about the marriage, but that there was a previous part of his life that I knew nothing about. I think it would have been much better to tell me when I was younger, although honestly it mattered very little.</p>
<p>I do think it would have been bad if I had been left to find out in my own. Once in my early teens I was snooping around the basement looking for family photos and documents. In doing so, I found my dad’s divorce papers, which would have been quite a shock if I hadn’t already known. Even if this hadn’t happened, there are other relatives who know who might have mentioned something - my uncle once came close to spilling the beans before my younger brother knew.</p>
<p>Frankly, I’m not sure why my dad is so anxious to conceal it. Other than my brother and me, I don’t think anyone he knows who wasn’t involved in his life at the time of his first marriage knows about it.</p>
<p>I’m not big on secrets. I believe in honesty from as early an age as possible. Keeping a secret like this is essentially lying, and few relationships can survive an atmosphere of lies. </p>
<p>About a year ago we were visiting friends who have a 7-year-old. The husband had been married previously and kept in touch with his ex-wife. His daughter even knows the woman. In conversation, I mentioned the ex-wife and my friend started to frantically signal me to “shut up!” His daughter didn’t know about the former marriage. They were afraid to tell her – as if she’d think her own parents’ marriage could break up, or because it conveyed some negative message about her dad, I don’t know.</p>
<p>I encouraged him to tell his daughter immediately. I suggested making it not a big deal – just casually mention that, “oh by the way, Jane and I used to be married.” They did tell their daughter, and it was no big deal. </p>
<p>The story continues. The word got out among our mutual friends, and it turned out that another former couple who keep in touch, the ex-wife had never told her kids that Uncle Dave and she had once been married. So they sat down and told their kids. The kids said, “OK fine, can we go play now.”</p>
<p>You didn’t mention the age of your kids, but I assume they are teenagers. I think the longer you wait, the bigger the risk that they will be angry that you kept this information from them. I wouldn’t make it a big deal, I wouldn’t have a “family meeting,” just tell them. It’s not a big deal – how many marriages end in divorce? Half their friends most likely either live in a divorced family or have parents who had been previously married.</p>
<p>Not sure what to do about your husband though … that’s more difficult.</p>
<p>(In doing genealogy research, I stumbled on a few family secrets, and was totally shocked. It’s better to learn about these things from your parents than from another relative or friend or newspaper article or census data.)</p>
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It’s not me that’s making it out to be a scandal, it’s H. Actually, I think H sees divorce not as a scandal but as a massive personal failing. He always has very negative things to say about divorced people, despite the massive number of divorces among our friends and his extended family and despite the fact that his brother is in the middle of a messy one right now. </p>
<p>cobrat, S and D are 19 and 18.</p>
<p>One night last summer H and I were having a rare “romantic” dinner out and during the course of dinner chat, I mentioned that I found it interesting that neither S nor D had ever asked many questions about our pasts. H flew into such a rage that we were attracting attention from neighboring tables. Way to ruin an evening.</p>
<p>We have had counseling in the past for other issues, but this is not something that came up.<br>
I’m not seeing that there would be any need for “emotional support”. We are talking about a marriage that ended in 1985. I’m certainly not carrying around any baggage from it. </p>
<p>Over the years I have even wondered whether they kids actually knew and just didn’t mention it, since both of my previous names appear on things they might have seen. I recently discovered that D definitely doesn’t know when I found that she used my ex’s last name on her college app as my maiden name (I didn’t correct it for her), and in a conversation about someone else who is divorced I proffered an opinion and she said “well you weren’t divorced so you probably don’t know her viewpoint”. S has probably seen both names, but maybe hasn’t put 2 and 2 together.</p>
<p>My feeling is that I will probably tell them each separately in the course of some conversation when we are alone - maybe driving somewhere when we have time to discuss things without interruption. Then they will need to keep the fact that they know a secret from their father, who will be furious if he finds out I told them.</p>
<p>Oh what a tangled web we weave…</p>
<p>Whoaaa… I think there are much bigger issues here than just telling your kids. Your H views divorce as a failure? So, by that logic, you’ve has a massive personal failing?</p>
<p>I won’t comment further but personally, I think it would be hard to be married to someone who thought I had a massive personal failure. JMO though.</p>
<p>Agree totally with what Travelnut said.<br>
We told our kids about H’s previous short marriage in a general discussion when they were around 8-12. The eldest was very upset (she had this idealized version of her parents being soul mates and that there had never been another for the other). The other two didn’t care one iota. In hindsight had I realised how devastated, albeit temporarily, D would be, I would have brought the matter up differently I guess.</p>
<p>Ugh, I think it would be a big mistake to tell your children and ask them to keep the knowledge from their father. That is unfair pressure on them. I would really recommend more counseling (we’ve gone in the past).</p>
<p>Also, I really think you should tell your D your real maiden name. I’d be very upset if I didn’t know my mom’s real birth name. Then again, I’m an Ancestry buff.</p>
<p>yeah, if you care, I don’t really think it matters that you haven’t told the kids. It’s your life not theirs. You weren’t married AFTER they were born. But, I do think it matters that your husband is acting the way he is. Unless you don’t care about that, either. Then that doesn’t even matter, by the way. (all relationships have their own internal logic that has nothing to do with what the rest of us are saying.)</p>
<p>But, above all, I don’t think it is anybody’s business except yours. So, tell the kids or do not tell the kids. But, it’s not up to your husband. Your story is yours and his is his.</p>
<p>Good luck to you. All parents have a past that is unfathomable to the young ones.</p>
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And this is what I would be afraid of - what else haven’t they told me? This is no big deal, so why the secrecy? So what would they do if something really were a big deal?</p>
<p>Furthermore, you want your kids to talk to you in the future - do you really want to teach them that keeping secrets, even when the secret is small, is the right thing to do? Even as late teenagers, kids learn the lessons we teach them.</p>
<p>I’d also remind H that your past relationships (even your past failings) made you the person that he fell in love with and married. Without that past marriage, would you really by the same person? Did you learn from the previous mistakes and thereby become a better wife to him? If you hadn’t married someone else first, might not HE have been the first husband?</p>
<p>I’ve never quite understood people who don’t realize that we are the sum of *all[/] our experiences. None of us emerged full-grown from the head of Zeus to meet our beloved. We are what our biology and our experiences have made us.</p>
<p>My brother and SIL never told their kids that SIL had a brief early marriage. Their reason for keeping it a secret was (according to them) because they didn’t want the kids frequently wondering if their parents would divorce.</p>
<p>It’s just a fact of your life and if it’s presented that way, I see no harm. But, if the kids are aware of tensions in the family, I’d be careful to distinguish between what let the first marriage end and the commitment to your DH.</p>
<p>Around the time of my grandparents’ 50th anniversary, my mother finally did some simple math- and realized there weren’t 9 months between the marriage and her birth. Even in that talky extended family, it had never come up.</p>
<p>*It’s not me that’s making it out to be a scandal, it’s H. Actually, I think H sees divorce not as a scandal but as a massive personal failing. He always has very negative things to say about divorced people, despite the massive number of divorces among our friends and his extended family and despite the fact that his brother is in the middle of a messy one right now. *</p>
<p>It seems that your H is engaging in Black/White thinking. As long as he can kind of pretend that you’ve never been divorced, you’re in the White-hat group (on a pedestal/good). If you’re identified as being divorced, then he “has” to put you in the “Black hat” (bad/evil) group. Does your H have a personality disorder? His reaction to the subject coming up during dinner is extreme and smacks of “splitting.”</p>
<p>If your H does have a PD, and does engage in splitting, then you may have to continue the secret just to keep peace in the marriage. I know it seems like “nonsense” to others, but irrational thinking by those with PDs can’t be worked out rationally. You can’t make sense out of nonsense.</p>
<p>If he were my husband, he’d likely be heading for his own “massive personal failure” unless he continued in counseling to address his need to control, anger and insistence on secret-keeping. I wouldn’t assume your D doesn’t know based on what she said. She may have had her suspicions and decided to give you a chance to tell her the truth. Your failure to correct her when she said you haven’t been divorced is tantamount to lying. She will remember this and may not be fine with it. My suggestion is that you see a therapist with your husband sooner rather than later and work out a way for you to let the kids in on the divorce. No one should have to be afraid to tell the truth in front of her husband.</p>
<p>I do think there is such thing as too much sharing among family. I am in the same boat as another poster - I’m one of those people that people confide crazy stuff in, and ask for advice on issues I have no personal experience with. If I ever get a phone call from a friend I haven’t spoken to in a while I can feel reasonably confident that she will be crying when I pick up a phone. </p>
<p>But on the original topic, I am privy to a number of family secrets that I honestly don’t think I’m better off knowing. I wouldn’t count a previous divorce among those, though, especially because my mother has two children from previous relationships (who my father has raised as his own). I guess the moral of the story is that there is such a thing as too much information, IMO, but I definitely might be interested in hearing about your previous marriage if I were your child. It wouldn’t be a big deal to me.</p>
<p>I can not imagine grown kids (or teenagers) not knowing this information about their parents.</p>
<p>My ex-H had a previous marriage (no kids). I think we told D1 fairly early just in passing in conversation. But no one bothered to tell D2… until it came out in conversation when she about 8 or 9. She was FURIOUS that no one had shared this important (to her) piece of family history. And even more annoyed that she was the only one who didn’t know. She wondered what else she didn’t know that everyone else did?!? But she is a kid who always wants all the information that can possibly be collected (is it any wonder that she is a whiz at Quiz Bowl?). Since then I have tried to include her as much as possible in sharing information on family relationships, etc. Which she appreciates.</p>
<p>I say tell 'em now. Don’t make it a big production, just mention, “Have I ever told you…”, and let them know. See what questions they have. It is not your H’s secret to keep. But I would not mention that he thinks it is a big secret, that will make them look at him funny. </p>
<p>By the way, I come from a family that is big on compartmentalizing information and keeping info from others. I make my dad crazy sometimes… but I just don’t believe in it. If nothing else, all these things that he thinks are “shameful”, I think are just stuff that happens in families. Things like living together before being married (he is still convinced all my employers would fire me if they knew I had done so), mental illness and suicide (happened to one of my siblings, and he treats it like it is a big secret… but everyone we know is aware, so not sure what that is getting him), etc. I did tell D1 and my niece both to keep it quiet if they decide to live with their BFs (both are talking about it). Both live far from the grandparents, and they will likely never know if no one tells them. So I guess that is one secret I do encourage them to keep because it will cause friction that is just not necessary. But I don’t think the OP’s secret is in that category.</p>
<p>In either case, though, we shouldn’t fall into our own black/white thinking- eg, that a kid would be crushed/devastated or that D might see withholding as lying. There have been so many times I explained to my kids that they didn’t get some whole version earlier because we weren’t sure how ready they were, that we were waiting to see what their fuller interest was, etc.</p>
<p>At some points, when there is conflict, the focus can change: ie, your need to be open with the kids (if that’s what you decide) versus the need to keep hubby from melting down. The relationship with the kids may trump. I agree that it’s not ideal to have to ask the kids to not let Dad know that they know. But, I would find it easy to say, “This is something your Dad isn’t comfortable discussing; I’m telling you because it’s a fact of my life. I’d like it to stay between us, for now.”</p>
<p>My parents apparently kept something from me and my siblings and we are grateful that they did. We never found out until after they were both dead and we were middle-aged that they had lied about their marriage date and that my mother had given birth to my eldest sister seven months after the date they were actually married (exactly one year later than the date they had given us). That did explain why my mother’s father, an ordained minister, never seemed that warm towards my father, but on balance it was really information that we did not need as children growing up.</p>