Dear Carolyn: My 86-year-old father has had a two-year long email correspondence with his old high school girlfriend. He writes to her at least once a day, sometimes more. He shares information about us kids and his grandkids, which is none of her business, and says things that are a bit more than just friendly chatting.
He leaves his email open, so I’ve read a few of them when I’ve been at their house for holidays. (I know, I know.)
The kicker is that he’s been happily married to my mom for more than 60 years. My mom is starting to suffer from slight mental decline, and I think he is lonely. It feels as if he is having an emotional affair with this woman. My sisters and I are pretty irritated. We want him to knock off the emailing, or at the very least not talk about us kids. Is there anything we can do?
— Dotard’s Child
Dotard’s Child: Yes. You can exercise the compassion to leave him alone.
I understand all of your hard feelings, I do. I feel for your mom especially, for the obvious reason of her longtime spouse’s possibly wandering affections, but mostly because I think we can all agree she faces a terrifying prospect. To be at the beginning of a mental decline process — and therefore probably lucid enough, often enough, to understand what’s in store — is a heartbreak that probably can’t be overstated.
I also understand your bristling at shared information about your family.
But.
The stuff he’s telling his long-ago girlfriend is stuff you wouldn’t object to if he were talking to, say, his fishing buddy as they stood in a stream all day, right? Seriously. So let it go.
And, he’s a bit into what will probably become the toughest and loneliest phase of his life — as he fails to get any younger himself.
So let him enjoy his person, his outlet, without any added guilt burden of his kids’ disapproval.
You also don’t have to see it as a betrayal of your mother, if you don’t want to. This “emotional affair” could be a mood-lifter for your father through the caregiving process that ultimately benefits your mom.
If you think it’s important, then you can ask him to be more discreet and not leave his email open, which you should not! be! reading! Come on.
Online commenters’ takes:
Surprising how many people think they get to demand that their parents be lonely and miserable as a loyalty test.
