...maybe, just maybe, the kids are angry not because the mom made them angry but they saw the damage he caused - they FELT the damage he caused. If Prudie really thinks an affair and departure on the part of one parent has no effect on the kids, she shouldn't be doing advice columns.

I can't agree with you Vermin. It would be so nice if life were all black and white, but that fact is - relationships between people are more nuanced and more complicated than that. Two people in awful marriages found each other and fell in love (it happens). They divorced their spouses and married each other. Happily married people do not leave their spouses and marry other people. I do not believe that parents have any obligation to stay in a hurtful, soul-sucking marriage just to please their kids. Sorry that the timing was off - yes, they should have both divorced before they had the effrontery to meet and fall in love, but the didn't - so what? So that means they are condemned to living in a bad marriage?

The kids need to get over it and the father needs to stay away from that wedding unless his wife is invited. They can all sit in the rain and eat worms at the reception if it makes them feel better.

No, people should not stay in unhappy marriages for the sake of the kids - it just prolongs misery.

But if a parent roils up a bad situation by involving another person, there are going to be consequences. And if the children feel the consequences, which they do if they are minors living with the parents, they have a right to be angry.

Children need to get over it? Absolutely - but the best way for them to "get over it" is for them to recognize the character flaws of the cheating parent and the new partner and to react accordingly. Otherwise they will either continue to be walked on by the cheating parent or turn out like the cheating parent.

I don't think falling in love with someone, which is what their father did, is a character flaw. The timing was bad. Yes, Dad should have walked out of the marriage before he met his second wife, but it didn't happen that way. So he did the right thing and ended his marriage when he realized he was in love with someone else. Although his marriage was already over or he wouldn't have been in a relationship with another woman.

BTW, your last statement - father staying away from the kids until the kids accept the new spouse to his satisfaction - could end up with the father "losing" the kids - and he will suffer more than them.

Falling in love with someone when you're married to someone else is not a character flaw. Acting on it prior to separation/divorce is. The best thing to do is keep away from the object of affections and end the marriage if that is the best option. If the relationship is meant to be it will happen under better circumstances.

Sounds like maybe someone might have been a homewrecker herself. While I don't think the children should be carrying on with the "whore" talk, etc at this point....Two things are clear.

1. The father has to be at the wedding.

2. The "other" woman cannot be if the mother (well within her perogative) says no dice. Its really simple. Father has to face this music solo. Don't even come close to saying the abandoned wife doesn't have a right to exclude the other woman, of course she does. Its not like this woman has any relationship to the woman being married that day. Forget the notion that the father has some sacred rite to have a date with him that night.

Yes, that's right. The kids could certainly refuse to see him again. But if the kids are willing to cut off their father over the fact that he and their mother had a bad marriage, then I would say he's already "lost" them - there is no relationship there to maintain. Very painful, but he can't make them love him if they don't.

I agree. Falling in love is not a character flaw, but we choose our behavior if not our chemistry. If they were in a miserable marriage BEFORE he "fell in love" than they should already have been getting divorced or have been in therapy. Instead Pops sat around whining about what a bad marriage he had until he found someone who felt the same way.

You can't simply brush off the feelings of the kids as being caused by their pissed off mother. As the child of a mother who pretty much broke up another man's unhappy household, I could never blame his kids for their anger or mistrust of her. Yes, he was miserable in his marriage before he ever met my mother but I can't, in good conscience, say that what went on after that was healthy. He eventually became my stepfather and I loved him very dearly but that doesn't make what he did right. His kids had every right to feel the way they did. They did all get over it and, by the time of his death, they still consider my mother as a beneficial presence in his life. That said, I think they'd have preferred it if the relationship had started under different circumstances (like AFTER he'd gotten divorced).

Oooooh, thebin - and it sounds like somebody got dumped herself!

1. The father does not have to be at the wedding. The bride herself needs to decide once and for all if she does or does not want a relationship with her father. She doesn't get to keep him hanging around as her whipping boy for the rest of her life. If she cannot love and respect him, she needs to be honest enough to cut him out of her life.

2. Husbands and wives are invited to weddings together. Always and in every case. A wife is invited, along with her husband, to the wedding of her husband's boss's daughter, even though she may never have met either the boss or his daughter.

And binny, a wife is not a date.

The kids aren't cutting the father off because he had a bad relationship with the mother; the kids are cutting the dad off because he handled it in an adolescent way (ie, indulging his hormones since that's what "being in love" is) rather than an adult way. My experience is that the situation may not repeat itself but the pattern of putting his needs above anyone else's does.

And if the kids need to accept the fact that life is not black and white, then why do they need to accept dad and his wife unconditionally? Sounds like dad is the one who is having trouble accepting shades of gray.

rjesak - you can't "break up" a miserable marriage. It is already broken. Having said that, it can be horribly difficult to end even the worse marriage, especially when there are children involved. I give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Who knows who tried to "save" the marriage? So his timing was off. He left. Divorce happens. Get over it.

"Husbands and wives are invited to weddings together. Always and in every case. A wife is invited, along with her husband, to the wedding of her husband's boss's daughter, even though she may never have met either the boss or his daughter. "

And what was that you were saying earlier about life not being black and white?

You are one of those idiots that takes all of the LW's self-interested POV at face value. Read between the lines and realize that the truth is somewhere between both sides.

THe kids still love their father. THey do not accept the Other Woman and may never. That's is WELL WITHIN their right even if they still want to maintain some relationship with their father. The Other Woman doesn't get a lifetime pass to play mother to the step kids who hate her. And you are unbalanced if you think in the scheme of things its a big deal for the father to fly solo for 3 hours in light of the unaceptability of his wife (which is rationale) to the two most important people at the wedding- the bride and mother in this case.

Just to throw it out there:

1) the marriage invitation could be the first step in daughter opening lines of communication with her father.

2) the reason the kids are not talking to father and step mother may be because father told them they have to accept her or live without him. (this is just speculation).