HOW do you react when you discover that one of your parents has been having an affair? Worse, what do you, do when you know about your father’s affair and your mother doesn’t? Do you tell? Do you hide it? Whose side do you take? And when your mother finds out and your family is swept up in the ensuing emotional chaos, how do you hold it all together?
Such questions may sound like thee plot lines from Neighbours or Brookside but for a growing number of Irish teenagers and young adults in their early 20s this is real life.
Fiona Leahy of Accord, the marriage counselling service, recalls teenage boy whose father took him on holiday with his girlfriend and swore him to secrecy. The father had told the mother that the holiday would be a father son bonding session.
It may sound extreme but it is only one of the ways in which parents may thoughtlessly impose their indiscretions on their offspring. “Some people don’t seem to have any awareness of the huge damage that can be done to children,” says Ms Leahy.
At the Marriage Counselling Service in Grafton Street, Dublin, “Teen Between”, a special service for teenagers in the throes of the chaos caused by their parents’ extramarital affairs and breakups, has had a steady clientele since it was set up in May 1995. The youngest “teen” to have contacted the service for help was only 12.
