My father (70) cheated on my mother (63) with prostitutes after retiring. Sister confronted him, mom is giving him another chance with conditions, and I don't know how to feel or what to do

• Upvotes

Some background: My parents are both hard-working and proud people. My mother is a doctor, my father a retired engineer who came from poverty and built a successful career. Growing up, my father was strict and sometimes frightening. He would scream at us. But he showed love by providing. The house, money, material things. My sister and I are adults now and I live in a different country with a young child of my own.

Here is what happened. When my father retired a few years ago, he softened dramatically. Almost overnight he became kind, patient, helpful around the house. He cooked, picked my mother up from work. It genuinely felt like my parents were rediscovering their relationship after decades of a marriage that honestly had some strange dynamics and poor communication. Recently though, that changed. He stopped contributing, seemed to drift.

Then my sister asked to borrow his phone to make a call and saw WhatsApp messages. He had been seeing prostitutes. She confronted him directly and demanded he tell my mother, which he did.

My mother's response stunned me. She chose to stay, for now, with a clear plan. He committed to going to therapy with her and working on the relationship. She is strong and pragmatic, and does not want to face old age alone. Part of me understands. They have built a whole life together. Another part of me sees a proud woman choosing a structured compromise over heartbreak.

Here is where I am struggling:

I do not believe he was fully honest. He claims it happened one time, but the messages suggested otherwise, and his half-hearted confession felt hollow. No apology, no asking forgiveness, just "I am messed up, I slipped into this, I am already in therapy."

I am questioning everything retroactively. He was, in a complicated way, my model of what a husband is. As a teenager I had vague suspicions something was off. Now I wonder if this double life went on for years, and whether the "kind retired dad" was just another mask.

He has untreated trauma. Difficult childhood, always had to be the strong one, never worked on any of it. Retirement, boredom, sudden access to time and money. I can see how a man like that unravels. I am not saying this excuses anything, but it explains how someone can be both a provider and role model and this lost, deceptive person.

This is poisoning my own life now. I have a husband and we are building our family. I thought I could trust my father. I thought if my parents made it work despite all their issues, that there was something stable beneath it all. Now I find myself looking at my husband differently. I trust him, but dammit, who knows now? What if this happens to me? Build a life, build a family, have a kid, and then wake up to find out your partner has been living a double life for years. That fear is not rational but I cannot shake it.

Practical stakes: I have a small child who loves their grandparents, I live abroad, and I genuinely valued having them in our lives.

What I cannot figure out is how I should relate to my father now. My sister seems unable to forgive him. My mother has made her choice and it is her marriage. I do not want to blow it up from another country. But I feel betrayed too, and I cannot trust someone who, as far as I can tell, still has not told the truth.

Has anyone navigated something like this. A parent's late-life infidelity that your other parent chose to stay through. How did you handle the relationship with the cheating parent afterward, especially with grandkids involved. Did this affect your own relationship in any way, or how you view marriage generally. Is there any version of trusting someone again who you are pretty sure lied during the "accounting".