Ask Ilona: My Daughter Won't Talk to Her Mom After an Affair

What happens when a child refuses to have a relationship with a parent after infidelity? 

In this first episode of Ask Ilona on The AM Sidebar Podcast by Antonyan Miranda, certified family law specialist Ilona Antonyan answers a powerful question from a divorced father navigating the emotional fallout of betrayal, custody, and parenting. 

After discovering her mother’s affair, an 11-year-old daughter wants nothing to do with her mom—leaving her father torn between supporting her feelings and worrying about long-term emotional impact. 

This episode is a must-listen for parents navigating divorce, custody disputes, and complex family dynamics.
 
📩 Have a question for Ilona? Submit via email to podcast@antonyanmiranda.com to be featured in a future episode.
 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hi, I'm Alona Antonian, and this is Ask Alona. I'm a certified family of law specialist, a litigator, and I'm here to answer your relationship and marriage questions. Thank you for joining us today on Ask Alona. This is our first one, and we got an inquiry from an anxious dad in Sacramento, California, who sent us a DM on Instagram. Dear Lona, my wife and I are divorced, but my question is really about my 11-year-old daughter and if I should encourage her to have a relationship with her mom. My wife cheated on me in our home and is now married to the man she had an affair with. We have two daughters who are 11 and 14. We have shared 50-50 custody of our oldest daughter, and she splits her time between my house and the house of her mom and her stepdad. My youngest is a different story. She lives with me 100% of the time and refuses to talk to her mom. I completely understand how she feels, especially since she is the one who found her, now stepdad, in bed with her mother exposing the affair. My daughter wants nothing to do with her mom and even requested to live only with me during our court proceeding. I support my daughter fully and want her to know that I will always respect her choices and what she wants to do. I also feel very validated as I was so deeply hurt and blindsided by my ex-wife and her actions. It feels like my daughter is on my side and it's us against the world. However, I am starting to worry that the anger and resentment my daughter feels towards her mother is going to have long-term effects on how she forms relationships, and she might regret not having any kind of relationship with her mom when she's older. This rift is also causing friction between my daughters. My youngest is angry that the oldest sister, quote, forgave their mom so easily, and my oldest thinks my youngest is being childish by shutting their mom out completely. I'm just trying to hold it together and do the best for each of my kids. I have my own feelings I'm dealing with, but I want to know if I should be trying to encourage my daughter to forgive her mom or would it make her feel even more alone? How do I best support my daughter? Anxious dad. First, I'm very sorry to hear that you and your children have gone through this trauma. Now, with divorce as well as with loss of a loved one to death, the stages the one goes through are the same. That is denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I don't know how long has it been. She's justified in being angry at her mother, but she has not gone through the five stages of grieving. Your question was, should I encourage my daughter to forgive her mom? I don't think you can push it down her throat, say you gotta forgive your mom. That in and of itself is not gonna work. I think your daughter needs to go to therapy if she is not and have a safe place to work through her feelings in a professional setting, because if she's talking to you, she'll be testing your level of acceptance as well and see if you'll feel betrayed, if she is going to express in any way that she's accepting her new life, the new world, and what her sister is doing. If you have insurance, I'll contact them to get a couple of names, go on psychology.com, do face check, read about those therapists, look them up, and take her to one that she will connect with. Picking a therapist is also a personal thing. Some are good, just like lawyers are good lawyers, bad lawyers, same thing with therapists. But definitely she needs to talk to someone in private and confidence and not with you, but should you encourage her? Yes, but show her that you're working on moving on yourself. You've had so much to deal with. I mean, divorce, sure, dividing assets, fighting over custody, possibly showing her you've done that to me, so guess what? The kids are on my side, and your 11-year-old feels shame for what her mom did to you. She's aligned to you. She's connected with you, like you said, it's the two of you against the world. And how is she supposed to break that? Where that's been the case now for probably some time, probably more than six months. Aligning with you is the reason why she currently is not allowing herself to have a relationship with her mom. Your 11-year-old simply needs to know and believe and be certain that you're absolutely okay with her having a relationship with her mom, however, she would like it. When it comes to adult problems and issues, I'm sure she's I mean, she already knows what happened. He sh her mom cheated, her mom is a liar, that's how she's labeling her. She can be trusted. She sees you as the good guy who's done nothing wrong, that loves her, cares for her, and that mom is selfish and moved on with her life and married a new guy and doesn't care about them like you do. She feels like her sisters doesn't care anymore. She moved on. You said my youngest is angry that her oldest sister forgave their mom so easily. I'm sure the youngest feels a little jealous that her oldest sibling has this relationship that she would like to have, but she feels like the ma that her mom cut her off. Your daughter lost a parent at this point. She's been without her mom. It's like having her mom die. If she's still angry, her anger is exacerbated by her sister going to mom, having a good time, probably getting presents, bringing it back, tell telling her about what they were doing. She feels like she has no access because she has to be aligned with you because she loves you and she knows you were in the right because you didn't break up the family. So help her. Since you're the good guy in this, help her get through the rest of the stages. She's gonna go through depression, so she's gonna need that support. And make sure you're a loving parent and she should have professional support. After that, get her to acceptance because once she gets there, then she could go do things with her sister and her mom. But she needs to know also that you're gonna be okay with it. You're gonna have to get help too. Being cheated on sucks. I mean, I got cheated on before, and sometimes you think, well, why would anybody cheat on me? You know, I'm great, like all of us think of, right? And then somebody cheats on you and it hurts. The pain and anger is gonna be there. And if you don't deal with it, end of the relationship wasn't just when she had this affair, a sexual affair, when your daughter discovered you guys had problems before that. You sense something was wrong before that. You need to help yourself because now the divorce is behind you and you got your custody. Like you said, I'm just trying to hold it together to do what's best for each of my kids, and I have my own feelings I'm dealing with. You're still dealing with those feelings. Those feelings, if unresolved, they'll remain your subconscious. And even when you don't know it, even when you say, Hey, I'm good, I don't care anymore, because you know there's no getting her back, you may say things, you may react in a way without even being self-aware that your child will notice in reaction to their mother. The stepfather is in mom's life. So how that relationship is gonna be re-established is gonna be another problem because she's gonna hate that guy for some time. Step one is re-establishing a relationship with her mom. Step two, that guy is in the picture and she's probably not gonna want to see him or accept him. Is she gonna want to really go to the house where that stepdad is? Probably not. I think that there are gonna be stages of forgiveness and acceptance. First, except we're establishing a relationship with her mom. Next is the stepdad, because he's always gonna be a bad guy in her eyes. In fact, what she may do if she really establishes her relationship with her mom, or when she does, hopefully, is she's gonna try to blame him, like being the bad guy taking her mom away from you. Perhaps at some point, when you're there as well, you could do family therapy where you guys all go to therapy. It's gonna be really hard for you. And I mean, I can't imagine being in a room with the person that did that to me and trying to work it out with them. I mean, you'd want to spit in their face, but for the sake of your kids, you're gonna have to bear the burden, the pain of having to sit through it if you're ever gonna do that. Now, that's in a perfect world. Everybody would sit together and like hold hands and make it work for the kids and act like they're on good terms of forgave and moved on. Is that realistic in real life? Probably not. But there could be other options and other solutions. You can be courteous to each other, which you may already be since you're exchanging your older child. Perhaps it's a curbside pickup, perhaps it's a different sort of arrangement. Perhaps there was conflict and your daughter has heard bad things about him in addition to just the affair that she witnessed. So that is going to be another thing you'll have to work through. I want to applaud you for allowing your oldest daughter to have that relationship and being supportive and also being aware and writing this message and that you need to do something now. I think for any girl, if their mom is alive and is not a drug addict, is not an alcoholic, is can feed them, nurture them, take care of them, it's important to have a relationship between mom and a child. She will miss that. She will miss that. And she should have an opportunity while her mom is alive and well, because things happen in life. People can get sick, they can go, and you never know when that's gonna happen. You can get into a car accident, somebody can be gone. And what would happen then? What would happen if somebody something happened to you? And I hope you're gonna stay healthy and live long, but mom by default will get automatic custody of your 11-year-old. So it's important to work on that relationship now for many reasons. In practicing family law, and I have some cases that are pending now where we're dealing with similar relationships, betrayal by one parent related to cheating. What I see is that when one parent forces through court an extended parenting plan to the point where, oh, let's rip off the band-aid and let's just let it be. The child pushes back and resents it more. They feel unsupported. They feel like the parent who's pushing them to re-establish a relationship is betraying them and they already feel betrayed by the other parent, so they're left alone. I don't think that's the right thing to do, to be pushy about it or to force any specific schedule right away, especially where now, for your 11-year-old, there's been a period of separation where there has been no relationship at all. She doesn't want to talk to her, she doesn't want to see her. So you have to take it slow and gradually, that's right for her. You have two teenage girls, I'm sure she's going through a lot of emotions and the hormones are gonna kick in. You have some challenging years ahead. So getting help on how to go through this re-establishment of relationship, professional help, would be beneficial. Let me go through the rest of your email to ensure that I address everything. She found her stepfather in bed with her mother. That image can't be cleared out of her mind. She's gonna live with it. But if you get a good therapist, they can do what's called EMDR. There are certain psychologists who specialize in that. So when you're shopping for a therapist, ask or look for one that specializes in EMDR. An EMDR helps people who like cops who've shot a person for a first time in their life and now they can't hold a gun. It's a very simple technique, but it really helps people that have gone through trauma, whether it's verbal abuse or seeing something that they want to unsee, deal with the anxious feelings. Before she can probably see her mom, it would help her to relive that image through EMDR and not have the feelings of anxiety and feeling overwhelmed that'll come over her that make her shove down. I've done it myself once. I was married for a short period of time and was it was not a healthy relationship. That's why it only lasted four months. And after that, it took two years. Like, I'm strong, I'm resilient, everything is great, I can do this. But in the subconscious, you still feel the pain and it still comes out in the ways that you treat other people. So, speaking from personal experience, that has helped me. They may have to do that multiple times, multiple sessions, until the feelings of anxiety and that pain and all the thoughts that might rush into her mind, like, mom, what the hell are you doing? Like, you just broke up our family. You're cheating on my dad, you bitch, whatever is going through her mind, I hate you. Like, all those feelings are gonna rush over her. She's gonna have to relive. But what happens, just like it happens with the police officers who are then able to hold guns and go back to their work, is after about a couple of months, you become desensitized to that image, those feelings and those emotions that flood over you. And I think your daughter will need that before she sees her mom again. It will be a great investment because healthy mind will lead to good grades, happy child, happy adulthood, teenage years, and everything that's ahead of her. It'll make your life easier. From cases that I've had, what have I seen that is similar? When parents try to force a visitation order through court on a child who's not ready, it can backfire. What I've seen happen is children may threaten suicide, they may not intend to do it, but to get attention, to show their level of frustration, anger, and resentment, they will act as if they are gonna hurt themselves. Their grades start going down, they isolate themselves from friends at school because they feel like nobody understands what they're going through. And in your situation, she feels like her sister doesn't understand what she's going through either because she has a relationship with her mom while she doesn't. So she does feel alone, and it's two of you that have that share that bond right now. How do you help her? You know, if you just go and reach an agreement with her mom about and you sort of schedule and leave her out of that, she'll be very mad and feel alone and betrayed by you. So you can't do that. Just have a conversation with her and are able to do it in such a way that she believes and buys in that you want her to have a relationship with her mom on her terms and at least start slow. It's you giving her permission to have a relationship with her mom and her buying in first and accepting it that you really, really mean it with no judgment. From legal perspective, you don't need to go to court and modify a court order to be able to initiate any sort of contact between your 11-year-old and mom. You try it out on your terms, see how it goes. I mean, if mom eventually wants to change the order if things go well, then the burden will be on her to go and change something, or you all can agree to do that in writing and file the agreement with the court. But that isn't it's not a priority to do that initially. Adding the stress of going back to court for her, like mom should not go to court either right now to try to get an order. If this is the way it has been, where your 11-year-old has not seen her mom for a while, and you are being open-minded and are going to be supportive and trying to help her, the worst thing you can do is go back to court. Whether it's you filing to modify for custody or her filing to try to reduce child support obligation because the more custody she has, the less she may pay. Do not go to court. Really just let this therapy and this healing play out first for at least six months, and then maybe go to a mediator who's gonna help you write it up so they can you can document whatever schedule it may be, if that's important to any one of you. You can really just leave the order as is, depending on how it goes. But I would not rush to court at all. That's just gonna make your daughter turn a mom again and interfere with therapy. I just want to say you're not alone in this. A lot of relationships and divorces obviously end because of someone cheating. Relationships end for many reasons, and there is no perfect relationship, but relationships are hard. Whether you're single, it's a relationship with your children, or you're married, or you have a boyfriend or girlfriend, there is no easy relationship. Everyone has problems. What we see people post on Facebook are just the highlights of the good moments. Behind the scenes, there's real work to do. Alright, guys, if you're not sure if you should stay or you should go, or what to do in your relationship, forgive or not, how to react, ask Alona, I'll be glad to help you. If you have a question you want to ask about a relationship or your marriage, or what to do, please DM us on Instagram or email us at podcast at AntonianMoranda.com.