By Bunmi Sofola

Research has found out that daughters of unfaithful fathers have less trust in men, lower expectations of their relationships and a lack of confidence – all hurdles Aminat said she’d had to overcome.  In her collection of old photographs, she has pictures of her, aged eleven, smiling up at an attractive woman who could be her mother, on the doorstep of her family home. 

“Later that day,” she recalled, “the same lady and I are both pictured by my father, posing in the local supermarket.  He then handed the camera to me to capture him as he larks around with this woman and pulls faces into the camera.

“As I looked at the photographs a couple of decades later, I was struck by what a convincing actress I was.  That’s because the woman in the pictures is not my mother.  It is one of my father’s mistresses.  Although I was grinning in the photos, I can see the pain and confusion masked by that smile.  The ripples of that pretend grin still echo-through my life.  And it’s only now, after 16 years of marriage and aged 48 and with two sons of my own, that I understand the lifelong impact of a father’s philandering.”

Studies have found that, far from fading as children grow older, the impact of a parent’s infidelity grows over time, increasing as those children grow up and try to form their own relationship.  “Now, as a happily married woman myself, I realise that my parents’ marriage was unsustainable.”  Continues Aminat. 

“They could never have made each other happy.  But like so many who witnessed affairs as children, there’s still a part of me – the scared, confused 11-year-old in those photographs – who is angry that my father  betrayed my mother with so many other women, and that they, for their part, simply could not stay away from him. 

I felt betrayed because I had not only lost my father, I had lost him to those other women, whom he put before me.  My mother had left only a few weeks before those smiling pictures were taken.  I just came home from school one day and was bundled into mum’s car with my younger brother.  Years of bitter rows over dad’s cheating meant she’d had the foresight to buy her own flat to escape to when she’d had enough.

“At weekend, when I visited my father, it broke my heart to see the man I had hero-worshipped looking so utterly lost on his own.  He seemed a mere mortal as he tried to fend for himself.  Then, one weekend, I turned up to find that he was no longer alone.  My mother’s closet was now filled with the scent of another woman, and her more sensible clothes than mum’s designer ones.  The bed where I used to snuggle between my parents on weekend mornings was now off-limits, it’s now a boudoir where my father took his lover.

“As a child, I’d always understood that my father was irresistible to the opposite sex.  Because he seemed to revel in the attention of women – handsome and charismatic, he was an incorrigible flirt – the shadow of infidelity always hovered my parents’ marriage.  I was always direly aware of some female waiting in the wings for my parents’ ailing relationship to falter, so they could move in for the kill.  It was only during their frequent separations that these shady figures would come sharply into focus.  And because I grew up in a world where sex and flirtation were chaotic, destructive forces, I was to grow into a young woman who did everything I could to avoid them.  Even one of our lesson teachers was in love with him.  We hated each other, so you can imagine my irritation when she reappeared after my mother left.

“On a weekend stay, I was called into the living room by my father where this teacher, clearly banking on being his next wife, suddenly let it be known that she loved me and that we could all live happily together.  I felt so powerless I simply bust into tears.  Before I had even turned a full teenager, I was learning this was a world where no one could be trusted and everyone let you down.  Since then, whenever anyone says any thing nice to me, it takes a lot for me to believe them.  I always ask myself what their motive might be.  When trust is lost at the age when you’re forming your view of the world, it is hard to regain it.

“I can’t remember the first time I was formally introduced to one of Dad’s new lovers.  I am sure I was as well-behaved as I would have been to any adult.  But beneath the polite introductions, I was already learning to feel contempt for ‘the other women’ – a feeling that’s lasted to this day when I see other females justifying getting involved with married men with children.  The derision also came from the fact that I felt sorry for my dad’s girlfriends for not being able to live up to my elegant mother.  When my father eventually decided to move in the woman with whom I took those photographs, my father’s other lovers faded away, and they later got married.

“She tried her best to be sweet to me, taking me shopping and letting me stay up late to watch TV.  But I was so cynical at the age of eleven that all I saw was a cheap ploy to secure my father’s affection.  With this woman now living in my family home, it looked like my fantasy that my parents could be reunited was dead.

“Unfortunately, Dad’s business empire collapsed and he re-located to his home-town.  Still fairly rich and now hoping he could make a go of things with my mother, he convinced her to give him one more chance and we moved back into the family home until it could be sold.  We then got ready to move to his new location, but before we did, my father said he had to take one last business trip to finalise some details of his new business.  My mother’s sixth sense prevailed.  She went to his estranged wife’s work-place and found she was also away that week.  When my father came back, she searched his briefcase and found their plane tickets.  The eight of my mother tearing into him and him with his head bowed, staring into the carpet as she presented him with her evidence will stay with me for as long as I live.

“In the end, dad relocated with his estranged wife to his home town and my mother got a new boyfriend.  I felt abandoned by everyone.  Divorcing parents have the solace of new partners.  But there are no consolation prizes for the children.  Losing a home with a mother and father who love you unconditionally is catastrophic, no matter how unhappy that household is.  Now that I’d been happily married for 18 years, and knowing how precious the mental well-being of my two sons is I sometimes wonder if my father ever considered the consequences of his liaisons.  Sadly, I will never know as he died years ago.  But if he were here today, I would have one question for him: ‘Was it all worth it?’