You say you are going to "give her some time". Isn't this a tad presumptuous. Her time is her own. How do you think you can give it or take it away. To me you seem to be threatening. That is no way to help anyone with a problem. Confronting her, as you say you have done, was your first mistake. You should leave her alone to work through her own problem. Find other things to discuss, but never discuss her private life, with her, or with anybody else.
When you say there are small lives at stake, I presume you refer to the man's children and what is at stake is the continued integrity of their family. When their father's affair with your daughter becomes widely known, it could mean the split up of their family.
So why are you so all fired anxious to reveal him? What is there for you to gain? Is it necessary that you two parents of one young woman be the ones to point the finger at that man and assume the responsibility for ruining his life? Why?
You are going to say that it's not you, but himself, who is doing the damage, and you're right, to a point. He is being
foolish, and so is your daughter. Both of them must know this, and will hopefully come to their senses before all hell breaks loose. Apparently you folks feel obliged to become involved in the situation by threatening the man, even though the ensuing scandal will ruin your daughter as well.
Stay away and let the saga take its course, avoid a great deal of misery and come out of the whole thing feeling better all 'round. If you persist in threatening action against the man your daughter loves, and if you persist in antagonizing your daughter by judging and condemning her, you will lose friends. The man and his wife will always hate you, as will their children when they grow up to know the facts, and you will lose your daughter's respect for ever. I don't think you will like eachother very much either, because the nasty taste of what you are thinking of doing will stay a long, long time.
She knows what she is doing is wrong. The man knows what he is doing is wrong. Hearing it from you isn't going to change anything there. And surely you must know about irresistable forces that can overtake humans. Surely you have heard about, or read about, love, passion, heartaches, uncontrollable attraction. If you're lucky, you have experienced these things yourselves, but whether you know first hand or only from books and movies, you must realize that these attractions do exist. Also they don't necessarily last forever, especially under circumstances such as those of your daughter and her lover.
One of your main worries is that your daughter is wasting her best years on an impossible partner. Well, an affair at her age is not going to ruin her chances of finding the right man later on and think of the possibility that time with him is not necessarily wasted. You won't likely have her on your hands forever; her next boyfriend will probably be tall, dark, handsome, healthy, wealthy, wise AND single.
Don't persist in ruining the life of her current flame. Let it flicker and fade by itself. And for goodness sake don't let it
become a source of argument between you and your child. Let her live her life as she will. You had her under your care for years and years, and have tried to instill in her your own standards. If she is straying now that she has reached adulthood, just let it happen. You can't go on running her life forever. If this escapade ends in sorrow for her, she will have learned a great deal. If you are the architects of its ending, she will have learned nothing except to hate her parents.
Learning her own lessons is part of being a grown-up. Don't take that away from her. You know the affair will end; just be patient. And then,. never mention it again.
I hope you can manage this.
Truly yours,
GG
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