New Research on Young Adult Women Forgiving Parents for Infidelity

Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash

While research on the effects of a parent’s infidelity on young adult children is scant, a recent article published in July 2024 (citation below), takes an important first step in looking at the process of forgiving a parent for their affair. Yes, there is a process!

For families coping with infidelity, it can be helpful to know that forgiveness doesn’t just happen, there are steps that adult children need to walk through if they are to be ready to forgive. In this post, I will describe the steps as well as what the research found in terms of other factors that helped these young adult women forgive their parents for infidelity.

It’s important to note that the research subjects in this study have two cheating parents, both mom and dad.

What does Forgiveness mean?

This article defines forgiveness as:

The readiness process to relinquish the right to blame, demean, or seek revenge against the person causing harm, while simultaneously developing compassion and empathy towards them.

I like this definition because it specifies that forgiveness requires both a change in behavior towards others, and a change inside oneself.

The 4 stages of forgiveness

Uncovering phase: In this first phase, the young adult is trying to learn more about the infidelity. She might be asking questions, scouring social media for information about the affair partners, and trying to find out why cheating happens. Additionally, she may go through layers of pain, including having her worldview about love, marriage, and sexuality questioned.

In my experience, women who discover a parent’s affair stay in this phase for up to a year. Which can be both frustrating and painful, but IMHO, is necessary for true forgiveness.

Decision phase: After getting more settled with the facts of the infidelity and a broader understanding of what it means for her family and outlook, a young woman needs also to learn about what forgiveness means. Specifically, what it means to her. Once she understands forgiveness, she needs to commit to forgiveness. Again, forgiveness doesn’t just happen. It needs to be prioritized. 

Working phase: Here the young adult starts to reframe her understanding of her parents and the affair by seeing them as a flawed human (as we all are) rather than only a perpetrator. This is a necessary shift for forgiveness.

As I wrote above, if the adult child rushes through the Uncovering phase, either because of discomfort or because she feels pressure from family or friends to ‘move on already’, she will struggle to authentically reframe the infidelity experience and see her parents as humans rather than villains. 

This is also where the hard conversations come in. Often the adult child sits down with the parents not to uncover more information about the infidelity, but to deepen her understanding of what the infidelity has meant for her relationship with her parents. For help with hard conversations check out this post and this one.

Parents, this is where you have some agency. 

This research (as well as past research) suggests that forgiveness for infidelity is more likely when the cheating parent takes ownership for their cheating behavior in an authentic way. 

Deepening phase: This is the real fruit of this process. In this phase, the young adult woman is able to find deeper meaning in the affair, and value any learning that she gained from it. She is able to forgive more easily because rather than seeing the affair only as painful, she sees it as something that happened and now she can move on from it.

Interestingly, this study found that forgiveness of mothers who cheated tended to go better than with fathers, for 2 reasons. First, there is a view that men cheat because they cannot control their urges, while women cheat because they are not getting what they need from their male partners. Second, fathers were less likely to apologize for their affairs. As noted above, forgiveness is hindered when the parent shows no ability to take ownership for the cheating.

Are you a parent looking for help speaking to your child about infidelity? Start with this post.

Are you a young adult woman who is wondering if you even want to forgive your parents for their affair? Read this post.

Looking for more of the research that informs my work? Check out my research page.

Article citation: Manoe, E. C. (2024). Phases of Forgiveness in Early Adult Women with Parental Infidelity. Salasika, 7(1), 53-62. https://doi.org/10.36625/sj.v7i1.153