From Dear Prudence on Slate:

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/2014/09/dear_prudence_i...

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/2014/09/dear_prudence_m...

Part ONE

Q. My Dad Despises Me: As a young teenager, I read my dad’s email and found out he cheated on my mom with a family friend. I impersonated him online and got her to send naked pictures. I forwarded them to her family, including her kids. I realized immediately how cruelly I’d behaved. I felt wretched at the unnecessary suffering I caused. I apologized to everyone I hurt, but many people, including my dad, have never forgiven me. My dad’s fury toward me came not from my exposure of the affair but rather at how I lashed out. He called me a budding sociopath, and my parents’ marriage ended more from his anger at me than the affair. I don’t know if our relationship will ever recover. How long should I continue reaching out to my dad? I don’t know how to stop caring about how he sees and loves me.

A: I’m assuming the events you are describing happened many years ago. Yes, you behaved terribly, but so did your father, and despite his anger at you, he should have been the adult and recognized that his cheating was the precipitating event. Your parents’ marriage was likely in a terminal state, so do not put the onus of its ending on yourself. You were a kid who struck out, but your father was an adult who struck back and has never taken responsibility or forgiven. Maybe he’s the one with the personality disorder. I think you need to hash out all this with a therapist to get some perspective and talk through what to do next. Maybe you just accept your father is a cruel, unforgiving man who will never be in your life. Maybe you can fashion one last attempt at a rapprochement. But you need to do that after you’ve worked through this too burdensome guilt.

Part TWO

Q. Should Eleanor Have Been Told About Franklin and Lucy?: All the participants in this are dead, but my wife and I still disagree about it. In the Ken Burns documentary, The Roosevelts: an Intimate History, which aired last week on PBS, we were told that after FDR’s death, Eleanor went to Warm Springs and asked FDR’s cousin, Laura Delano, to tell her exactly how FDR had died, and all the attending circumstances. Ms. Delano truthfully told her that Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, FDR’s old lover whom he had promised never to see again, had been on the premises, and that she had been there frequently—the arrangements having been made by Eleanor and FDR’s daughter! My wife’s reaction was that Ms. Delano was cruel to tell Eleanor. My response was that Ms. Delano should not have lied—Eleanor asked for the truth. What would your advice be to a future relative of a future dignitary, deceased in similar circumstances?

A: The future is easy—in today’s world, someone would have a surreptitious video of the death and all the attendant circumstances, so there would be no need to lie. Even when former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller died in flagrante in 1979, the attempt to cover that up didn’t hold a week. The news that Franklin was with Lucy Rutherfurd when he died—the woman he almost left Eleanor for years before—remained unknown by the public for about 20 years after his death. What a tale! When young Eleanor discovered their affair, Franklin asked for a divorce to be with Lucy. It was Franklin’s overbearing mother (who couldn’t stand Eleanor) who stopped it. She threatened to cut off Franklin financially; she knew a divorce would ruin his political prospects and she had great faith in the future of her son. Eleanor agreed to stay in the marriage but said they would never share a bed again. Imagine that! Finding out your husband has been unfaithful, agreeing to continue, but ending your sexual relationship is not exactly a recipe for continuing fidelity. In the case you describe, I think Laura Delano should have told Eleanor to ask her daughter directly about the events, instead of outing the young woman as the go-between. Of course the revelation was shocking to Eleanor and caused a temporary rift with her daughter. But I’ve read that in later years Eleanor came to accept that Roosevelt needed female companionship to help him bear the burdens he was under.

From Wikipedia:

( FDR's daughter) Anna Boettiger was a witness to many historic moments, but she also carried the burden of dealing with some of the most intimate and painful decisions of her parents during their dysfunctional marriage. After her father's death, Anna had to tell her mother that FDR had been with his long-time mistress, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd; in addition, she told her that Franklin had continued the relationship for decades, and people surrounding him had hidden it from Eleanor. Her brother James later wrote that Anna had become estranged from Eleanor after taking over some of her social duties at the White House. The relationship was further strained because Eleanor desperately wanted to go with her husband to Yalta but he chose Anna. Yet after a few years, the two were able to reconcile and cooperate on numerous projects. Anna's relationship with her famously fractious brothers was also volatile. Anna took care of her mother when she was terminally ill in 1962.