193. The Conversation You're Dreading: How to Talk to Your Kids After an Affair

When you’re trying to recover from betrayal, some conversations feel almost impossible. And few feel heavier than sitting down with your children and trying to explain that life may be changing, without giving them a burden that was never theirs to carry.

You may be searching for the perfect words. You may be terrified of saying too much, not saying enough, or causing damage you cannot undo. But as I explore in this episode, children rarely need a perfect explanation. What they need most is safety, stability, reassurance, and parents who can stay present through a difficult moment.

Inside this episode, I walk through a practical framework for talking to your children after an affair, separation, or relationship breakdown, with guidance around emotional safety, age-appropriate truth, difficult questions, and the importance of ongoing repair.

Key Takeaways:

• Let go of the pressure to find the perfect script and focus on emotional presence instead.

• Prioritise your child’s safety over your need to be understood, validated, or defended.

• Tell the truth without giving adult-level details that create confusion or emotional burden.

• Reassure your children clearly about what is changing and what will remain stable.

• Remember that this is not one final conversation, but the beginning of an ongoing process.

This Is About Safety, Not Sides

One of the hardest parts of how to talk to your kids after an affair is managing your own pain. You may want them to understand what happened. You may want them to know who caused the hurt. You may even want them to see the truth as clearly as you do. But your child’s emotional safety has to come first.

This conversation is not the place to be validated, defended, or finally understood. It is the place to remind them they are loved, safe, and not responsible for adult choices.

As I shared in the episode, children do not need the full story. They need enough truth to feel grounded, without being pulled into adult pain.

You Do Not Need One Perfect Conversation

This is not one final talk where everything must be explained perfectly. It is the beginning of an ongoing conversation. Your child may ask very little at first, then return weeks or months later with bigger questions.

That does not mean you failed. It means they are processing in their own time. Give yourself permission to repair, revisit, and respond differently as things unfold.

You might say, “I don’t think I explained that well. Can we talk again?” That kind of repair matters. Your children do not need perfect parents. They need parents who stay available, honest, calm, and willing to keep showing up.

💬 Reflection Questions:

If you’ve had to navigate a difficult conversation with your children after betrayal, what helped them feel safest? Or, if that conversation is still ahead of you, what part feels most difficult right now?

People Also Ask

What to tell kids after an affair?

Children need safety, not the full story. Be honest, but age-appropriate. Reassure them it is not their fault, explain what is changing, and remind them what stays stable: they are loved, supported, and not alone in this.

Should I tell my children I had an affair?

Not always. Ask what purpose it serves for them. Children need truth, not adult details. You can say trust was damaged without making them carry guilt, blame, or pain that belongs to the adults.

At what age is a child most affected by divorce?

There is no single age. Children are affected differently depending on safety, conflict, support, and stability. What matters most is not their age, but how the adults guide them through the change.

Connect with Luke:

• Website: www.lifecoachluke.com

• Instagram: @mylifecoachluke

• Email: luke@lifecoachluke.com

Join the After the Affair community at www.facebook.com/groups/aftertheaffaircommunity

Episode Transcript:

The After The Affair podcast with me Luke Shillings is here to help you process, decide and move forward on purpose following infidelity. Together we'll explore what's required to rebuild trust not only in yourself but also with others. Whether you stay or leave I can help and no matter what your story there will be something here for you.

Let's go! Hello and welcome back to the After The Affair podcast. I'm your host Luke Shillings and today you're listening to episode number 193. Over the last two episodes we've explored a difficult but incredibly important topic.

First we looked at whether you should tell your children about an affair at all. Then we looked at what changes when the relationship is ending and separation becomes part of the conversation. But throughout both episodes there has been a question sitting quietly in the background.

A question that many of you have probably been asking yourselves the entire time. Okay Luke, but what do I actually say? Because it's one thing to understand the principles, it's one thing to understand emotional safety, stability, truth versus detail and all the things that we've discussed so far. But eventually there comes a moment where none of that feels like quite enough because eventually you're sitting in front of your child.

Your heart's racing, your mind is running through a thousand possible outcomes and you realise that this isn't just a theory anymore. It's an actual conversation and probably a pretty difficult one. So today that's what we're going to focus on.

Not whether you should have the conversation, not when, but how. I think the biggest mistake parents make before this conversation even begins is believing that there is a perfect script, a perfect set of words, a perfect explanation, a perfect answer to every question that might come up. And I understand why, because if you're anything like most people I work with or me, you desperately want to get this right.

You don't want to damage your children, you don't want to create confusion, you don't want to say something that you'll later regret. So naturally your brain starts searching for certainty. The perfect words become a form of emotional protection.

If I can just find the right thing to say, everything will be okay. But unfortunately that's not how conversations tend to work, and it's certainly not how emotionally significant conversations work. The reality is that children rarely remember exact words.

What they remember is how the conversation felt. They remember whether they felt safe, whether they felt loved, whether they felt included or excluded, whether they felt supported. And that's actually good news because it means that you don't need perfection.

You need presence. You don't need the perfect explanation, you need the ability to sit with whatever happens next. And those are very different things.

Before we get into exactly what to say, I want to talk about something probably even more important, and that is your state. Because your emotional state matters far more than most people realise. I've seen people spend weeks planning the conversation, writing notes, practising sentences, thinking through every possible question, but they've never really stopped to ask, am I emotionally ready to have this conversation? And that's probably the more important question.

Because if you're still carrying intense anger, if you're still looking for validation, if you're hoping that your child will understand your pain, if you're hoping that they will finally see what the other parent did, then you're not really having a conversation for them. You're having it for you. And I don't mean that critically, I mean it compassionately.

Because after betrayal, most people are hurting. And when we're hurting, we naturally want relief. The danger is that we accidentally seek that relief through the conversation itself.

You see this when parents overshare. You see it when they explain too much. You see it when they start answering questions that weren't actually even asked.

Because underneath it all is a very human desire. Please understand how difficult this has been for me. But your children aren't equipped to carry that.

They shouldn't have to carry that. It's not their responsibility. Which means before the conversation happens, you need to ask yourself, can I prioritise their emotional experience over my need to be understood? Because if the answer is no, that doesn't mean you're failing.

It just means you may need a little more time. Now I don't believe in scripts per se, but I do believe in structure. And the structure I use is pretty simple.

Safety, truth, change, stability and space. So let's walk through each of those. Before anything else, children need safety.

Not information, not explanation. Safety. And that often sounds like, we need to talk to you about something important.

We both love you very much. Nothing you did caused this. This is not your fault.

Those last four words matter probably more than you might think. Because children are remarkably good at creating explanations when they don't understand something. And very often those explanations involve themselves.

Particularly young children. They may never say it out loud. They may not even be able to internally articulate it to themselves.

But they can quietly wonder, did I do something wrong? Is this because of me? Or is this because of me and my brother fighting? Would things have been different if I'd behaved better? So don't assume that they know it isn't their fault. Tell them. And tell them more than once.

Now we come into truth. Not detail. Truth.

There's a clear difference. For example, we've been having some problems in our relationship. We haven't been able to solve those problems.

We've decided we're going to live separately. Those are truths. You don't need the affair started two years ago.

You wouldn't believe what your father did. Your mother has been lying to me this whole time. Those are details.

And the challenge with details is they create burden. And children don't need that burden. They need clarity.

Once you've established safety and truth, the next thing children want to know is, what's changing? Because that's where their minds naturally go. Where will I live? What happens at Christmas? Will I still see you both? Can I still play football on Saturdays? Will I still go to the same school? And what strikes me is how often adults underestimate how practical children are. While we're worrying about emotional explanations, they're wondering who is taking them to swimming lessons.

So answer those questions where you can. Not because they're trivial, but because they're important. They are part of your child's sense of stability.

What about what doesn't change? And this section I think many parents rush through. Because children need anchors. They need things to remain true.

Things they can hold on to. Things like, we both love you. We are both still your parents.

We are both going to take care of you. We are both going to be in your life. The reason this matters is because betrayal often creates an instability.

Separation creates instability. Uncertainty creates instability. So your job is to identify the things that remain stable.

And it might help the mind you too. But most importantly, highlight it to them repeatedly. The next part is also an area that I've seen many people struggle with.

It's the silence, the space, the reaction, or sometimes the lack of reaction. Because children don't always respond the way we expect. Some cry.

Some get angry. Some ask a hundred questions. Some stare at the floor.

Some appear completely unaffected and rush off back to their mates or their computer game. And that last one can be particularly unsettling. Because it might leave you thinking, have they even understood? Do they even care? Often they do.

They're just processing it differently. And that's okay. Not every emotion arrives on schedule.

You know that. So then comes the questions that you're dreading. So let's talk about those difficult questions.

Because these are the ones that create probably the most anxiety. Why? The most common question. And this is where most people become uncomfortable.

Because they kind of know the full answer. But the full answer isn't necessarily the helpful answer. You don't need to explain every detail.

You can simply say, we weren't able to fix some important problems in our relationship. That's honest. It's age appropriate.

And it doesn't burden them with adult information. Another question that many people are afraid of, and this is probably more prominent in slightly older children, and of course there is no one universal answer, is did somebody cheat? Now age matters here. Circumstances matter.

What they already know matters. But I would encourage you to ask, what purpose does this information serve for them right now? Because that question often provides clarity, sometimes a simple something happened that damaged trust between us is likely to be more than enough. Then comes the, are you getting back together? This is difficult.

Because many parents genuinely don't know. And when we don't know, we often want to provide reassurance. The danger is offering certainty that doesn't exist.

So instead of maybe or definitely, perhaps you could say, we don't know exactly what the future looks like right now. But we do know that we both love you. Just notice how that brings the focus back to what actually matters for the sake of this conversation.

A slightly adjacent version for, did somebody cheat? might be, whose fault is it? This is another big one, and honestly it's a often a question underneath all of the other questions. Children want simplicity. In fact, humans want simplicity, and children even more so.

So it's normal for them to look for someone to blame, or a clear story. The problem is that relationships rarely work that way. And even when one person has made choices that cause enormous pain, placing a child into a position of judgement rarely helps them.

So instead of assigning blame, perhaps you could say, this is just something between the adults, and just hold that boundary. It is okay to hold a boundary, even with your children. Now let's talk about something else that's important.

Because some of you listening are perfectionists. I am a recovering one myself. Perhaps you're terrified of getting this wrong, terrified of saying the wrong thing, terrified of causing damage.

And I want to offer a slightly different perspective. You probably will get parts of it wrong. Not because you're careless, but because you're human.

You might become emotional. You might say slightly more than you intended. You might answer a question really badly, or at least retrospectively so.

You might wish you'd handled something differently, and that's normal. The good news is that children don't need perfect parents. They need parents who are willing to repair.

Parents who can say, you know what, I don't think I explained that very well. Can we talk about that again? Or there's something I wish I'd done differently. Repair is powerful.

This is also true in our adult relationships too. Often we are too tied up in our own egos to make that bit of a connection, when we have said or done something that actually we weren't that proud of ourselves, but we're too afraid, or too stubborn to approach the conversation again. But with children, and in a situation like this, it's absolutely essential.

Mistakes are normal, and that's okay, but they don't have to be permanent. And let's remember as well, this isn't just one conversation. Perhaps the most important thing today is this.

This isn't one conversation. It's just the first conversation, and that's all. There will be follow-up questions, there'll be new emotions, different perspectives, and as children grow, their understanding changes too.

I remember questions that my kids were asking me when they were three and six years old respectively, and now at nine and thirteen, they're asking slightly different questions, and slightly different scenarios. They change as time changes, and that's okay. The questions that a seven-year-old asks are obviously going to be different to questions that you might get from a seventeen-year-old, for example, which means the conversation can evolve depending on the situation.

So let's just take a bit of pressure off yourself. You don't need to say everything today. You don't need to solve everything today.

In fact, if you could solve everything today, you wouldn't even be having this conversation, so stop putting that unnecessary burden upon your shoulders. You don't need to answer every future question today. You just need to take that next step.

If you've listened to all three episodes in this series, you might have noticed something. We've spent surprisingly little time talking about affairs, or even betrayal, and that's intentional, because while the affair may have been a catalyst, it's not actually the thing that your child needs most help understanding. What they need most is safety, stability, reassurance, consistency, and parents who are willing to put their emotional needs aside long enough to support them through a difficult moment.

They don't need the perfect explanation. They don't need the full story. They don't need to know everything.

They need to know they're loved. They need to know they're safe, and they need to know that although life may be changing, they don't have to navigate that change alone. And if you're listening to this and thinking, Luke I understand the principles, but I still don't know if I'm ready for that conversation, that's completely normal.

Because knowing what matters and actually sitting down with your child are two very different things. That's one of the reasons I've created something called the Safe Conversations Framework, a practical guide designed specifically for parents navigating difficult conversations with their children during relationship breakdown, separation, or the aftermath of an affair. It walks you through the same five-step process we've discussed in this episode and throughout this series.

Safety, truth, change, stability, and space, along with guidance on difficult questions, common mistakes, and age-appropriate considerations. It's not a script. It's not about finding the perfect words.

It's about helping you show up with more confidence, more clarity, and much more intention when the moment arrives. You can access your copy by emailing me at luke at lifecoachluke.com with the subject line of Safe Conversations and I will get that sent out to you as soon as possible. If you want to find out what working together one-to-one looks like, then you can find out more information at lifecoachluke.com. And if you're not already, come and join me over at Instagram.

There's a load of great information over there too. Because the reality is, you don't need to do this perfectly. You simply need to take the next step.

Until next time, I'll talk to you all very soon. Take care.