I’m a 25 year old guy and my mum is 52 years. I’m the second of four children. My elder brother has rented a place and has left home so I am more like the eldest child at home now. My parents have always been having arguments for as long as we can remember. The way they behave in the marriage greatly affected my view of marriage and I wonder if marriage is even worth it. When they are happy, I don’t feel okay because I know it’s only a matter of time and they will quarrel again. To be very frank with you guys, many times, I take my Dad’s side because I see things from both my mum and dad’s point of view and my mum is not being fair. After almost 28 years of marriage I expect them to be more mature. The arguments are so serious they insult each other.
My mum works as a secretary in a government organisation. She has been doing this work for several years and my dad is into construction. He has people who work under him. Mum is more educated and she has a stable job, so the salary is assured every month and the salary is also very good because she is the Secretary to one of the big people in the company. She also enjoys some allowances here and there. But my dad can go a long period of time without getting any contract to build a house, so this creates a lot of problems with my mum complaining all the time and calling dad lazy and dad also calling mum disrespectful and a gossip because she tells her friends she is the provider. The way things have become at home, I also want to leave home. But I don’t want to leave my younger sisters with them to always endure the verbal abuse at home. They’re 21 and 17 and I want to be there for them.
I’m a graduate and I’m in a patnership with a friend. We sell menswear and we started on campus so I can say that it is not doing bad and I sometimes support small small by giving dad money to give us like it came from his own pocket. Usually, when it comes to technology, my dad is the one who always worries me to teach him how to use social media and all that. You know how the elderly don’t really know how to use smartphones. But because of mum’s work, she knows how to use the smartphone very well. She works with computers, so she is good with technology. The last time she was trying to update some of her apps because she had bonus, but her phone kept freezing. So she left it for me to keep trying for her and went to bath.
Curiousity got the better part of me because mum never leaves her phone. I went through her WhatsApp and saw that she has done the disappearing message setting, so her messages were disappearing in 24 hours. But she had saved a particular guy’s name as ‘my son’. Meanwhile she has saved my number with my name on her phone, same with my elder brother. The ‘my son’ guy had sent her a message and she hadn’t read yet and it hasn’t disappeared. He was asking if my mum enjoyed the last time and also if she likes the pics he has been sending her. Then he thanked her for ‘the phone and the nice shirt’. I was shocked to my bone. I quickly went to her gallery to check and saw that there were several nude pics of one young guy and some other videos where he was m*sturbating. I quickly saved his number on my phone before my mum returned.
Now I don’t know what to do. I love my parents and there is no way I can even tell my dad that mum has a sugar boy. The guy will be in his 20s, I’m sure I am even older than him. I can’t also talk to my mum. I have the guy’s contact too. My mum insults my dad for not being able to bring money for upkeep, yet she sleeps with a young guy and buys him things. I don’t even know the time she goes over to the guy’s place or where they meet because my mum has her own car and no one questions her if she comes home late because she is the one who brings money. I found out about the cheating two months ago and I wanted to keep quiet. But if I look at how my father is struggling to prove himself as a man for my mother to see, it hurts me more. What should I do?