Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here .

Dear Prudence,

My mother has started confiding in me some very troubled details about her relationship with my father. She tells me that he has cheated, has been verbally abusive, and has been, overall, not a very good husband. The kicker here is that I’ve already known this for decades.

She carelessly wrote about my father’s infidelity in a random notebook that I found as a teenager, and it’s been a source of trauma that lingered into adulthood. Back then, I didn’t have a good relationship with my father because of it, but now we are good. I’ve managed to forget it and move on. However, this recent situation with my mother is troubling. When I told her I knew about my father, she brushed it off and continued to di

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