to ask if having a secret second family is that common?!

[trob22]

I've seen a couple of posts in the last few days about men who not only have a long-term OW in their lives but also have kids with the OW - and somehow manage to keep this a secret from their wife (and kids from that marriage) for YEARS while still seeing the OW and other child fairly regularly?

Is this really that common? How on earth do they keep the secret? How does it work with the man paying child maintenance etc?

I've only heard of one person in my life who had a secret second family but judging by MN it seems fairly run of the mill!!

I think it happens a lot, I think people have affairs a lot too, I was pretty oblivious to this until I started dating again, I have met several men who have lied about having a family (who they live with) and would have happily had another relationship at the same time. I’m sure many women have affairs too and end up telling their husbands that the baby they are carrying is there’s and they raise the child not knowing

I’m pleased that I am single.

A guy I knew, whose parents divorced when he was a small baby, discovered when in his 30s that his uncle was in fact his dad and his cousins in fact his step-siblings.

Granddaughter of a first wife here. Grandad legged it with his floozy when she eventually became pregnant. So, first family, son and daughter in Berkshire, second family of twins in London. Another child to second family ten years on. Floozy then gets cancer and dies a few years later. Grandad drafts in first wife and daughter to help deal with the traumatised kids. Lots of resentment all round for many years. 70 years on, an ancestry DNA test shows they weren't grandpas children at all. The good old days. I don't think this was as uncommon as we're led to believe in the days before easy divorce.

genetic testing shows between 6 and 13% of paternity is not as
thought by the child, in all tested populations and cultures the
world over. Sperm competition presents some fascinating
evolutionary explanations.

This is completely wrong.

6-13% is for a very select set of people - those who get paternity testing, and so where the paternity is in some doubt. It is much, much lower when you look at populations, more like 1%. (I do genetic studies of disease and you don't see it that after when you take paternal DNA).

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-012-9143-y

My grandfather had children come to his funeral which were from a long term mistress. I was shocked but I think my grandmother knew.

He had 5 kids with my grandmother and 5 with ow. He left them a house and money in his will but most of the estate 80% went to grandmother and her 4 kids. (1deceased.)

I am sure men having a secret child from an affair is common. But having an actual secret family that they support and visit, just blows my mind.

I worked with a woman who was deliriously happy. She was pregnant with her first child and due to marry her fiancé that year. Fiancé was in sales and used to work away Mon-Thurs.
One day my work mate was tidying up their garden shed when she found a box full of info of fiancé’s ‘other’ family up north! God only knows what the other family thought, perhaps they knew about his cosy set-up down south?
Needless to say, she didn’t marry him that year. I always thought he was a slippery slimy character!

Happened to my DM. I am not sure of the exact details, as I didn't learn about this until after her death. I am not the child in the second family.

Not married, and not an affair but I had a relationship with someone from when we were 13 to 31 and nobody had a clue. We kept it completely secret. So yeah I can see how it's done

A girl I went to college with found out when she was about 16/17 that her dad had an entire other family living fairly near them. Her half sister was only a few months younger than her and her dad never told any of them about the other family

I have many siblings that are in other family’s around my own age. Some months apart others a couple of years.

The danger is if you have siblings that live SO close and are the same age they can unknowingly end up meeting up or being in a relationship (sexually)

I think women passing off children as their husband’s or partners when they’re actually another man’s is even more common than men having second families.

I know of two such instances within the same family. One generation after the other. My ex’s. He wasn’t his mother’s husband son, and in turn, the husband wasn’t the product of his own mother’s marriage.

My current partner’s mother passed him off as her partners child when he too, was not.

Neither my ex nor my partner found out until after the men they believed to be their father was dead. In both cases they were teens when this happened. In both cases those men suspected the whole time, in both cases the children suffered for it. They both, ex and my partner, had quite sad upbringings, the former especially.

It is a dreadful thing to do.

OK.

I am the child in a secret family, I have 2 older siblings who I have never me, but my DM lived with my DF for over 2 years until she got wise and kicked him out. This was in the 1960's.

My GGFather had 2 families, who lived about 3 streets apart from each other in the East End of London in the 1880's - to about 1920. We think they knew about each other as one of the children from the "other" family were taken in by the "original" family when the "other" wife got ill. This was found out when she applied for an identity card in 1939.

My GGF eldest son, My GM brother and his wife, adopted a child as his wife could not have children. When we looked in the records, my GM brother was listed as the legal, married father of the adopted child.

I also knew someone as a teenager who found out his father had a whole other family and children when he died. This was in the 1980's.

One of my family members was married to a man who had a brother, a couple of months younger than him, and a sister a couple of years younger to another "wife". Both "wives" turned up at the DF's funeral, and both and all siblings sat at the front of the Church for the service. This was about 10 years ago.

It's happened in my family. Before that I'd have thought it happened but was v rare.

My grandfather's father shuttled between two wives and two sets of children. he and his mother knew about the other wife (because she was the first and only legal wife) but apparently the first family knew nothing about them.

A friend was the OW for 18 years before her now-DH told his wife. He would 'leave for work early' and spend 45 minutes with her every morning and then spend the same amount of time with her in the evening. Ss far as his wife knew he was a normal office worker and commuter who spent 90 minutes more in the office each day than he really did. They have a now-adult daughter and he used to go to her parents evenings etc.

I know a few..

Myself! My mum found out when she was pregnant my dad had a wife, a 7 year old... and a baby on the way. My half brother is 3 months younger than me. My mum found out when he dropped her off at the train station, and she saw him picking up another women (my mum was the younger spitting image of her) - never trust a cab driver lol

At work, I got a call asking why we’d taken two direct debit amounts from her joint account. Turns out husband was paying for both kids to go to the same drama classes, a few months later I was asked by her lawyers to provide details etc.

My friend found out she had a half sister in America, dads business trips we code for second family.

My step-fil had a second family in China.

After he retired he did some contact work in China. For years he would be or there for 3 months at a time, back for a couple of weeks, then in China again, etc. He was making good money, spoke to mil every day, sent her loads of pictures etc. It was only when he died that it came out he had an other woman out there, with a toddler. He was in his 60s, nobody expected him to be having an affair with a woman younger than his own daughter and fathering children younger than his grandchildren. It hasn't worked out particularly well for his other woman either, as his promise to bring her back to the UK obviously hasn't materialised (because he died, but I don't think he ever had any real intention of bringing her home), and the money he was spending on her and their child isn't there any more either. It devastated mil, and she feels like their 20 year marriage was a complete sham.

my best friend found out last year, she was the ow, she had been with her dp for 18 years, had 3 dc with him, turns out he was married with 4 kids to his dw, 2 of the dc were born within 2 months of each other.
Everyone was shocked, he seemed so nice and genuine, a full part of her and her families life, she's since moved to another country, she had a bit of a breakdown when she found out the truth, his dw has decided to stay with him

I know of this happening to two different families.

In both bases when the secret family was uncovered the initial marriage split up.

Friends with secret brothers who happen to be only a few months younger etc

Both times the married couples always have seemed like the most in love and happy people on earth

DH works with someone who was getting away with having a secret second family until a couple of years ago when one of the wives caught him and kicked him out. I was surprised he got away with it for so long given technology now, and I have no idea how he was supporting two households on £25k a year. I thought it was a travelling salesman in 1950s America type thing, not a modern-day suburban Britain thing.

I am really surprised by the quantity of replies. I've always supposed it was far more common than we expect but this is a lot more than that

My friend found out she had 2 older brothers. But the oldest was in between her 2 elder sisters and the second was about 3 months younger than her. So no doubt there was an overlap. Her mother and ow. Where both exspecting at same time.

They never get talked about and her fb is full of smiling family photos etc. They from the outside seem the perfect model family.

I think she forgot she told me as it never got mentioned again....

yes, my family, too, my close relative married a man she met during a holiday abroad, very quick, whirlwind romance, they returned to the UK together after some time in his home country (he had a job there and wanted to work till end of contract, plus immigration etc., my relative is self-employed and works mainly on line, so she was fine to stay there)

stayed here for some years, had a baby, then relationship got a bit rocky, finally, they had a very serious row, he stormed out and decided he'd go back to his home country.

When my relative tried to contact him there to reconcile, it emerged, through one of his sisters who spilled the beans, that he had actually returned to his partner and children (two of them we think) that my relative knew nothing about!

We believe he had never broken up with her, but invented a job abroad, he travelled back regularly, but there was always a reason why my relative could not go, he did use to send money back home regularly, too, but my relative thought it was to his mum and siblings!

Now they have no contact and relative's child never even mentions him anymore (child was primary school age when he went off, so she remembers him!), nor has she ever met her half-siblings, very sad.

You honestly couldn’t make it up.
Not strictly a ‘second family’ but we found out a few years ago that my cousin (in his thirties) had cheated on his partner (of 10 years) with an old family friend and had a kid! He’d literally just pretended it wasn’t happening and carried on.

(The OW had been living abroad but outted him when she came home and all hell broke loose- it’s more funny because they’re all so fussed about being ‘middle class’ yet this whole fiasco belonged on Jeremy Kyle)