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!!

my Nan and Grandad separated before i was born 40 years ago. They were still together but wanted to live apart. They were well off so paid for 2 houses outright. He then got a secret girlfriend. They even held an engagement party in the local pub. My Nan never went to the pub so didnt know. however when her sister found out she told her. My Nan cut off her sister for lying. "It wasnt an engagement party, it was his female friends birthday party and he was a guest".

Over the years as a child I frequently saw him out with this woman and told my parents (innocently). He always said he was "with my friend". We also went on holiday once, 2 hours away, and they turned up at the same zoo. Him, his friend and "her" children. My mum said it was so awkward.

She tried to tell my Nan many times over the years and has always been told shes wrong and they are just friends and my "selfless" grandad does a lot for his friend and her family.

One day he came to my DDs birthday party and forgot his camera. I looked. full of photos of other kids and grandkids, he was clearly at a family event for her family.

Now his house is full of ornaments and flowers (clearly a woman lives there). We ring before we go round.

Everyday he goes to my nans for breakfast around 9am, they spend the day together and then he has his dinner and goes home around 5pm. They send christmas cards and gifts from "nan and grandad". When my nans sick or in hospital he is there 24/7 with her. Does her shopping for her as its getting hard for her to go out. Perfect husband.

The girlfriend definitely knows my nan exists as shes been at friends events with her when Nan & grandad have shown up together. However we are unsure what my grandad has told her in regards to their relationship.

Both nan & grandads wills leave everything to the other person and then my mum is sole beneficiary. Guess we will only find out whether hes married this woman (while still being married to my nan) or if my mum has siblings / nieces / nephews at his funeral.

also i do have a friend who had a one night stand with a man she had never met before. Got pregnant. Had her daughter. He was married. He comes round every tuesday night and sees his daughter for 3 hours in her house. Has NEVER taken her out of the house incase someone sees him. Doesnt pay anything. No idea where his wife thinks hes going but his DD is 15 now and theyve never been caught. my friend justifies it that she didnt know he was married and doesnt want her daughter missing out just because of his mistakes. her DD has never met any of his family and they dont know she exists.

I know an Irish guy whose father had a secret second family- all down to inability to divorce.
Grown up kids from marriage knew, but second family from (non married) second relationship did not know. All very wierd. Older kids were not allowed to tell their half siblings that they were half siblings.

So not secret from one side, but twas from other side.

Yep my great uncle did it in the sixties. He had a wife and son in the UK and worked in the Philippines for most of the year while they stayed here. My grandad (his brother) started to get suspicious because when he was home he would buy baby girl clothes. He said it was for a Philippino (sp?!) colleague's daughter as nice clothes were hard to come by over there.

Well some time later, when he was back in the UK he confessed all to his wife and said he was going back to the Philippines to be with OW and child. His wife went to tell her MIL.

Now his mum, my great-grandma, was a real bosom hoiking matriarch, you wouldn't mess with her to save your life! She phoned his boss up and told him about OW and told him to do something about it or he'd regret it. My great uncles boss stationed him elsewhere and he never went back to the Philippines. Him and his wife stayed together until their deaths.

When I was told that I lost sleep thinking of the poor OW and her baby expecting him home, to love forever and he never came

Someone on DH's side emigrated, promising to send for his wife and children. He never did and they assumed he'd probably died.
We found a photograph of him celebrating something with a wife and children in the country he'd emigrated to.
It's history now and all the wives and children are dead or old so we aren't about to rock that boat. It's not a secret family that he shuttled to and from but it was easily done relatively recently.

One friend had no idea she had siblings until a half-brother turned up on their doorstep when she was in her early teens. Dad had been married before but neglected to inform his new family of this fact.

One very complicated case where I don't know all the details but basically, the man had one son with his wife, married his mistress after his wife died, adopted a daughter, then wife 2 finds out he has had another son with his new OW. Son from first marriage knew all about his half-sibling and OW (who was about the same age as him). Man shuttled between wife 2 and OW for a couple of years before he died. Wife got the house, eldest son got the business, OW got enough cash to make a new life on the other side of the world. Eldest son still considers OW family and has no contact with his stepmother or adoptive sister

I found out last year one of my uncles had 3 if not 4 DC with other women in the very small town he lives in and still lives there! One of his other DC came to babysit what turns out to be her little half siblings and her father was introduced to her as Mr SoandSo. What an absolute bastard.

None of us had any clue!

I know of one couple at the moment and he has a secret family that very few people know about. He is married and has 3children. Meanwhile his wife has her own business and would have a good income.. He works as a cab driver. He minds the children of his marriage after school so he works a few nights a week and some weekend nights. His wife found out that the women he was seeing behind her back was pregnant. He was told to end things with her and to lie about the child being his. She hardly let him out the door for months and took a financial hit because he was not working. After a while he started to do cab work in a different town.
Within about 2 years his wife went on to have another baby. She wants people to think they are a happy couple with the perfect family and not be a source of gossip.

The reality is that he has a child living about 15 miles away from his family home. Where he lives it common for kids to meet up from the area schools for football ect. Also teenagers go to disco's ect in the local larger town so in time it is possible that his children will meet the half sibling they don't know about.

Definitely happens- I've only just encountered it though! Family friend of mine I know has had a long term boyfriend for a couple of years now, just found out she's pregnant and another friend in the know informed me that he has a wife and kids completely separate to the family friend and her kids! (Easy to find during Facebook search! He's created a full on fake Facebook and Instagram name to post pics with the ow friend! ) Horrendous really, it's even worse that she knows he has a wife and kids and is continuing a relationship with a man like that🤮

Despite social media I think it still happens all the time. My DHs uncle maintained a secret family in another country for ages, and the child is still mentioned with the suffix ”we aren't meant to know she exists”, so I avoid the topic because I am really confused about what on earth is happening, and so is DH.

My ex partner had a friend who had two families. He was a pretty well off guy with his own building company and had a wife and two boys that he "officially" lived with. He then had a girlfriend who he had another two boys with and paid for a flat for her to live in. All his kids were similar ages and lived within 5 miles of eachother.

His wife was oblivious to it all, but the girlfriend seemed fine with the situation.

He was really shady about the whole thing- had two phones - one for wife and one for girlfriend. He had two local pubs, two favourite restaurants and two favourite holiday destinations - one for each woman. All of his mates knew the situation and we had all met and socialised with both women.

I've not seen him for 15 years and always wondered if he ever got caught. He used to say that he knew one day he would, but would coast along until that day.

My dad had an affair before I was born. I have 2 older siblings. The ow got pregnant and the affair ended. The first my mum knew was when the equivalent of child maintenance people came knocking. OW got married and her husband brought up the child (my half sister) as his own. They went on to have 2 more kids. As far as i know my dad stayed away.
We kids didnt know anything about it. My half sister and her half sister were in the years above and below me in high school.
Fast forward 20+ years and the OW husband died. After a while, my dad started an affair with OW again. My mum found out and chucked him out. He married OW and they are apparently miserable lol.
My mum married again and is happy!
Karma!
I don't speak to my dad and have met half sister once. All of this made easier by having emigrated

My Uncle did.

My Cousins didn't try to contact their half-Brother until my Aunt died, so not to upset her.

But he'd either moved or died, because they never found him. It upsets them all that they never knew him.

It's changer their opinion of their Mother, because in retrospect, she shouldn't have give them ultimatums not to contact him. Whilst she was alive, they knew were he was and had to ignore his existence.

Gunpowder Gelatine, that's really sad. I hope he at least sent her money.

My grandfather had two families, though the second was 20 years after the first. My grandmother may have been unaware of the first family at the time they married. Whilst my grandmother was alive the first family was unknown to me (no contact has been made for years).

It happened to a good friend of mine. And she only realised when he DIED. He had a heart attack aged 39, I'm sure his stressful life contributed.

My poor friend was totally unsuspecting. It came out almost immediately and turned out he had children despite telling my friend he didn't want them.

Her grief was for someone she hated and it's taken a serious amount of work for her to function again. OW posts shite on FB about how the love of her life is with the angels. She knew all about it which I just can't get my head around.

It's hard work with one family, it doesn't bear thinking about having another one.

I still think in most of these cases people either know full well or are sticking their head in the sand.

Had a relative emigrate from Italy about 100 years ago to America. He said he'd send for wife and children when he was settled. The years rolled by, and every year he sent them money. But never any address or word of when he would send for them. His wife, till she was aged and the money stopped, staunchly maintained that he'd still send for them. Years later a grandchild investigated and found that there was no way he'd be bringing his old family over to America as he had acquired a new one there.

Irma I think in the past when some men had jobs that involved travelling, then it would have been easy for wives not to have known. One Great Uncle worked in the Merchant Navy and was often away from his family. There were no mobile phones, no skype, only short landline phone calls - short as they were expensive. It would have been easy for him to have a second family where the wife knew they were a second family, but my Great Aunt would have remained in the dark.

Its much easier for woman to have children that are not there husbands unless the resulting baby is mixed race why would the "dad" suspect anything?

worriedmum I think we all accept that affairs by both woman and men that lead to a child without their spouse knowing, will be more common. But actually having a whole other secret family is another level of deception. Because it means constantly lying about what you are doing and where you are and how much money you earn.

Also note that sometimes a man raised a kid knowing it wasn't his, but ancestors may not know this. So my Great Grandad raised my grandad knowing he was not his. My Great Grandmother was actually pregnant with him when she married my Great Grandad. But I can imagine when DNA tracing becomes common in the future, family members may assume my Great Grandmother "tricked" him, when actually she did not. And I have known other similar cases. Before abortion was easily accessible, I suspect this was also more common that we realise.

It happened to someone I knew when I was in school. Her father had a girlfriend whom he'd had a boy with. The first family knew nothing until he was about eight they discovered his school bag (with his name on it) in their father's car. It had been left there presumably by accident!

It definitely happens, although I'd have thought it was more common before divorce was easier to get and it was socially unacceptable to be divorced. I don't know how anyone keeps it a secret in the age of FB and similar technology though, unless the husband is 'working abroad' maybe?

My friend's stepfather was an engineer who worked away during the week a lot. Turned out not only did he have another family in another city - he was still married to the other woman. He ended up with a prison sentence for bigamy, and the real kicker - her mum took him back after he got out and divorced wife no.1! This affected my friend a great deal as she was a teenager at the time and the court case was all over the local news. She was bullied over it, her mother was so wrapped up in her own wants she neglected the children and none of them see the mother much now they are all adults.

Wow it sounds very common!