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!!

Clearly it's more common than people think.
more common than OP realised.

I've just watched the BBC program Mrs Wilson and he had 4 wives!!

plus there are hundreds of mumsnet threads about people who husbands I've been having affairs. some of them long-term. Some men living a totally different life. and some of them actually having other families, other children.
as well as this thread too shows.
so maybe is becoming more and more common? as more and more people are unfaithful? and more and more families and marriages split up?

Abacucat:
"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."

I completely disagree with that.
I think your'll find that on the MN relationships board: "I've just found out my husband is having an affair", there is humongous lies. Deception. Clever thinking!
I think it's a small step onwards to a child being produced. And a further small step to a totally different life.

Not huge steps. Not that much difference. Because even in the long term affairs, the extent and complexity of lying, even to cover basic things as in meeting up with ow for sex, is so complicated.

That the step to taking it to the next level, of child, or totally new life, might not be quite as extreme as you think, from what is needed to lie about even a basic long term affair.

I know of 2 separate instances among my friends.
One is from the first family, one is from the second.
They are both fucked up over it.
I don't know what will happen when their dad's die, it's going to be a total shit storm in both cases.

I actually know of a case where a woman had three families. It’s sort of complicated because she worked away from home during the week so told the first man she was with that she and her husband had split up. They had a child together.

She then told him she was pregnant again and they had another child together. Unfortunately at this point the relationship had broken down and the children were DNA tested because of maintenance, access etc. Turned out the second baby wasn’t his and he’d had no idea she was in a relationship with someone else on the days she wasn’t with him.

It then transpired that she was actually still married to her husband and had told him that both children were his, but because she lived away during the week the children were looked after by a live-in nanny, but she went back to her husband at weekends.

This all came out and years later the husband essentially raised both children with her (mug) although the man who fathered the first child does see him regularly, pays maintenance etc.

A relative of mine had a baby by a man who wasn’t her husband. The husband was a lying cheating arsehole anyway not that this justifies cheating on her part but makes it more understandable how she did as he was one of those who would appear for stretches of time and then bugger off again. Anyway it all came out when she was on her death bed as another member of the family decided to stir it and tell everyone that their sister was in fact the product of their mother’s affair. The sister however had died some years previous so there was in fact no need for anyone to know.

I used to write wills. It’s more common than people think. I’d often see a couple together to discuss wills & then receive a phone call to say they need to see me again. Always because they needed a new will to reflect 2nd & 3rd families. I did ask one what would happen when the partners would find out about each other - & his reply “I’ll be dead so not my problem”!

Oblomov I don't agree, but even if you are right, affairs are very common, a whole second family is not.

theres 2 different scenarios, theres the affair that results in a love child - very common, the OW knows and keeps quiet etc often breaks if off with the OW but then pays towards the child etc
and then theres the man that runs 2 households and both women think they are the only wife/partner. the man dupes both of them and both believe he lives with them and works away etc.

Happened to me. In a relationship ( i should now say "relationship") with a man a couple of years. Not too serious but saw him a few times a week, went to each others homes etc. Plenty of nights out, nights in etc. Found out I was pregnant and told him which is when I found out he was LIVING with someone else - note I had been to his home many times - and she was also pregnant. They lived the next town over and not once had he let on he had been with someone other than me. We broke up and he financially helped out out but never saw my child. Things have changed in recent years as the other lady found out about me and my child but although he did not technically have two families as he did not see my child from the day I told him I was pregnant till a couple of years ago but he still had a massive secret literally living 15 minutes away the whole time. I cannot imagine how he coped with the stress of keeping that secret all these years but then I guess i kept it too in a way when I found out he was with someone else and was not going to be in our childs life anyway.

In my family my GF’s double life and other family didn’t come to light until his GGGS found out. Even my dad and his siblings didn’t know.

I know someone who did this.

His wife followed him one day, knocked on the door and he answered it wearing his slippers. It has been going on for years.

I can relate to the posters saying it’s a relatively small step from affair to child. It does seem amazing that anyone would have two families, that level of deceit, but maybe it’s as common as relationships getting accidentally pregnant?

An ex of mine kept up a deception for 3 years, texting women from a dating site. While I was pregnant too. When I think about it, he wasn’t very careful with contraception. It would have been so easy to have got another woman pregnant, so easy. And the women he was meeting were generally quite lonely. He used his high status and sold them a dream - pictures of our nice house, his nice car, how caring he was etc. Because for him he was just playing, just having fun.

So I think as a woman I can see the temptation, the whirlwind romance, he must have come across as a real catch, the kind of man who would have been a husband to them. They would have had no idea he had a partner and child already.

I completely agree that it's a small step from affair to baby. Everyone I know who's had an affair and left their partner is either pregnant or the new woman is, within six months. I see it on MN all the time too.

Happened in my friend's family. Her grandfather (the GF) was in the merchant navy (i.e. away a lot) and it was only when my friend's mother was in her teens that it came out that her father (the GF) had a long-term OW and child. It came out because the OW died and the GF asked his actual wife if she would agree to bring up their child (who was about 8yo, I think). She said no (not surprisingly), but despite the shock news she did keep living with the GF until he died, about 20 years later. This was in the early 1950s and the wife was a Catholic and also had 4 children with the GF, so divorce was not really a consideration for her.

Also, my DP had a friend who in his early 20s had two children of very similar ages with two different women. He too had a job which involved being away for days if not weeks at a time, and both women considered him to be their DP, though he wasn't married to either of them. In this case, the truth came out when the man had an accident at work and was in hospital. At that point, the children were both 3yo, so he had kept the pretence up for a while. Result was that both women chucked him out (and my DP - who up till then had only known about one of the women - stopped being his friend). That was in the 1970s, but I'm sure similar things still happen today - as some of the posts on this thread (and on the Relationships board) demonstrate.

My DH used to work overseas and he had colleagues who had families back home and girlfriends abroad. One had a wife and kids in the UK and a girlfriend and a baby in Nigeria where he'd work for months at a time.

I personally don't know how these men manage to keep it all going (or why). I do sometimes wonder if the wife knew or found out. It's such an insane secret to keep

I have had clients confess secret families. Its very difficult to deal with legally a real head scratcher.

@PrincessFiorimonde that was actually really brave of the wife. A lot of times women felt enough societal pressure to just fold the children into the group and go along with it. Good for the wife for putting down a boundary regarding humiliation and shame.

Some of these stories are incredible.

I wonder how anyone managed to keep track of different families.

Is there a registered charity or support group for children of secret families?

I know people who work abroad who have a whole separate set up home and away. Sometimes I think the other halves are complicit and go along with it....openly or otherwise. Mostly though no one knows what's going on apart from the partner with multiple partners.

Honestly thought it would all be harder with the internet and social media etc...but it goes on.