A friend of mine tells a story how her ex cheated on her while she was pregnant. She didn’t know, only experienced a lot of gas lighting (not a well known term 35 yers ago) and mistreatment while pregnant, lots of financial abuse too while she was on maternity leave back in the day when SMP didn’t even cover the cost of nappies.
They had to move to an area away, where he was from, but far from all her friends and family, very isolating for her.he’d be gone all day for work and many over nights, all the time telling her it was a reunion with old friends. She took to walking the baby in the pram at odd hours as the anxiety gave her insomnia. Walked by a house and saw his car parked out front. Went back later in more normal hours after her DH would be at work and knocked on the door. Of course turned out to be OW who knew all about her, their new baby etc and had followed them from their old town. Faced with the reality, friend finally left he DH and move back home. There followed a few years of trying to get child support (no cms back then). This spurred her into a few years struggling to get professional qualifications and then a really good career that she eventually didn’t need the child support so stopped pursuit of child support from the deadbeat. ExDH showed no interest in their DC so didn’t take up offers of visitation, so no contact ever since.
She later learned that he’d gotten OW pregnant and did the same to her, this time moving to another country to avoid child support. Friend sent OW a card in the post, “congratulations” in big letters across the front and inside, “you finally got everything you deserve” on the inside. Just the one thing, never anything more but she still feels satisfied in that one thing - and her (and DC) lived a good life afterward. Her DC is grown, lovely young man who had a loving stable home with a fab step dad. The ExDH tried to get in touch when DC turned 30 and was promptly ignored.