Found out fiancé is married to someone else

[limewonder]

Hi
I found out my DP of 4 years is married
The way I found out is his ex (not his wife, the one after her but before me) messaged me on facebook and told me as she’d seen our engagement post.

I’ve met his wife loads as they share kids (age 12&14 together). They split 9 years ago but apparently never sorted the divorce out.

Not sure what to make of this, i don’t know why he kept this from me. His excuse is that he forgot.? AIBU to demand he get a divorce or we’re over? I’m not even sure what his plan was here, marry me while still married to his ex?

Does anyone else know that old music hall song, Waiting at the church, which ends:

‘… I can’t get away
to marry you today,
my wife,
won’t let me.’

🙄

I think I'd rather sit on a hot poker than spend any more time with a prick like him. He's vile. And now he's even gaslighting you about things. Yuck.

Raise your standards op.

I can understand a mix up between filing the nisi and absolute if someone has lost track of a spouse from decades ago.

Forgetting to mention you were ever legally married at some point in your past is just lying.

Sorry to hear this OP.

I don't think it has to be the end of the relationship. But I agree with the poster who said simply hand back the ring (and maybe put a pause on your relationship) Until a divorce is finalised.

His actions to remedy this situation will tell you a lot about who he is.

His “plan” was to NOT actually marry you.

He’s a liar. He’s done this before and saw it hurt his partner so he did it again to you eh? Innocently, he claims. Accidentally…

Nothing wrong with not wanting to talk about having been married - except if you’re in a relationship with someone and don’t mention it briefly to them as a matter of transparency. He’s a dick and you’re ignoring the flags.

If he's lying and minimising over this huge thing, what else is he hiding?

He's wrecked your trust. I wouldn't be able to continue the relationship if someone had done that to me. He's done it to someone else too. I'd LTB. Don't get pregnant.

Yes, he is deliberately hiding it.
His ex was, very reasonably, pissed off he didn't tell her he's married.
So he decided not to tell you either.

He chose to do the very thing that pissed her off, knowing it would piss you off too.

Yet he asked you to marry him, still without telling you. He knows this would make him a criminal. And your marriage would be invalid.

He doesn't give a shit how you feel or if he breaks the law, leaving you in the lurch.

It's a big deal, all right.

Do you really want to be married to someone with a brain this limp?

You can have whatever preferences you like but to me it seems quite sweeping to say you wouldn’t want to be with someone if they’ve been married before. If he had told you all about it up front and had actually bothered to get divorced then I’d find you unreasonable to refuse to date him. Though again, in the end it’s your choice.

BUT the fact that he didn’t bother to divorce is a red flag, showing that he’s likely to avoid other difficult things in life and maybe isn’t very emotionally mature.

Worse than that, he’s hidden his situation from you. This is not something a person forgets, certainly not in the context of actively planning to marry again! He’s lied to you by omission and then even more so by getting engaged.

Finally, the absolutely enormous cannot be ignored or forgiven or tolerated on any level red flag is that he’s now minimising it all and invalidating your feelings. He’s trying to pretend your totally normal reaction is the problem rather than his completely abnormal deceit. No no no no no there is no coming back from that. I’m sorry, it must hurt so much. But you have to see that, on top of the initial offence, his refusal to admit fault and his failure do everything possible to make amends is a really really clear sign that he’s not a good person to be in a relationship with. This is how he behaves when you are hurting!? The only possible way your relationship could continue is if he does a very rapid 180 and takes full responsibility for how shit he has been to you.

It also rather suggests that he wasn’t actually intending to marry you. If you do stay with him insist that he gives clarity on that. If you decide to marry, do it soon. Don’t let him string you along for years on a fantasy. He has to show that his word means something.

I am so angry on your behalf!

Hold up, you didn't even know they'd been married? I thought he'd allowed you to believe he was divorced, which is Very Bad considering you're supposed to be engaged. But, re-reading this, he actually told you they never married?

Mate, this is a very, very bad sign.

If you are unwisely considering whether to continue the relationship, the very least you owe yourself is to have long talks with both his ex and his wife, and maybe some friends who've known him since before the youngest was born. He does have long-term friends, right?

Or you could rip the plaster off now. Ditch your lying bigamist and start living a normal life.

Why would you saddle yourself with this pathetic liar? You are young and have your whole exciting life ahead of you.

Dump and don’t look back.

I'm going "Hold up!" again ...

You're 27 and he's 33.
You've been together four years, so you were only 23.

You say they split nine years ago. That makes him 24 at the time.
And he has a 14-year-old? Born when your 'fiancé' was ten? 🤨

Going by your story, the very oldest he could've been when the eldest child was born is 14!
Four years for you, one for the ex, plus 14 for the kid = 19.
33-19=14.

You're either telling porkies or staggeringly gullible.

I can understand/sympathise with someone separating and not divorcing right away, but it would make me uncomfortable to discover I'd been involved - even fairly casually - with someone who did not disclose the fact that they are married. It's possible that - thinking the relationship was casual and would never lead to marriage, children, shared finances, etc. - he decided you didn't need to know and he "let you think" he was divorced rather than separated. Maybe the topic really never came up - possibly, he said "my ex" and you assumed that meant divorced? But I would still feel that I had a right to know and he should have told me. (There have been "rape by deception" cases in England and Wales where one partner misled the other about marital status; the law seriously considers whether this would negate apparent consent.)

Unless you live in a country where polygamy is legally, he should not have proposed to you when he was not free to marry - unless, perhaps, in a case where you both knew all the facts the engagement was kind of a placeholder until he could manage the paperwork. I also think that the fact that he did not tell you ONCE YOU WERE ENGAGED - when he MUST have been actively thinking about the need for a divorce - and instead let you find out from someone else is yet another layer of shite on what to me sounds a lot like a shite sandwich.

Of course, only you can decide whether to stay with him or not.

It’s a big deal. Call him out : it’s a big deal TO ME, if you cared about me you’d care about that! It’s a big deal to all my friends and family who are stunned. I bet if I spoke to a stranger on the street they’d say it’s a big deal too, in fact the checkout person at the shop yesterday thought it was a huge fucking deal. All I’m getting from your ‘it’s not a big deal’ is marriage doesn’t actually mean shit to you, and I’ve been in a joke engagement with a man who just forgot he is already married.

Is he generally pathetically useless at anything that doesn’t immediately and personally benefit him?

Sorry to hear that OP.
If you're trying for a baby with this man it might be worth checking if he's also had a vasectomy he's forgotten about.

I once dated a guy for 2 years. We had many conversations about our future, the breakdown of his marriage 9 years earlier and so on. We were at the point of discussing arrangements for me to sell my house and move in with him.

He was very slippery about whether we'd get married and so I was holding back putting mine on the market because I didn't think we were quite on the same page, and also I'd have preferred we bought somewhere new together but he was resistant and wanted me to move to his house.

At this point his mother let slip that "as of 3 years earlier he hadn't been divorced, but she was sure that if he had led me to believe he was divorced then he was by now". I asked him and he wasn't - they'd split up, made a financial arrangement, and never actually got divorced.

He was going to let me sell my house and move in, and his ex was his next of kin and would have got everything and been his medical next of kin if something happened to him!

Not only that, but his parents had recently given him a lot of money to fix his house up, and his ex would have got everything of that too!

He said he'd never told me because he knew I wouldn't like to date someone who was still legally married. And to him it was just a piece of admin.

He did then put in for the divorce, but a few months later when it finally came through, he didn't tell me that either, until I asked and he said 'Oh yes that came through a couple of weeks ago'.

I tried to step over it but he never apologised for the deceit, and kept maintaining he hadn't lied because he had never actually said he was legally divorced, and that letting me believe he was divorced and choosing not to tell me otherwise at multiple opportunities wasn't actually a lie. I never trusted him again and ended things, it took a while and I tried to step over it but couldn't, because if he could intentionally deceive me, then how could I ever trust him.

I was very clear he had made a fresh choice to deceive me every single time we discussed our future and his marriage breakup, and he'd been prepared to leave me legally and financially exposed.

OP, I think it depends whether your partner thought he'd told you - a PP said she thought that was something she'd told her new partner but they were living their lives, it wasn't a big deal and had never come up.

Was your engagement was with serious intent to get married soon, or whether it was one of those 'We got engaged just to show it's serious, we might get married in 10 years' type things? I've seen plenty of people get engaged before one is divorced, just to show future intent.

If your partner actually intentionally didn't tell you that would be unforgivable and I don't see how you could, or should, trust him again.

It's a huge shock and you don't have to make any major decisions right now.

It’s a huge deal.

Whatever you decide to do I would stop trying to get pregnant until you have fully made up your mind.

This would be the end for me though. If he can lie/omit something so big what else is he/could he be hiding. There would be no trust left.

I would have thought that when he said he had the 2 DC, you would have asked him whether he'd been married to their mother. A clear yes or no should have been his response.

As you've said you never knew he was married previously, my guess is that he said no to that question, which means he's deceived you from the start.

At 27 with no DC or other ties to this man, I'd be running away very fast. You are so young and honestly don't need this mess in your life OP. You will find someone wonderful to marry and have DC with in future, it just won't be this liar.

Do not have a baby with this man. Leave. Find someone who doesn’t lie etc. if you stay, you’ll be making a huge mistake.

No-one forgets they got married, or didn’t get divorced. Could cost be a reason he isn’t divorced. To be honest, you can’t get with a dad of 2 then moan he’s done it all before. I’d stop TTC with him, and would reconsider the whole thing. Especially as you want someone who hasn’t done it all before, as he has and nothing will change that. I wouldn’t ever trust him again. Was he planning to just let you get married and he was going to break the law?

Surely the 14 year old son was born when her DP was 19?

Agreed. And they were together I think around 7 years so he was about 14 when they got together. This is a teen romance, which got really intense and his parents pushed him to marry at 23 as they had 2 kids.

My take is being married possibly broke up the relationship because it became too intense. He missed out on a lot of teen stuff if he was with her during that crucial period. Some boys have barely hit puberty at 14! I am just wondering if he was really immature and blocked out the fact he was married and it just became easier not to revisit that.

That said, he’s 33 now. It’s 9/10 years on and he hasn’t bothered to face his past. If he’s still not mature enough to face up to his past, this doesn’t bode well for the future. Lots of red flags really.

This for me is the killer. So it wasn't that he forgot. I mean it's wierd but I could possibly believe it.
But the actual situation is that he forgot. He ex found found out and then he still did nothing about it.
That just smacks of total complacency. And a lack of basic understanding of both the legalities of marriage and also human relationships

Why do you wsnt to have a baby with a man fight bow when you are not married to him and you dont own a house and at such a young age?

🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩