Sad that I have hidden the truth about our relationship

[Impic]

Looking back I'm sad Iv has to lie about my relationship for over 20 years.

When I met my DH we had this immediate attraction to eachother. I just knew we were ment to be together.

But he had a girlfriend. They were a really odd couple. He was fun and outgoing and she was quiet and antisocial. Everyone said they weren't right together.

Anyway they split up and we got together. Circumstances ment that for a while wed spend a month or so together but then not be able to see eachother for several months.

After we'd been seeing eachother for about a year he told me his ex had a baby who was now four months old. He said he thought he was probably the father but he wasn't 100 percent sure.

Circumstances were complicated and probably too outing to explain but I know he wasn't really being much of a father to the baby. He could of changed the circumstances but he chose not to.

Anyway circumstances eventually changed and we were able to see eachother more regularly. He said his ex wouldn't let him see the baby because she wasn't happy about how absent hed been and wasn't happy that he had moved on.

Then out of the blue she basically publically humiliated him, telling all his friends and family stuff that made him look bad and it also turned out that he'd been letting her think they were still in a relationship all that time and she never stopped him seeing the baby.

So obviously he'd been lying to me the whole time and cheating on me. but I loved him too much to dump him so we came up with a lie to tell my family about why he suddenly had a baby over a year old because otherwise they'd hate him and I would have to choose between him and them and that was impossible.

It sounds bad what he did but

1. They'd only been together about 3 months when she got pregnant. He didn't want to keep the baby and she originally agreed but then changed her mind

1. He didn't know she was pregnant when we started seeing eachother.

1. He'd been planning on breaking up with her anyway at that point and was just waiting for the right time.

1. He didn't want to break up with her when she was pregnant or looking after a small baby because she had problems with anorexia, cutting, drinking and drugs and he didn't want to tip her over the edge

1. He thought she would get the message that there relationship was over sooner and also thought that she would behave like a decent person and not publically humiliate him when she did.

I know that our relationship has always been great and we had the perfect love story when we got together but I hate that Ive had to lie all these years to protect DH because other people won't understand and even with the lie we told lots of people still think he must of done something wrong.

I didn't mean to write so much. I'm just glad to of got it off my chest.

I know the relationship has always been great.

Oh dear.

You obviously have no children of your own, his choice or yours? I mean, good work as he’s a dogshit dad but you seem to have completely excused this so I’m surprised.

Perhaps she was so thin as she was stressed her partner and father of her child was cheating on her and treating her so badly... Everything you said above is assumption on your part, encouraged by your partner, to try and excuse his terrible behaviour. You say it was a difficult time for him but he actually created this situation by acting extremely selfishly, cowardly and manipulatively.

@Impic nothing you can say excuses his behaviour. You both treated this woman really badly and you enabled your partner to do that. The only thing you can do now would be to admit that and try and treat both her and her child better, maybe even apologise.

You seem fixated on trying to re-write the past to a version which is palatable to you, but the fact is, it clearly wasn't great. If you want to avoid the detail about what happened, it would be better to be vague than to deliberately make up lies. You can say, "we met at work", "yes he has a child from a previous relationship". Leave it at that.

Married wearing matching tracksuits? Was this the eighties? What an amazing image 😍

"All he did was cheat on her whole age was pregnant and continued when she was a new mother and neglected his child and she wants to paint him as the bad guy?????

And it's her fucking fault that the truth of what he did makes it awkward for me to explain our family dynamic"

This is a cruel and disgusting lie. How dare either of you attack her character and her parenting just to hide his awful behaviour.

Even if the relationship has been amazing I don’t think I could love and respect someone who did that.

Yes I’m not surprised you don’t want to explain how you met.
it’s fairly obvious you have no children of your own as I imagine your hormones would of kicked in proper and realised what an absolute twat he is by now. The thing is women like you think ‘but he wouldn’t do that to me so it doesn’t matter’ reality is- his ex obviously thought the same to birth his child!

Twenty years you’ve spent being in a relationship with a man who is a shit.

The mother of his child said some things about him that made him look bad? Oh dear, how absolutely terrible for him. 🙄 He thought she would behave like a decent person! Is that what he said to you? The quality of his lies and manipulation is really low and yet you have lapped it all up and have a perfect love story.

And everything else is this other woman’s fault because she is Bad and he is So Great and she lied. I bet you she didn’t lie, she would not need to lie. He was an absolute dick.

Twenty years!

What were the "very difficult circumstances"? Was something going in the background? And how can you possibly believe he was trying to do the best for everyone? He was cheating on his ex with you and lying to you both about it. He also wasn't "being much of a father" to his own baby.

It does seem an odd coincidence that "trying to do the best for everyone" consisted of him having sex with two different women and not making any effort with his child. That sounds suspiciously similar to a man doing exactly what he wants with no thought for anyone else.

Yeah he exaggerated through his teeth, the exaggerating bastard.

Funny how similar those two can be isnt it?

They say it's easier to trick someone than to convince them they've been tricked.

The older I get, the more depressed I become about the lengths to which some women will go, the amount of time, love, energy and potential they will waste, to try to prove to themselves that they didn't make a mistake and give their heart to an absolute dickhead.

Oh it was brilliant. She was 8 months pregnant too. Of course I stalked social media for the photos just too laugh my head off!!! Xx

😂 😂 😂. Oh my gawd! Hope you took screenshots..that's always going to brighten up anyone's dull day.😍

You say you were in your early twenties when you started seeing this man, and his ex was a year or two older than you. So, his ex was "getting really drunk on nights out" when she was about twenty-four, at most? The horror!

At the end of the day, you didn’t have a “perfect love story” because by him “letting her think they were still together” (because of this that and the other excuses)- he was obviously still sleeping with her… and you… he’s a liar and a cheat.

And making out like he did this to benefit her because she was pregnant/had a young baby/had issues… NO… his actions would have hurt her WAY more. She was deceived during the most vulnerable time of her life. It would have been better to end the relationship properly than string someone along like this.

The reason you are still thinking about it all these years later is because you know all of the above. Put yourself in her shoes. You thought you won a prize but it was all built on lies, deception and a man who stuck his willy in multiple women at the same time. Life is complicated but not that complicated… jeez Louise.

WTAF??

I agree with the poster who said you’ve been taken in. How do you know they were together for 3 months? Also, classic dick move on his part to tell you she’s crazy, blah blah. What an awful man he is.

He deserved to be humiliated. A dealbreaker for me would be a man who has/had children he didn’t see. And that’s what you’ve got, here.

Two sides to every story. Have you heard her side from her own mouth?

Obviously I was devastated. I nearly broke up with him then. It wasn't like I just accepted it.

If I lie about how we met then I have to lie about alot of other stuff going on in my life then and I don't want to pretend. people are going to say I'm pretending anyway but it's not as much of a pretence.

I dont think it really matters what you tell other people, because none of those lies are as big as the lies you are telling yourself.

What is the other stuff going on in your life that you then have to lie about? I thought you said you told the lie years ago and it rarely comes up these days?

@Impic I hope you read what I'm about to write

The reason you feel uneasy about people finding out how your relationship started, is due to projection. This is how YOU feel about how your relationship started so you're projecting that judgement onto others.

You know deep down that this was far from a beautiful love story. He cheated on you both, you were devastated but chose to forgive and carry on. He let his child down, he demonised his ex and on and on and on.

You cannot face the truth about your relationship, and what this man truly is. So you're clinging onto this narrative of how perfect it all was, the dreamy way you met and connected etc. But you know it wasn't. He probably swept you off your feet and lovebombed you.

I bet people aren't that interested in how you two met. You just cannot keep lying to yourself about how awful it all really was, and probably is. That's why 20 years later you're still ruminating on this.

I'm not judging you, I know a few women in your situation. All I'm saying is, allowing yourself to admit the truth will probably be good for you. Surely it's time now.

You know this rings so familiar, my dad has affairs and my mum finally kicked him out. He's been with his last affair partner 30 yrs (though has cheated on her which caused a big drama and downward spiral for her, though they stayed together)

I remember her trying to justify things to me unprompted when I was at adult (I stopped speaking to her when I was 22 as she's not a nice person) and said that my dad was suicidal in the marriage to my mother and wouldn't be here but for her, yet I also know that my dad came begging to my mum to give him another chance a few weeks in to their breakup (he confirmed this to me) and he absolutely was not suicidal, so either he told her that or she was rewriting history to suit her narrative. Her family and kids never knew about the affair til years later when my dad had the other affair and it came out they began with an affair too, such a mess. But it's a common theme for the affair partner to lie about the origin and yo rewrite history I'm.afraid.

It doesn't come up that much but I would have to lie about my life if I pretended we met in a different way.

I know when people ask their just making conversation and not really that interested but once I've said it they know and then they'll think DH must of been a bad father and I admit he was at first but that doesn't mean he should be judged forever because he didn't know what to do in a difficult situation.

He IS a bad father, a cheat and a Liar and you aren't telling people the truth so you can stay in your make believe world where he is a decent person.

Justify it however you want, your husband is always going to be a bad father, a liar and a cheat.