Have discovered that the man I've been dating is actually married! Any advice?

[Greene1]

I haven't posted here before and wondered if I could ask some advice. I'm sorry but this is long.

I am completely devastated as on Friday the man I have been dating for 9 months confessed that he is already married and has children. I don't think he was actually going to tell me but a chance encountered forced him to.

Some background. We dated back in my mid twenties, very happy, passionate fun relationship and we were together for nearly 2 years. Kept our own flats but he was reluctant to commit as he felt he was too young. We split amicably but I was very hurt and took me ages to forget him and he told me later that he was moving abroad. I moved on too dated and then was in a long term relationship which finished at the beginning of last year.

On Christmas Eve 2013 I received a message out of the blue from married man. Very friendly wishing me a happy Christmas and asking what I had been up to. He told me he was living back in the UK working in town and was single after a relationship he was in had finished. Said he wished he was spending Christmas with me and that he had always viewed me as 'the one that got away'. I'll admit I was hugely flattered.

I was abroad for New Year and when I got back we arranged to meet for a coffee and a catch up. I'll admit I was wary as obviously I wasn't 100% sure of his status and obviously I am fully aware that some married men are looking for affairs!

When we met up the attraction was still there in spades I naively thought that the time would have muted the feeling but I was still hugely attracted to him and him to me. We had a kiss then and he asked me to dinner later in the week. There was at no time any indication that he was married and he wasn't wearing a ring. I was excited and exhilarated to have him back in my life and we started a very intense and passionate relationship seeing each other after work and he coming over to my flat at weekends. Maybe that's when the alarm bells should have rung as sometimes he would come over only on Sunday afternoon or would make an excuse that he had an early flight and had to leave that night not staying over. However I was happy to have him in my life and realised that he's a very busy guy, as am I!

We had a great summer I had already booked a girlie holiday late last year with friends so we didn't go on a 'big holiday' together but we spent some lovely nights away at hotels.

On Friday we had supper after work outside of a lovely restaurant and we were discussing going away for the weekend in October to Barcelona. He was telling me about a fabulous hotel he had stayed at with work and i felt excited and happy. I invited him to my parents for Christmas in the country which feels so ridiculous now I want to cry. As we were walking back to the train station holding hands we bumped into 2 ladies who I assumed were work colleagues. He introduced me to them as a his 'friend' and they seemed strangely off with me as we walked away he got very agitated saying that he wasn't expecting to see them and that it made things 'complicated'. He then looked really stressed and worried saying that he had to go and he would call me soon. He left me standing in the street completely perplexed and horrified that something was seriously wrong.

He telephoned me on Saturday night to say that he was married with 2 young children. He said that his marriage was over and he and his wife hadn't had sex for more than a year. He said that he had been patient and understanding with her but she refused to talk about it and see a sex therapist and had expected him to become celibate just because she had. He also said he had tried to organise weekends away child-free and helped out with housework but nothing seemed good enough or made her happy. He said she was exhausting to live with and seeing me again made him realise that their marriage was a mistake. I told him not to ring me again to sort out his marriage and not to prop his life up by using me.

He text me several times which I have deleted and have now blocked his mobile number. I have been a complete mess since he confessed and now don't know whether to tell his wife what has been going on or whether I should walk away and not get involved. I'm also wondering whether I should leave the door open if he separates soon.

My exdp told the OW that life with me was hell. That I was abusive and violent and had threatened to harm myself if he left. He claimed he had left and I then became a psychotic, stalking ex.

He only told her all this, about the terrible life he had been forced to live with me after he was caught red-handed lying to us both. Like in your situation, neither of us was aware of the other.

OW soaked up every word and they are still together now. She thinks I am some sort of daemon. Not one word of what he told her was true. He is a pathological liar. And I thank god I found out his true colours. OW however, who believed his lies because 'she knows him' has got herself a massive booby prize and I feel sorry for her.

Anyone who leads a double life and dupes two women so he can get what he wants isn't a good man, and isn't worth having.

You had a lucky escape OP. I am sorry it happened to you though.

OP, I really think you need to make an important distinction.

When you say "I know him" you need to recognise that your knowledge of him is based on the OLD him. The single man that you USED to know. That man may not have been a cheater, a liar, a manipulator.

But he's changed now, and not for the better. He is now a different man, and your view of him is like placing a rosy filter over a bad painting. It may look nice on the surface, but the bad painting is still there underneath. You just aren't willing to look underneath, as it wars with the image you have always carried of him from your previous relationship. You MUST start realising that this man is NOT the same man that you knew previously.

You really do NOT know him.

Oh wow here we go again. i know him!!!!

Clearly you don't know him.

Or did you actually know he was married with children and you pretended not to know he was deceiving you for 9 months?

Perhaps you knew he was a skilled liar and a very selfish manipulator prepared to go to great lengths to deceive to get what he wanted from relationships? No?

You know him?

Where was he this Friday night when he was seen with you? He was having a cosy romantic restaurant meal with you. Right?

Where was he this Friday night when he was seen with you? He was having a late night conference with a client from NYC right?

Which is the lie?

Who did he tell the lie?

How many other meals has he had with you? How many other lies has he told his wife?

If she had turned up to his meeting Friday night what would she have found? A busy hard working man working? Nope she would have found a cheating lying snake.

Would you have liked to share a bed with a man happily fucking at least 1 other? Did you use condoms? She doesn't know your sexual history.

I would be more inclined to believe that this complete liar has previous form which has played a massive part in his wife's mistrust and the destruction of their marriage than the liar who has lied to you over and over and over.

I don't know if you are believing what he says your posts make it sound like you do though.

You are not to blame and you are better to stay no contact and just accept that the man you thought you knew is just a complete liar.

I also suggest you consider an STI test. Condoms don't protect from everything.

I bet his wife thinks she knows him too.

This entire insistence in that you know him makes me think, again, that you actually knew he was married and he hasn't really lied to you about this (assuming this whole thing is true).

He says that a couple of his friends had called his wife "hard work" before they were even married and had said she behaved like a nightmare turning up at restaurants when he was out with clients and telling him he was forbidden to go on stag dos or weekends away. So for him the warning signs were there anyway but he thought things would settle down after they married

Have you met his friends? His co-workers?

Even if you believe him about the state of his marriage, he has blatantly lied to you (or didn't him?).

He made you a booty call starting off with lies and has kept lying to you for 9 months. Really, not even a slip up? It makes him an extremely good liar (and that is why none of us really believes any of that crap about his wife and family).

I suspect most women would seem "hard work" if they suspected their h/p was having an affair, after all their very existence gets in the way of his free indulgence. Think of it this way , by his deception he has also been cheating on you with his wife , whether they had sex or not . He has spent time, birthdays, holidays, money, dinners etc with them more than you. His priorities will always lie with his family. I hope your dm and friends can give you some perspective.

OP someone upthread touched on it and it is one of the things I was most furious about in my experience and you should be too.

While this man was deceiving you into thinking you were starting to build a potential future together he took the opportunity away from you to meet a genuine guy who could want the same things as you. He robbed you of your time through deception. Be bloody angry about that rather than understanding towards him and his 'terrible' marriage.

And if his wife was so bad before, why did he marry her?

He is a liar and a user.

All the time he's been with you OP, he's had another woman and you never suspected. He's got children and he never let slip about them either.

He must be an exceptionally accomplished liar.
And you never had a clue.

Greene1 I think that you should be very thankful that you are not this man's wife.

You can walk away, this poor woman can't.

Pretending she didn't exist is bad enough, but to pretend that your children don't exist, and never slipping up on that one, is despicable.

Couldn't agree more with wfielder. Whatever level of justification he might muster around his 'dreadful' marriage (of which there is none, by the way) there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING that can justify the betrayal of his children. Not a whisper to you. And seemingly completely untroubled by it.

That is so appalling it gives me the creeps. Seriously.

Wow. I can understand why you don't want to believe he is lying about his marriage (he is) - I guess this is cognitive dissonance. I find it staggering you even are listening to him though.

I can't understand why you don't seem furious that virtually every conversation he has had with YOU has been lies.

The "soulless" loft - lies - preferring your cosy flat - lies -( he couldn't take you home), the travel, the flights, the reasons he couldn't stay over, oh and the children he hasn't got. It seems absurd that you think you know this fella! You didn't even know he had kids! Two children!

I would feel deceived and humiliated and then raging.

Have you told your family yet?

Hi OP - I am glad that you took the plunge and spoke about this to your friends. I get the impression that they probably had much the same reaction to people on here, which is what has helped you realise that he is not worth the time of day. It must have been to admit to being in that situation to your friends, so I commend you for it.

Two things:

• Even if this guy does get divorced, as others have said, he is not a lone agent, and you two will not be able to skip off into the sunset. His children are part of that package. If you don't see children in your future, then there is no point considering a future with this man.

• If you wanted to be a candidate for most awesome person in the world award, you could contact the wife and offer to give her evidence which would allow her to divorce on the grounds of adultery. This means that the adulterer would have to cover the divorce costs.

No matter what your views on this woman, she has done nothing to break her marriage vows. That was HIS behaviour. Why should she have to suffer financially just because he couldn't keep his cock in his pants?

Why on earth would you believe him about his marriage when the very first thing he told you when he message you on Christmas Eve last year was a complete lie? As was pretty much everything else since.

He didn't tell you because he was ashamed of being unhappily married (bollocks about the so-called taboo); he didn't tell you he was married because you wouldn't have even entertained starting a relationship with him. So he lied to you because he wanted to have an affair with you.

If he'd really wanted out of the marriage, he'd have told his wife he'd met someone else 9 months ago and let her divorce him for adultery. He didn't. He chose to lie to you and hide the relationship from her. He could have told you and her at any time in the past 9 months; he said nothing until he was caught.

When he was finally caught by her friends his response wasn't relief. He panicked and told you that it 'complicated things'. That's not the reaction of a man who is relieved that the truth came out; it's the reaction of a man whose comfortable life has been out in jeopardy. Sure, when he finally contacted you on Saturday he could claim to be relieved, but in the actual moment of discovery that was a long, long way from his reaction. That tells you a great deal.

From your perspective, it really doesn't matter that he's treated his wife and children shoddily. Well, it does to the extent that it demonstrates that he is not a nice man. What matters is that he has treated you shoddily too. It doesn't matter (to you) that he lied and deceived his wife for 9 months; it matters that he lied to you for 9 months and let you believe that you had something you didn't.

The upshot of all this is that, even if he divorces his wife and sorts his life out, I can't imagine why you'd want to give him another millisecond of your time. He doesn't deserve your time or your sympathy.

I think the OP is living under the belief that her and this man she knows so very well are actually "star crossed lovers" whose true love and real connection has been thwarted by his immaturity in breaking off the relationship initially and then an evil wicked wife.

OP will do the "right" thing and wait for him to at least separate properly before getting together with him. Because he is such a "catch" being a rich liar lawyer and all, and she "knows him".

He's not really a lying manipulative scumbag, but a clever talented loving man trapped by terrible tragic circumstances of marriage to a nightmare woman and 2 unwanted children that have befallen him.

I'm with Lweji - if there is any truth in this story, then the OP already knew he was married. That's why there's a whiff of fiction pervading this thread. This picture of the manipulative, spendthrift shrew of a wife who doesn't even have the decency to be a good housekeeper (and, really, who cares if she's a good mother or not because he didn't want the blasted children in the first place) has been built up over months. Not one email and a hurried phone call

I am planning on telling my mother tonight as we had a discussion about Christmas last week and she was delighted that he would be coming down. Like old times. How embarrassing.

Thank you for all the helpful advice. My friends were fantastic and have made it clear none of this is my fault and to ignore his emails and calls to work. My mobile has already been blocked.

I think your being very sensible telling people in RL.

You didn't do anything wrong at all - you trusted someone you had a previous good history with who abused your trust and hurt you.

Hindsight is always 20/20 and IME everyone has it in spades. I think it's normal to want to see the best in someone you love and want to believe them.

You know this guy lied a lot and that you need to move on - easy to say hard to do - but I really hope you manage it.

To answer why I believe him about the state of his marriage.

Simply put I know him.

Yet you did not know that he was married, and telling lie after lie after lie.

Greene, hard as it is for you, you need to take off the rose-tinted spectacles, and learn to view every single thing this man says with distrust.

All your evidence about the state of his marriage has come from him - even his colleagues' comments were reported to you by him. You have NO independent evidence whatsoever to back up his claims. None.

Even if his colleagues have actually said what hard work his wife is, that may well be based on what he has told them about her and her behaviour, rather than them actually having witnessed this behaviour - and we all know how scrupulously honest this man isn't! If he has lied to them about her behaviour, they might well describe her as a nightmare or hard work - but that doesn't make it the truth - it is simply a product of more lies.

Ask yourself this - this man that you 'know' so well - would you have ever thought that he could tell so many lies and deceive people he is supposed to care for? Would you have ever believed he was the sort of person to cheat on a marriage and to hurt innocent children?

I am pretty sure your answer to that is a resounding 'NO!' But he IS that person - you know he is. You know he has lied to you, to his wife and to his children - at a bare minimum - he has probably lied to other people too, so they will back up his lies for him. You need to accept that this must utterly destroy his credibility.

Every time you want to believe the things he is saying, you need to remind yourself of all of this, so that you can stay firm in the decision you have made.

As I said earlier - you deserve SO much better. You deserve a man who loves you without lying to you. A man who is not married to someone else, and a father to children - to whom he is also lying Someone who will put you first in their life - not themselves - because be under no illusions, this man's first and ONLY priority is himself - not you, not his wife and not his poor children! Keep telling yourself that you deserve better - and if you are not waiting for this man to sort out his marriage and his lies, you might find your decent man waiting for you.

Perhaps he did make the wrong choice of partner. That happens. A decent man would not have a 9 month affair, denying that his own babies exist, for heavens sake. A decent man would have a kind and respectful divorce, put the welfare of his kids first while being fair to his former wife, and only then go looking for a new happiness.

He is running away from adult life, and you are his escape fantasy, because you represent his 20-something years. Maybe that has a future, maybe it doesn't; but in your shoes I would very much dislike the man he appears to have turned into.

He sounds like a shit who doesn't care about his wife's feelings, his children's welfare or that he's hurt you. He does not have an ounce of respect for any of you.

So he's lied to you from the start, he's lied to his wife while he has been seeing you and now apparently his wife knows about you and he is getting divorced. Do you actually know that she knows about you? He could actually still be with her, waiting until you've forgiven him or until you believe he has formally separated from her and then pick up with you exactly where he left off.

I am sure he could come up with plenty of reasons why he can't be with you all the time so he could easily get away with that based on his previous conduct.

Even if he did leave and married you, would you trust him? Maybe you could believe he was being faithful to you by sticking your head in the sand and believing what he tells you. If you take him back I would be shocked if he didn't hurt you again. Don't waste your life on someone like him, he really is not worth it.

What percentage of a person's life and who they are is being married and having children? Pretty high in most cases. That's the percentage of him you have no idea about.

My DSis met her partner through work. He was married but had no longer loved his wife so ended it. They became friends but only in a brief chat at work and at work functions way. He spent a few months single and then asked my sister out and they dated for a few months. He then decided it was too much too soon and ended the relationship, spent six months single, had counselling and concentrated on building a solid relationship with his son and making sure his ex wife was being treated fairly. They then got back together and have been living together for 18 months and are looking at buying a house.

Now that is what a man who is unhappy in his marriage should do. No lies, no overlap.

Oh OP, he is a shit. An epic, epic shit. Like many pps, I can't get over the fact that he denied his own children. What was he planning to do in the future, if he even intended to divorce and be with you, how the hell would he explain them? Awful man.

I've been burned by one of these before, fortunately not as good a liar as yours. We dated for two years when we were younger, were each other's first loves, etc etc. Broke up as the relationship just fizzled out. Met him some years later. Through mutual friends I knew he was in a relationship (I was single) but met him as friends for a coffee. He was all "I've never loved anyone like I loved you, holding your hand feels like coming home, I never smile as much as when I'm with you," with all the strokey hands and gazing deep into my eyes. Half of me was confused as he had a gf, half of me was so so tempted, I wanted to believe him. I listened up until the point where he told me he'd book a hotel room that minute if I said I'd be with him, he tried to kiss me, I told him he was a bastard for talking to me like this when he had a gf. He told me, "But, it's you , you're special, you know what we have!"

I walked out, drove off to sit in a car park and think. Called him, said I was sorry for leaving, I'd made up my mind, I loved him and I wanted to be with him. He laughed down the phone, told me he didn't want to be with me, he just wanted to have fun in hotel rooms occasionally. His gf was busy with work, and busy with some medical problems and had no time for him and he was unhappy.

I nearly threw up on my phone out of disgust. Hung up, have never spoken to the arsehole since. Clearly the only "special" thing about me was the fact that he didn't have to try hard, get to know me, impress me - he'd already done that, years ago. I was easy pickings.

Since found out from mutual friends - that "medical problem" he mentioned that was taking up all her time? IVF. They were going through IVF.

OP, he wasn't unhappy in his relationship. They were trying for a baby, mutual decision. He just wanted attention, to sleep around, who knows, who cares. He lied to me, to her.

The him that I dated all those years ago would never have acted like this. He was honest and loyal. He changed. At least in my case he was relatively upfront but he had no choice as we had mutual friends. Your pathetic excuse for a man decided to utterly deceive you. How was he planning to have a future with you? He must have know that he couldn't hide all this forever.

I feel for you, thinking that you know him and he wouldn't do this. I thought the same until he did it to my face. Good Luck OP.