DH and OW's baby. Can he see the baby without seeing OW?

[Lovelytea]

Husband cheated and got somebody pregnant but i decided to work on forgiving him to keep my family together. Would it be possible for him to have a relationship with the baby without having direct contact with the OW?

He confessed what he'd done himself I suspect because she was going to tell me anyway. We split for 6 weeks whilst i decided how to proceed. During this time I had conversations with the OW and I do believe it was just a one night stand that culminated from an EA and that he was no longer in touch with her. He has been transparent ever since.

He bitterly regrets the affair and cut contact with her before he told me what they'd done. Eventually I agreed to stand by him and we're now going through counselling to work through the problems we were ignoring prior to the EA, of which there were a few.

After coming to terms with the reality of the situation I realise the baby needs it's father. As far as our family goes I'm prepared to facilitate a relationship between our DC and their half sibling, I'm prepared to have the baby over our house and for our DC to slowly get to know them. It will be painful but I'd never begrudge an innocent baby a relationship with its relatives on my watch.

The babies mother has told DH in a series of rambling texts that the baby will have nothing to do with our DC and she won't allow them to come to our house. She wants him to spend time at her house with her and the baby if he wants to know him and that our family are to have nothing to do with him or be involved in discussions.

Unfortunately that doesn't sit right with me because she's made it very clear she wants to be with DH. I've seen messages where she has said as much and she's been particularly vile about me and our DC. I don't think I should have to put up with such vitrol after what they've done and if anything it should be me lashing out which im not. Although he has been unfaithful she isn't entirely innocent and is a manipulative, spiteful and so herself.

She isn't interested in being civil and adult about the situation and has done nothing but cause trouble since it became apparent I'd be standing by him. She was expecting me to leave him and for him to go and be with her and the baby. He has said he wants no contact with her whatsoever but does want to see his baby which I think he should.

So my question is, is there any way he can have a relationship with his baby without having to have direct contact with her?

We're trying to repair after what he did and quite frankly I cannot stomach the thought of him spending any time alone with the woman. I don't want to break up my family so please don't tell me to LTB as for now I've decided to try to make it work. It's been a long and painful period of deliberation but for now I'm satisfied that I've chosen what's best for my family.

A relative dealing with hand overs? A contact centre perhaps? If he took her to court would they support his stance of not wanting to speak to her? Is that even possible?

The baby is 2 weeks old now and he's yet to meet him.

I don't know about others, to many to read, but I would think when people are telling that the women just had a baby and wouldn't emotional want the child to leave her side and she is upset it's more facts about why she's being difficult not that we feel for her.
Because I and my dp don't!!!
I'm guessing your doing something similar to what I would and are being strong and trying to fix and manage the situation but sadly you can't.
You dp shouldn't allowed texts that abuse you and your dc.
You dp sounds weak willed.
This lo isn't going to get the same love and attention that your dc together will at the moment because there's to my conflict and to be honest you can drive yourself mad think about what's right but the lo only needs mum right now.
I understand you hoping by offering your dh some ideas of contact it with reduced future resent but whatever you do, you need to put you first. Watching you dh in your home feeding the baby or are you going to be helping ( realistically) is to much.

I learnt a long time ago, there is nothing worse than putting other people first and still being called selfish.

@LyingWitchInTheWardrobe please don't feel as though you can't continue posting, my comment wasn't aimed toward you specifically. OW has been getting a degree of sympathy from the earliest pages and I'm just feeling a bit sore is all x

I don’t think people are expecting you to sympathise with the OW and I am sure she is no innocent but the point is being made that she was probably being lied too as well. Told you didn’t have time for him, you never had sex anymore, the marriage was over etc etc. It doesn’t matter what is on her social media, it doesn’t matter what she was or wasn’t wearing, he willingly had an emotional affair with her, he went to her house to have sex with her, he wasn’t trapped, he didn’t have to go. So don’t minimise it.

Really you should both be telling the loser to fuck off but I know it isn’t that easy.

When you decided to stay with him, you did not get your husband back the way you had before.

You got back your husband who now has a child with someone else. I wouldnt take him back. But you have. That means you are taking him back along with the baggage of another child. With that child comes the reality that he will need to speak to her by phone/text/in person. It means he will quite possibly need to go to her house. He may need to go to parents' nights with her, doctors appointments and all the rest of it.

That's what you are signing up for. You can't go into this thinking that you're getting your husband back and you're both going to move past this. You're not getting that.

Laying down the law and saying he cannot see her or text her or whatever... You're preventing him from being a parent to that child. That's completely understandable. I'd do the same; that's why I wouldn't stay. It's an impossible situation and it's horrible. But if you're staying with him then you're staying with a man who has a child outside of the family home and you can't put conditions on his parenting of that child. That's the way it is and it's shit, but it's a decision you made when you stayed.

OW wants her family, Nah she's bad OP forgave him and she's left out,
Legally she believes she can ask for this so she doesn't look bad.
Bring a baby into this situation was selfish for the lo and dc!
Plus OP all the OW thinks about is you and this shit.
Even if she is smug, every appointment etc she's with out the dad.

Get a free half hour with a solicitor and they will advise on how much it will cost for mediation. This is MANDATORY she cannot refuse to come.

HOW can you stay with a man who cheated and impregnated another woman????

Once these regular visits are set up between him and OW, the pair of them will have to find some common ground for communication, bordering on friendship maybe.....Think on that.

This has nothing to do with you, OP. Your DH is not named on the BC of his new baby. If your DH wants to see his baby it will be on the terms and conditions set by the baby’s mother who is currently the sole decision maker as she is the only person with parental responsibility.

Your DH may wish to pursue a legal route to secure parental responsibility but this is for him and not you to do. His OW would be crazy to give him parental responsibility without a legal contract to secure her rights. In particular she will not want her baby spending time away from her in your family home. Would you, in her position?

I think you’re being really unfair to your children actually.

I know it feels like you’re keeping the family together but that’s not what’s happening. Their dad has a baby with another woman which is essentially another family now, how are you supposed to explain that to them? That it’s normal for men to acquire new families?
What behaviour is that modelling to them?

If my dad had another family with another woman while he was still with my mum I’d feel so rejected and hurt, and I’d be horrified that my mother stayed with him.

You haven’t done anything wrong, this is awfully unfair but you don’t have the life you had before.
Leave and make a new one with some respect for yourself.

The thing is I've been very reasonable with her when we've been in contact before.

I put the affair to one side and said a plan needs to be made whereby none of the children suffer, she agreed (tried apologising and saying it shouldn't have happened and she was drunk etc etc) in fact she was very much up my backside. All contact will be about the baby and nothing else. She's not interested in him anymore.

The next thing I know I'm being badmouthed and having the piss taken out of me, what's he doing with me? has he seen the look of me? The baby isn't coming anywhere near our DC and all of that kind of vitrol.

Is it any wonder I'm angry towards her?

I put %100 of the blame onto him initially, i believed she'd been taken for a ride and approached her in peace, then she started being a c u next Tuesday about me after the fact.

I really don't see how a marriage can survive long term with a child coming from an affair. An affair itself can be recovered from, you go no contact with the OW, get counselling, move on. You can never move on in this situation, every contact visit, occasion, it will be there like death by a thousand cuts.

Sandy may be right that some couples move on successfully by cutting off the child but I don't understand that at all. As angry as I was when my ExH cheated, I'd have even less respect for him if he had fathered a child and then turned his back on them as some kind of gift to me. Reading the advice about deciding a failing marriage be prioritised over a child's right to their father, the cheat tiptoeing around with separate bank accounts sounds like a really unhealthy situation to me, with a massive elephant in the room that everybody is pretending isn't there, and a child missing out on a parent to enable this charade.

Ow deserves no sympathy.

You do, tea. You have been treated appallingly.

It is shocking that your dh had an emotional affair and then found himself at her house- and is trying to make out that he couldn’t resist because she was in her pants. What on earth was he doing there?

It must be gutting for him that it’s ended this way- in a baby- but that’s the way it goes. He has made his own life immeasurably more complicated - you don’t have to stick with him.

OW is insisting visitation be with her and the new baby on their own. She wants her ‘family’. This will cause great pain and distress for existing family so is not feasible at all. It’s only going to be possible to parent all children, with women who are willing to compromise...but in this situation it seems like there is a battle for the DH, so it’s not going to happen.

Well, a mother of a new born doesn't have to or need to compromise.

Let's face it, she isn't insisting on sitting in on his parenting the OP's children, so the OP has no right to insist she be there to parent this baby every time they meet.

It's just not feasible.

The fact the OP wants no texts messages between them tells you how out of hand it all is. There is no way they can parent a child and have no messaging, what if they child should get sick, or even have a long term condition?
They will need to be able to communicate.

Also I don’t think you trust him anymore, this is going to be torture for you.

Leave now.

How will you feel when family moe y is being used as child maintenance?

OW is insisting visitation be with her and the new baby on their own.

It is entirely within her rights to do so.

You sound overly involved in ow attitudes and motivation, deflecting blame from where it should firmly be with your h. He did not have to sleep with her underwear or not, once or more. Tbh I really don't see a happy ending here, your dc are so close in age there will inevitably be comparison in his head at least. Any mention of or contact with ow or baby will continue to tear you up.

If she doesn't like the fact she's not being pandered to then perhaps she's learnt a harsh lesson about having children to married men who already have a family.

100% ^...^^..

She doesn't deserve one ounce of sympathy. She's made her bed. She had an affairand unprotected sex with a MM.

I'm astounded that pp are sympathising with her. It's very disgraceful behaviour from her (and him)..

I agree if she posted, she would be getting flamed to high heaven.

Focus on yourself. Keep to your stance that he can't go round there. Your mental health is more important than their love child.

I have a very close friend who was tricked into getting his girlfriend pregnant - she was on BC..only she wasn't.

What do you do to trick a man into putting his penis inside you, without wearing a condom?

Or is it all men cannot help themselves around women, so we cut them the slack, and all women are dirty seductresses, preying on men's utter weakness.

Your friend wasn't tricked, he had sex, which can always result in a baby, even with contraception, there's no trickery involved, we all learn that in school, quite early. The only way to not have a potential pregnancy is to not have sex, every time you do, a baby can be produced.

Oh op. I can't stop thinking about you today. I can't see how you can go on together. If it was me I couldn't forgive. I might be able to move past a ONS, but the result of a baby from a ONS - I couldn't. As others have said, it's a constant reminder.
I wish you and your dc all the best.

It's not about having sympathy for her, it's recognising that being a shitty person has no bearing on a post partum mother's rights or the baby's best interests, and nor does the circumstances of conception.

I've noticed some people are latching onto my post where I've mentioned her greeting him in her underwear.

If you look back at the post you'll see I've referenced that as part of the excuse he's given me. At no point have I said he's not to blame for taking the opportunity to sleep with her, in fact I said it did him no favours telling me that as it just makes me think of him as a dirty bastard or words to that effect.

I'm not in any way shape or form saying that he isn't %100 responsible for sleeping with her. He had two options, sleep with her or don't, he chose to and I'm well aware that's on him and nobody else.

The underwear tale was what he told me in attempts to explain away sleeping with her. I haven't bought that as a valid excuse whatsoever. I was relaying his pitiful justification about how it happened.

She was most likely angry and upset, he messed her around too, had an emotional affair,most likely made promises.Said he wanted to be involved, then backed out, then turns back up in the picture and having to contact you too, now she's had the baby and he hasn't been, or he has in secret.

I mean, you don't need sympathy for her, but you can understand her anger.

She directed it towards you, as you are now doing to her.

How are things at home right now? Has your husband said he wants to meet his son or isn't he bothered?

I feel so sorry for you OP. For what it's worth, I agree with you regarding the OW. Clearly she has no self respect. Why did she think it was a good idea to continue with the pregnancy when she knew your DH was married? What a bitch, even more so for being so horrible to you and I don't care about any posters telling me she shouldn't be blamed blah, blah, blah.

HOWEVER your DH was the one who has wrecked your marriage and I don't see how you can stay. If I were you, I would probably be giving my DH the same conditions regarding contact with the child and it's just not sustainable. In fact, you're a better person than me as if I wanted him to stay, I would want him to have no contact with the child either and that's me being brutally honest with myself.

I hope you can find a way to make it all work