An accidental affair, a baby and no closure telling the wife.

[Nowayjose0]

I found out my child's father is married and cheating on said wife when I was six months pregnant he threatened me to go for custody if I apply for child support or his wife finds out.
I thought he was a good guy prior to all this.
I grew some, spoke to a lawyer, called his bluff and messaged her on Monday.
Loads of proof.
Photo's, messages the lot.
I told her about dating apps and multiple women.
They have only been married two years and I met him the month they got married.
This also wasn't the first time he had hurt her.
She thanked me for telling her anddddd blocked me.
Still has him all over her social media.
I thought I would feel better after this I am struggling to understand her reaction and feel like I am angrier than she is about it.
I'm now worried maybe she genuinely didn't want to know and I have done the wrong thing.
I'm also angry that this man has no repercussions for the hurt and anxiety he has caused.
I have no idea what this all means for my baby and what I tell him as he gets older. Do I lie. Say it was a sperm donor or what.
I'm drowning in anxiety please be kind.

Going to court to get custody is expensive. More men bluff it than actually do it.

Focus on you and your baby. No court will take a young baby away from its mum unless there are serious concerns about safety. If he gets to see the child, and it has a relationship with its father, is that such a terrible thing?

You're hurting now and that's normal but you won't always feel this way.

this will be encouraged through gaslighting and lies by the cheat, who will only admit to what is known (e.g. you might have had a relationship with him for quite a long time, but she will be told you were a drunken one night stand or whatever plausible excuse minimises your relationship).

"She's crazy, obsessed with me, delusional, mentally ill, lying"
She's produced proof you shagged her.
"It was only once, I was drunk, down",
She's produced proof you shagged her more than once.
"I'm depressed, suffering from sex addiction, you've been ignoring me, we haven't been close" ....
She's pregnant
"it's not mine"
"it was a one night stand"
"the condom must have broken",
"she must have tampered with the condom"

(he wasn't using one, and pregnancies from one one off incident are not that common, most couples have to fuck repeatedly to hit that 10-15% chance per cycle in your eg 30s)

On and on.

There'll be sex addiction talk and depression talk and stress talk and childhood trauma talk and subtle or not so subtle blame put on the wife ("cheating doesn't happen in a vacuum") and counselling will be broached as the solution etc etc etc

Cheating actually does happen in a vacuum. The vacuum is the cheater's morality/integrity.

Nobody ever wants to hear this and there's always a ton of vitriol against people who feel differently, but it's the truth. It takes all sorts and not everyone has to approach their marriage the way you think they should.

Some people are happy as they are and they simply don't want it disrupted. You can say they're in denial, you may be right, but that's their choice to make. Infidelity is not a deal breaker for everyone and some people are able to overlook it as long as it's not forced in their faces.

That doesn't have to be you, but it does mean that you are not always automatically in the right when you insert yourself into someone's life like that. If you tell the wife without knowing her well enough to know if she'd want to hear it, then frankly she is the judge of whether you did the right thing, not you. You made a decision for her and she isn't obliged to be grateful.

Are you in England OP? Because that's definitely not how it works here. CMS and child custody/ parental responsibility are two very different issues. If you open a case with CMS and get a DNA test done it does NOT give him parental responsibility. The only way he can get parental responsibility is if you add him to the birth certificate (which he needs to agree to) or if he applies through the family court to be given parental responsibility

@Namechange666 It is not that they don't want to know. It's that they do not enjoy being told by a complete stranger that their whole world is about to fall apart. On top of that, they really don't want a stranger demanding that they behave or respond in a certain way to the news. A lot of people with serial cheats for spouses have been emotionally abused too.

People need a lot of time to process information like this and often don't want to act on the information immediately. I think the negative responses tend to come when the stranger is demanding immediate action. Often, the stranger might have found out about the affair some time ago too (either as the other wronged partner or someone duped into a seemingly monogamous relationship) and been able to process it already and needs to understand the other wronged person will need time.

I do still think telling the wronged partner the news is important but it should be done in a sensitive way and there should be no expectation of a response.

@CubaLibre23 Yep, those excuses sound about right. I got a lot of similar from my ex-wife (although she didn't get pregnant, she tried to claim she never had sex with any of her affair partners despite her bank statements showing frequent visits to day rooms in hotels. On the balance of probabilities, I think there was a good chance of gaslighting!)

Of course I wasn't disagreeing about whether to be sensitive or not, I meant just telling in general.

No one should cover for a snake like him. Threatening op too what an arse.

I did not disappear. I offered to answer any questions she had. Where did you get that I disappeared from?

Exactly.

How can you stalk his wife’s social media if she’s blocked you? The very reason people block people is so they can’t communicate with them, and that would include being able to see their social media.

Did you genuinely not know that he was married? You must have had an inkling that there was something not right even if you didn’t know it was full-on marriage.

Threatening to go for custody doesn’t make sense if he was keeping the fact he was married from you and didn’t want his wife to know. Exactly how do you think he would explain to his wife why he’d brought home a new baby?

Far too much of this doesn’t make sense, and I suspect that you knew he was married and are unhappy because he’s gone back to his wife, but you don’t want to admit that on here for fear of backlash.

Whatever happened, your baby is here now, and while he is clearly an arsehole, the reality is that none of this is about either of you any more but about an innocent child who didn’t ask to be a part of this mess.

If you genuinely don’t want him to have anything to do with his child then walk away, but one day the child will have a right to know who his father is and may choose to contact them. You need to be prepared for that at least.

It's that they do not enjoy being told by a complete stranger that their whole world is about to fall apart

Should the stranger trawl SM to try to find relatives to break it to them on their behalf.

Wouldn't they then be accused of stalking/being weird ... And of lying because they're approaching it side on, as it were.

Anyway, they're not so much of a stranger when - to be very blunt - your partner has been sticking his dick up them before and after he's been doing it to you. He's made you both "sister wives" whether you knew or not.

And that brings me back to the perpetrator and cause of this stranger having to tell you your husband is cheating and without condoms. The man.

Don't shoot the messenger. Don't hate the messenger. Don't blame the messenger. She's been abused and mistreated and betrayed too. She's a victim (in op's case).

She has every right.

Put the blame for this stranger having to tell you ... At the door of the person responsible.

100% agree with this. I mean if there's no baby involved, then maybe just maybe a relationship can recover if the man has an affair. And it does seem a little bit like stirring and trouble making for a 'mistress' to tell the wife if a man has decided to end the affair. (Though, as has been said, why should he carry on like nothing has happened, when the 'mistress' is left to pick up the pieces when he ditches her?)

But if a baby is involved then absolutely yes. The wife needs to know. Like fuck would I be staying with my DH if he had a baby with another woman. That's a massive dealbreaker. I can't imagine why any woman would stay with her husband if he had a baby with another woman. I would WANT to know.

I do find it a bit strange that the OP is desperate to see the 'fall out' on facebook though. And unless she is on this man's wife's 'friends list' then she would very likely not see anything anyway.

@Nowayjose0 As many posters have said, please just look after yourself and your baby, and don't worry about this man taking your baby. It won't happen. He has no automatic right!

I haven't demanded anything from her my message to her was factual and I removed emotion. I offered any further info if she required it. I tried very hard to do it properly.

Op there have been some disgraceful posts to you here. I'm embarrassed for mnetters.

But this is always the way on here.

There's always this contingent.

There is frankly something wrong with women who'd rather not know about their partner's infidelities. Sad cases.

Ignore them and just look at the posts of the people trying to help you with the circumstances this specimen of a "man" has put you in.

Because you aren't going to be there to see her through it and support her. Why would you? You don't know her and obviously your position makes it impossible anyway.

But that's one reason why I don't agree with the gung ho "always tell, it's always right and the wife is just wrong if she doesn't appreciate it" approach. Some people don't want to be told, more than MN would have you believe, and if you tell someone without knowing them well enough to be sure it's what they would want, then you may find they don't thank you. She did, which was polite, but as she's blocked you she clearly doesn't want to hear any more.

It's done now, so if all you wanted was for her to have the facts, well, she's got them so there's nothing more to do or expect on that front. Put it behind you and start making decisions for you and your child and nothing else.

then you may find they don't thank you.

And what?

She did her duty. She did what was right.

At all but especially given there's a child involved in this.

She's not responsible for other women's masochism.

But that's one reason why I don't agree with the gung ho "

Why would that be a reason?. ... It's not the unknowing affair partner, who's also been betrayed and abused and mistreated, role to support the main partner!

That's her family and friend's role.

It’s none of your business. Worry about your own situation, their marriage is nothing to do with you.

Ultimately though an OW telling the wife she’s expecting her husband’s baby is unlikely to be seen as a victim by the wife.

If a woman came and told me that she had been in a relationship with my partner for two years and was expecting his baby I would absolutely rip him a new one. but I would assume that she knew he was married and had just told me she didn’t to save face. And I would assume that she had told me to force the end of the marriage so they could be together. And tbh OP’s insistence she should dump him, and her bitterness that the woman is still showing as being with him on FB does point to that.

If you are in the US, then in some states the presumption is 50/50. I have no idea if he or his wife (should she stay with him) would want this, but this is just something to be aware of.

@CubaLibre23 , nobody has to justify their life choices and priorities to you. You wouldn't stay with a cheater, that's fine. But it's too much to expect that everyone else in the world do the same no matter what the circumstances, and thank you for decisions you made for them without knowing them or else be Wrong and Lesser. Even if they are Wrong and Lesser, that's up to them. They don't have to live the way you want them to.

I told you people always get vitriolic and angry about this. It's the truth, though. In the real world, a lot of people would not want a stranger telling them their husbands are cheating and would rather you didn't do it. Rage at it being Wrong, it's true. Some people would want it, some people wouldn't, so if you don't know the person well enough to be sure, you're taking a risk. And they are not obliged to thank you if they think you're a busybody who should have left them alone.

I think there is another pretty serious matter that gets ignored in that situation. Our sexual health. If she doesn't know and anything like that happens that can have serious ramifications for her. It could of had serious ramifications for me. That alone is worth informing someone. Like I have said previously I don't think she would have thanked me if she didn't value the information. I'm starting to think you are projecting here.

Good thing I had text messages proving I didn't know then. She can think that if it makes her feel better just like you can if it ever happens to you.

For what it's worth, I think you're probably right, it may well be best for you and your baby to avoid the stress associated with trying to deal with this man. I understand it's a very difficult decision for you to make, particularly when taking your child's need for a present father into account, but judging by this man's behaviour so far, it sounds as if he is likely not to be a good parent, more concerned with taking revenge on you than with his child's welfare. If you can afford it, I think it would be better for you not to go for maintenance, at least at the moment and till after you are properly settled.

"Projecting" is a term used so incorrectly so often that it's actually meaningless on here now. I've never cheated so this isn't about me. It's about what I've observed in life, how people work and what our true motivations are. If you really only wanted the wife to have her information then you wouldn't be upset now for not having "closure". It was supposed to be about her, wasn't it?

Same goes with the sexual health argument, to be honest. As with this, it's usually a fig leaf for the true motivations for telling (which does generally seem to be to punish a cheater) and it isn't your responsibility to guard her health any more than her marriage. How come it's taken this long to think of it if it was such a key reason?

But as before...it's done. So no point thinking further about it. You wanted her to have the facts, she's got them, and what she does with them isn't your concern. You will find your closure by building the best life possible for your family.