Partners family won’t accept me

[FlowerKL]

I met my partner at work last year. Our situation is slightly complicated in that he was married and his wife was pregnant. They ended up splitting up before the baby was born and we left things for a couple of months and then started seeing each other regularly once the baby was born.

The problem now is his family won’t accept me. He’s recently moved in with me and my son, but his parents won’t have anything to do with me and I’m not welcome.

I know the timing of us getting together is bad, I feel bad about it but we fell in love and they are now divorced.
I don’t know how to manage the situation, he was very close to his family. He is happy to support me and stay together, even if it means losing his family in the meantime. Will things settle over time? Is there anything that I can do to try to make amends?

Context is everything. Please don’t accuse me of making things up. It’s a forum and people will interpret what the OP writes.

Said as if you didn’t literally just make something up.

People are ‘interpreting’ to suit their own narrative, that is entirely one that they want to be true, regardless of what OP has actually said. People may not believe OP, but in truth they have no idea what did or didn’t happen, yet are speaking as if they do.

@CrochetForLife

' maggot shit ' I like it !!!

Get this on here all the time. People make up their own version in their head then post as though it were fact.
Annoys me.

Yes!!!!

Yeah you went there with a married man - with a pregnant wife - and this is the consequence. You say "nothing happened" but it did - just because you didn't sleep together doesn't mean you weren't having an emotional affair, that you didn't cross lines, that you did not behave in ways that were inappropriate with a married man.

In my experience of seeing it with others, no it quite often doesn't get better, even many years later.

And now he's living with someone else's kid and not getting to see his own. Hmm, would you be happy with that long term?

I wouldn't accept you either. What a shit thing to do to a woman at the most vulnerable time of her life. She will forever connect having her child while you were setting your sights on her husband. Absolutely grim.

I think it is going to be a matter of time and patience… I’m not going to join in with the negative attitude towards you of other posters as each situation is individual but you are just going to have to ride it out

Because you should have known better?

Because you don't 'get' it?

Do you not see what the two of you have done?

You’re getting a lot of hate, OP. I don’t think either you or your DP are necessarily bad people. Ultimately, your DP didn’t want to be with his wife any more - so he left her. People are entitled to end relationships they aren’t happy in, and it’s the right thing to do for both parties. Having a romantic relationship with somebody else prior to breaking up isn’t a good thing to do, whether or not it was physical, and presumably you do both feel ashamed about that. But I understand that if you’re working closely with someone, and you get to know them well, if there is a compatibility there it’s going to be hard to repress those feelings. Maybe it spurred the breakup of his marriage, but I’m not sure that staying in a relationship you don’t want to be in is a good solution either.

The important thing now is that he pays his fair share of childcare, and does his best to be a good father. It sounds as though he’s doing that.

As for his family, there’s probably not a lot you can do to make them like you. Hopefully, in time, if your relationship stays strong, they’ll see you’re a good match and that your DP didn’t just end his marriage on a whim. They may start coming round eventually.

How can you trust a mam that can leave a women pregnant with his baby? It won't last- family probably know that. Do the honourable thing dump him and let him slither back to the mother of his child.

How you get them is how you lose them.
just saying..

You are not in control of what his family thinks of you or when or if they ever want anything to do with you.

The best thing to do now is accept that they hate you for the part you played in this and not try to force yourself into their lives.

They don't have to ever like you.
They don't have to ever want you in their lives.

If you ever want them to soften towards you then don't make demands of them and don't try to make yourself any sort of victim.

Just wait.

It takes as long as it takes.

You've got the man you love, right?

His family never accepting you may have to be the price you pay for this true love.

You'll have to be happy without them.

One day you’ll know how his pregnant wife felt, I promise you that. You only left things a while so you didn’t get backlash but unfortunately for you, people aren’t that stupid. His ex wife is better off without him and his family are right to be ashamed of him.

To do this to a pregnant woman is absolutely disgusting. Don't think ever one of you have morals and I doubt your relationship will last.

I'm glad his family has morals

Op hasn’t ’done’ anything beyond be attracted to a man, and pursue a relationship with him when he became single.

He, and adult with agency, chose to leave his wife. It wasn’t and isn’t on OP to police his relationship with his wife/ex, and OP dumping him isn’t going to make him go back to her. He divorced her pretty quickly, after all, which doesn’t suggest a man trying to keep his options open. It’s amazing the amount of control people think OP has over a grown man though.

OP, if you’re still reading - it may very well be that his family don’t hate you at all, given that they don’t even know you. Refusing to meet you may because they’re angry at him, and are denying him what he wants, which is for them to meet you.

If one of my sons started up a relationship at work, then left his pregnant wife, then went full on Tonto with the OW, I wouldn’t just not accept her, I’d rip my son a new one.

No son of mine is going to do that to his wife and unborn baby and then think my DH and I are going to play happy families with him and his wrecking ball.

I’d cut him off, and I’d support my DGC with everything I had in me.

Your scum partner is a cad, a rotter and a coward. What kind of a man leaves his own blood, a new born, to play happy families with another’s child?

Good luck. Neither of you deserve happiness after your actions to that tiny baby.

Honestly, as a mother, how can you look yourself in the eye in the mirror, knowing what damage you’ve done to that baby and new mum?

Why would you get involved with somebody who had a pregnant wife at the very least he was having sex with her and happy with her nine months previous to her having baby

he hasnt been apart long enough for him to consider a real relationship with you. You are a rebound that he just wants to use for somewhere to live and sex

why would you want a man who is happy to leave his pregnant wife anyway , why would you want a man with a character like that?
he should be concentrating on supporting her, and the baby, regardless of whether he is in a relationship with her or not -not entertaining you

It’s likely she has feelings for him and vice versa, why would you even want to take on all of that baggage ? Does he see the baby?
just sounds like a whole leap of drama with the ex-wife and the baby and child contact issues in future
I’ve seen it happen . As for his family you both have created a situation where a child is now living in a broken home, away from the father
he’s now going to have to beg contact from her and pay a shed load of maintenance
no wonder they are pissed
what is he contributing to your household? I very much doubt he’ll be able to contribute much. I hope she takes him for what he’s worth.
he could end up leaving you, and even getting back with her, who knows , that can happen in emotional situations like this, especially where family are involved
I would be wary

I noticed another post where you said the EX hasn’t got anything to do with his family anymore
She’s probably cut them off because of what he did with you , blamed them because that’s their son
so because of your stupid relationship , they now can’t see their grandchild
what are you expecting all of us to say to you? They are not going to come round.

I think you may have issues with your self-esteem as to why you would accept a man like that- you need to set your standards higher

So in the space of one year
You met a married man
Had an affair with the married man
Man has left pregnant wife for you
Man & wife have divorced
Man has moved in with you and your child

And you can't understand why his family have distanced themselves from you?

Well it sounds like you deserve each other.

I feel sorry for the ex wife, who I bet you both portray as "psycho" and "demanding all his money"

Interesting how you diminished destroying a marriage and family, and causing a child to grow up in a broken home, to “I know the timing of us getting together is bad”. I cannot fathom the devastation you jointly put his wife through and then the entitlement to complain that his family treat you with the disdain you deserve.

In fairness, while you may be right, the OP has been extremely cagey about what actually happened after they’d met at work, and before her now-partner left his pregnant wife.

She says ‘nothing happened’ until after he’d left his wife and the baby had been born, but it’s not clear what that means, exactly. No sex? No kissing? No telling one another they were attracted? No explicit or implicit signals or promises that, if he were single, she’d be up for a relationship?

It’s actually an interesting question, given how often people say about affairs on here ‘Ok, you’ve fallen out of love with your spouse, and had your head turned by someone else, but at last have the decency to leave him or her before you start a new relationship’ — this, it seems, if we believe the OP, is exactly what this man did. He didn’t cheat, he ended his marriage while expecting a baby with his ex-wife, and only after they’d separated, started a new relationship.

Would this have been OK if not for the pregnancy? Given the pregnancy, should he have stayed with his wife for some extended period after the birth? How long? How culpable is the OP if she didn’t have sex with a married man, just told him that if he were single, she’d be interested? We’re perhaps more used to the narrative of the married man who tells his affair partner he’s going to leave and never does. This one did.

I say this in full sympathy for his ex-wife, who was left in an appalling position.

If his family have any relationship at all, OP, it will be with him, not you. Regardless of whether you were the OW or not, the timing is so bad that you are unlikely to ever be accepted. You say yourself that you did a bad thing so I don't know if you've changed your scenario to engender more positive posts but I doubt anybody's buying that.

If you're determined to stay with this man then carry on but as far as his family is concerned you're out so leave them alone, there is not likely to be any circumstance that you'll be acceptable to them.

Why you're so delighted to be with a man who treated his wife the way he did is a mystery to me. This is likely to be your fate also.

I wouldn’t be impressed with my son if he left his pregnant wife and got together within a couple of months with someone new either.