A big secret

[contrafibularities]

Someone I know has discovered her husband has a child from before they were married, he has been paying maintenance for all the time they have been together and has not told her a thing. They already have children. WWYD ?

'it might not be his anyway' and he's been paying maintenance all these years?
I would hope he'd get a paternity test first of all and then take it from there...

I would go mental, purely on the lying front. It would also make me rethink what kind of man I had married. I have a low opinion of men who have DCs but then ignore them.

thanks all, don't want to go into it too much for obvious privacy reasons. There is more to it, but I think she is being v brave, although is devastated, and I will support her all the way. am upset myself as I consider him a close friend, he has lied (or omitted the truth - same thing) from me as well

shitemum - exactly. My friend is pushing him to get a test.

TheCracFox perhaps he really wasn't welcome. If you don't have the opportunity to have a relationship with a child then as a man you don't have anything.

Sorry but blood means nothing it time & love that makes someone a parent. If a man isn't ever involved then he's not going to have much in the way of feelings towards a child.

We don't know the circumstances so I wouldn't judge that he was being a complete b*stard just yet.

I don't think that ending the relationship would be ott.

They've had money worries and yet he's been paying maintenance to this other woman and hasn't told his dw. This isn't just a matter of it not having come up, he's been deceiving his wife every month that he's been paying this other woman and allowing her to believe they're broke.

How did she find out?

"he has lied (or omitted the truth - same thing) from me as well." Tbh, I think you have to separate these two issues. He has no obligation to you, he is a close friend but nothing more. I imagine lots of close friends have secrets from one another and no-one has the right to expect their friends to tell them everything.

He does however have an obligation towards his dw. And while I can see that if he had no contact with the child he might have omitted to tell her, considering he is paying for this child, I would question just how honest a relationship they had anyway, given that this money must be going out of the bank and she was oblivious. Where does he say his wages have been going every month if they're having financial problems?

I'm sure I would go mental as well but it would be a shame to rush into big decisions like divorce without really getting to the bottom of it.

i would hate the idea that when i was pregnant with my first child and thought this was a hugely important first for him too.... that maybe actually it wasnt..... and i would be fecking furious if his family had all decided it was best to keep this from me..... and even more furious that he had unilaterally decided that MY dcs shouldnt have any knowlege of or relationship with their half sibling...... tosser.

On some levels I do think that it's different for men though. He could have got the other woman pregnant during a one night stand and as he would not have been around for the pregnancy etc there would be no bond with the child, so I can sort of see how a man might end up fathering a child and not actually having anything to do with it iyswim. I suppose that in his defence he has taken financial responsibility for it at least, and if at the time he didn't feel he could be a father perhaps it is better that he had no involvement with the child rather than being an unreliable father.

For me it wouldn't be so much his lack of involvement as the fact he hadn't told me, and had been giving money away to this woman every month while we were struggling to make ends meet. It is the deception imo. If he could withhold something as big as a child, what else might he be lying about?

wannaBe you have hit the nail on the head with how my friend is feeling. the child was a result of a 'casual' relationship, it is not that so much, but the deceit.

oh if it was casual then it's fine to have no relationship with your child.... i'm sure the child will understand..... and his dcs with his wife when they realise they have a half sibling who was "secret"... tosser.

If the child was from a past relationship, I can't see the issue being a big one. The wife met the man and they fell in love with each other. Perhaps at the start they agreed that the past is the past.

The man is possible embarrassed about having the first child or it might be that he and the mother of the "unknown" child agreed to keep a lid on the child's existence. The agreement predates the marriage.

The now wife obviously found out via another person, someone other than her husband. The husband obviously wants the hidden child to stay hidden because it might cause problems and he was right.

The man is paying for the child. He might accept that the child is his but not want to complicate the child's life who might have another man who the child thinks of as his dad. Adding the real father into the child's life is going to cause confusion, possibly a load of negative emotions. Perhaps now is not the right time.

Bottom line. The wife and husband are together for the hard and easy times, good and bad. The past before they were married is in the past. The past shouldn't be affecting the current marriage because it wasn't a problem at the time of being married.

If the wife feels that she is living a life of deception then perhaps she might quietly ask about the other child and get a few answers.

Could it be that the wife is feeling a bit insecure (all of a sudden) thinking that another woman (and child) might upset her ideal family?...so she wants to run away, just in case it happens.

The past is the past.

no, I'm not saying that it's ok to not have a relationship with the child conceived from a casual relationship. What I'm saying is that I can see how a man might not feel the same about a child from a casual relationship/one night stand as the woman would.

And let's be totally honest here - if a woman decides she doesn't want a child she can have a termination/have the baby adopted, but a man doesn't have that option. If he decides he doesn't want a child it's still up to the woman to make the decision about the child's future, so it would be logical to think that a man who did not want to become a father might choose not to have anything to do with the child, in the same way as a mother may have a termination/give the baby up for adoption.

I would be mightily pissed of by the deceit but at the end of the day as far as the money issue is concerned he's done the right thing.

Is it possible that the other woman doesn't want him to have a relationship with the child and never has, but has got the CSA to get involved so that her child at least gets te financial support he/she needs?

I think splitting up with him just because of this would be a bit of an over-reaction unless there are other reasons for her wanting to leave and she's using this as the catalyst.

My advice would be for her to talk to him about how betrayed she feels bbut not to make a big issue out of the money part of it as he's done the right thing in paying for his child's upkeep even if he was too afraid to let her know about it.