what's the worst affair story you've heard of where the marriage recovered?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The children of marriage ALWAYS come first to the wife. As they should.

Wrong. You are thinking like the wicked stepmother. No wonder kids hate their stepparents if they think like you.

Expecting a second wife to be kind and welcoming to a child from the first marriage is very different from expecting a wife to be kind and welcoming to a child her husband fathered in infidelity while married to her.

The thing about you, angry PP, is that you aren't just saying that the ability to forgive this would be beyond you. I would get that. Understand it. It's reasonable, this would be a really hard thing to get over. And if you are choosing between treating an innocent child like dirt or not ever talking to them then certainly pick the latter. But you also seem viscerally against the idea that there could be women out there who got just as angry at the betrayal, but chose a different path to try to be the most beneficial to the children.

Not everyone is like you. That's ok. I certainly have my own flaws and weaknesses, but I don't act like anyone else strong enough to overcome those weaknesses is full of it.

I don't think you understand how this whole line of argument came about. Perhaps you jumped into this discussion in the middle of it. How it came about was that someone opined that the wife (in the Thailand example) was a saint who chose kindness and decided to give this child a better life. It is this characterization that caused my objection. What I said - and I'm happy to restate this - is that no woman, in this case, would be motivated "solely" by the desire to give a child of infidelity a better life. My theory - and it's all theory - is that the wife did this primarily for the good of the marriage and her original family. She must have decided that her marriage and family had the greatest possible chances of survival and stability if the husband's love child was integrated into the family. THAT was her motivation. To preserve the family. That this decision happened to have the effect of kindness toward the child is immaterial. It wasn't kindness that drove her. It was her decision that her family would be best of with this course of action. If she thought that her family had the best chances of survival and success with leaving the child behind, she would have done just that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How do you "manage" to keep the truth of that child's parentage from your children? You also forget that you don't own that information. Tons of other people would know. That you think this can be kept from your children forever tells me you are trying to engineer reality to your liking.

But thanks for admitting, finally, that fathering children outside of marriage does poison the relationship with the children of marriage.

In 1970s Ohio, I grew up with 2 sisters in the same class who looked nothing alike. The second sister was his mistresses and the first was his wife's. The girls were good friends and acted like sisters. The wife was raising both. Catholic family by the way. I cannot understand why, because you cannot conceive of doing that gesture, that you believe that it either doesnt happen or could never work. That was late 60s/70s when we knew them. Get a grip, much less stigma now than then. I would do it. It's my kids sibling. What does it do to my kid to kick their sibling to the curb? You just must have a maternal instinct. If not, then no you would never do it.

[Anonymous]

This thread had inspired me to watch Anna Karenina again.

[Anonymous]

I heard n the news that a man had an affair with a woman, and she had his twins. He refused to acknowledge them, and refused to pay support. This was before DNA tests. Then his son by his wife got leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant. That child supposedly had no siblings and neither parent was a good match. That's when the father came out and admitted to having the other kids. He tried to force the mother of the twins to allow testing for a bone marrow transplant. He even too, her to court. The judge said that because he did not have custody, he couldn't force the mother to submit the children to blood testing or even the bone marrow donation. However, he had to pay child support.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This happened to my Mom's friend. She wasn't too close to her but was good friends with her friends.

This woman, her husband and teenaged daughter moved somewhere in SE Asia, maybe Thailand. After a few years, they move back to DC and they've 'adopted' a baby. Everyone thought it was weird to suddenly adopt when you have a teenager. The rumor mill was it was the daughter's baby (she would have been 12-13 when the baby was born).

But as it turns out, it was the DH's with his Thai mistress. The DW adopted it and raised it as her own. Last I heard she and DH were still together.

Was this in Bethesda? I heard of a similar family with an adopted Asian child. Father worked overseas then all of a sudden they had this kid....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I heard n the news that a man had an affair with a woman, and she had his twins. He refused to acknowledge them, and refused to pay support. This was before DNA tests. Then his son by his wife got leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant. That child supposedly had no siblings and neither parent was a good match. That's when the father came out and admitted to having the other kids. He tried to force the mother of the twins to allow testing for a bone marrow transplant. He even too, her to court. The judge said that because he did not have custody, he couldn't force the mother to submit the children to blood testing or even the bone marrow donation. However, he had to pay child support.

That sounds like an urban legend. You can't force anyone to donate bone marrow, not even proven relatives. "I don't wanna" is reason enough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you "manage" to keep the truth of that child's parentage from your children? You also forget that you don't own that information. Tons of other people would know. That you think this can be kept from your children forever tells me you are trying to engineer reality to your liking.

But thanks for admitting, finally, that fathering children outside of marriage does poison the relationship with the children of marriage.

In 1970s Ohio, I grew up with 2 sisters in the same class who looked nothing alike. The second sister was his mistresses and the first was his wife's. The girls were good friends and acted like sisters. The wife was raising both. Catholic family by the way. I cannot understand why, because you cannot conceive of doing that gesture, that you believe that it either doesnt happen or could never work. That was late 60s/70s when we knew them. Get a grip, much less stigma now than then. I would do it. It's my kids sibling. What does it do to my kid to kick their sibling to the curb? You just must have a maternal instinct. If not, then no you would never do it.

I didn't say it doesn't happen or could never work. I said women do this because they feel this way their family/marriage has the most chance of surviving, not out of the pure kindness toward a mistress' child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
There's also the possibility they are friends and care for each other. Really.

Thanks for this. I actually have thought for a long time that Trumps have a tolerably happy marriage based on explicit understanding of each other. I doubt he asks all that much of her, and she certainly doesn't ask much of him. I also think that as long as you don't bother him and do the things he cares about the way he likes (and god knows, there's enough staff around to make that possible), life with Trump is not all that bad. He's not around all that much.

It actually seems like he is. Doesn't he usually sleep in his own bed?

Melania Trump was asked by reporters when she got engaged to DT if she was with him for his money. She replied, "Of course I am. Just like he is with me for my beauty." I thought that was a fantastic answer.

It is a marriage that gives both of them what they want. Yes, it could be they are friends or lovers who care deeply for each other - who knows. DT has actually come through for her family in a big way, and she has played the role he wants her to play in the marriage. This marriage works for them.

[Anonymous]

Trump and Melania both get what they want from their marriage. I think the same goes for Hillary and Bill. I think that the marriage of Bill and Hillary has been under more scrutiny because they are same age group, never been divorced etc, college sweetheart, partners in politics etc. It looks more like the marriage of average folks where there is much more of a parternership, and we judge them accordingly. Trump and Melania's marriage is so out of the ordinary realm (nude young model, 30 years age difference, billionaire , twice married, adulterer had mistress who got pregnant etc), that it is beyond judgement and speculation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The children of marriage ALWAYS come first to the wife. As they should.

Wrong. You are thinking like the wicked stepmother. No wonder kids hate their stepparents if they think like you.

Expecting a second wife to be kind and welcoming to a child from the first marriage is very different from expecting a wife to be kind and welcoming to a child her husband fathered in infidelity while married to her.

The thing about you, angry PP, is that you aren't just saying that the ability to forgive this would be beyond you. I would get that. Understand it. It's reasonable, this would be a really hard thing to get over. And if you are choosing between treating an innocent child like dirt or not ever talking to them then certainly pick the latter. But you also seem viscerally against the idea that there could be women out there who got just as angry at the betrayal, but chose a different path to try to be the most beneficial to the children.

Not everyone is like you. That's ok. I certainly have my own flaws and weaknesses, but I don't act like anyone else strong enough to overcome those weaknesses is full of it.

I don't think you understand how this whole line of argument came about. Perhaps you jumped into this discussion in the middle of it. How it came about was that someone opined that the wife (in the Thailand example) was a saint who chose kindness and decided to give this child a better life. It is this characterization that caused my objection. What I said - and I'm happy to restate this - is that no woman, in this case, would be motivated "solely" by the desire to give a child of infidelity a better life. My theory - and it's all theory - is that the wife did this primarily for the good of the marriage and her original family. She must have decided that her marriage and family had the greatest possible chances of survival and stability if the husband's love child was integrated into the family. THAT was her motivation. To preserve the family. That this decision happened to have the effect of kindness toward the child is immaterial. It wasn't kindness that drove her. It was her decision that her family would be best of with this course of action. If she thought that her family had the best chances of survival and success with leaving the child behind, she would have done just that.

I read the whole thread before responding. I understood just fine.

Personally I don't believe anyone does anything for purely altruistic reasons because it's virtually impossible to separate consequences from actions and for to the way humans think about choices, unless someone managed to do something completely against their own self interests that served literally no conceivable possible positive it couldn't be defined as pure altruism. And at the end of the day even a soldier throwing themselves on a grenade to save their friends could theoretically be motivated by glory/hero status.

That said, I do think sometimes people do things that are very hard for them, hard but tolerable, to improve the lives of their loved ones.

IMO a woman who finds out her husband fathered another child is in a pickle. But in the Thai scenario, assuming the Thai mother completely released any claim to the child, man and wife had two choices. Put the child up for adoption or take it in. Assuming they could handpick a good family that would be much better for the wife than taking the child in.

Assuming the Thai mother wanted contact with the child it becomes send child support to Thailand knowing the child is being cared for and looking the other way when the husband goes and visits or taking the child in.

In both of these scenarios taking the child in and staying in the marriage feels like the most difficult choice. So while I'm not going to say your theory is implausible, it is in my opinion less likely. Regardless, it takes strength and a good person to take the child in and commit to treating it with love and care. Your desire to strip this woman you don't know of any praise for her good act is kind of bizarre.

[Anonymous]

^ Last 2 sentences make good sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What do Do with a Child of the Affair
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi8122_affairchild.html

WTF is this bullsh#$????????????????????? This website literally recommends actively trying to withhold a child from a biological father!!!! This website is nuts. The health of the marriage cannot be the ONLY consideration when making life choices. Holy hell!

The owner of this website is a marriage counselor. His concern is the health of the marriage and nothing else. It's not beyond the pale for him to say, with the benefit of having seen thousands of couples in this situation (and therefore a much greater statistical sample), that MARRIAGE has the greatest chance of survival if there are no third parties around it. I think he acknowledges that this is a difficult situation with no good choices. He speaks for the marriage, so he recommends what's best for the marriage. Not for everyone else.

You got cheated on hard, huh? Damn, Gina.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
IMO a woman who finds out her husband fathered another child is in a pickle. But in the Thai scenario, assuming the Thai mother completely released any claim to the child, man and wife had two choices. Put the child up for adoption or take it in. Assuming they could handpick a good family that would be much better for the wife than taking the child in.

Assuming the Thai mother wanted contact with the child it becomes send child support to Thailand knowing the child is being cared for and looking the other way when the husband goes and visits or taking the child in.

In both of these scenarios taking the child in and staying in the marriage feels like the most difficult choice. So while I'm not going to say your theory is implausible, it is in my opinion less likely. Regardless, it takes strength and a good person to take the child in and commit to treating it with love and care. Your desire to strip this woman you don't know of any praise for her good act is kind of bizarre.

That's a ton of assumptions you made to support your argument (and remember, this all is just idle theorizing, no one really knows what went down).

1) That the Thai mother released the claims to the child without being asked. She may have very well been asked by the father to waive her rights. Then the adoption option goes away, and it's not like you can handpick a good family for the child that isn't even yours.

2) That the husband would have sent child support and gone to visit.

Perhaps the wife reasoned - so my husband is a weak, irresponsible man but he's a father of my child and I invested years of my life and economic assets into this partnership, and it would be painful to dissolve plus there are few chances for a do-over. Now he has this mistress and a baby that he appears to be interested in. Suppose I make him leave them and go back to the US. He will always wonder about them, perhaps send money secretly, talk to them behind my back, entertain romantic fantasies about what could have been, be wrecked by guilt and whatnot. They will always be a pebble in my shoe, a time bomb, because the child will grow up and who knows what they will think of then. How do I neutralize this threat? Much better, although clearly one out of two shitty options, is to keep this closer to home and under my control. If the mother agrees, let's get the baby, get the mother out of the picture, since it's the mother who is a real threat and not a baby. The baby will grow up in our house. I will be its mother, for all practical purposes. There is no need to wonder about what if, open yourself up for guilt, or be reproached that "you made me abandon my babeeeeee!" The mother is out of our life forever. The child is right here. It sucks in its own way but at least it's under control. And no money is going out of the house that I don't know about. The baby is cute, I can learn to love it with time.

[Anonymous]

Wow lol. We are both making assumptions about a hypothetical situation to bolster our respective arguments, I'll give you that.

But your assumptions paint a pretty grim picture of marriage and relationships!

I think I'll keep my rose colored glasses on and retain my faith in humanity!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
IMO a woman who finds out her husband fathered another child is in a pickle. But in the Thai scenario, assuming the Thai mother completely released any claim to the child, man and wife had two choices. Put the child up for adoption or take it in. Assuming they could handpick a good family that would be much better for the wife than taking the child in.

Assuming the Thai mother wanted contact with the child it becomes send child support to Thailand knowing the child is being cared for and looking the other way when the husband goes and visits or taking the child in.

In both of these scenarios taking the child in and staying in the marriage feels like the most difficult choice. So while I'm not going to say your theory is implausible, it is in my opinion less likely. Regardless, it takes strength and a good person to take the child in and commit to treating it with love and care. Your desire to strip this woman you don't know of any praise for her good act is kind of bizarre.

That's a ton of assumptions you made to support your argument (and remember, this all is just idle theorizing, no one really knows what went down).

1) That the Thai mother released the claims to the child without being asked. She may have very well been asked by the father to waive her rights. Then the adoption option goes away, and it's not like you can handpick a good family for the child that isn't even yours.

2) That the husband would have sent child support and gone to visit.

Perhaps the wife reasoned - so my husband is a weak, irresponsible man but he's a father of my child and I invested years of my life and economic assets into this partnership, and it would be painful to dissolve plus there are few chances for a do-over. Now he has this mistress and a baby that he appears to be interested in. Suppose I make him leave them and go back to the US. He will always wonder about them, perhaps send money secretly, talk to them behind my back, entertain romantic fantasies about what could have been, be wrecked by guilt and whatnot. They will always be a pebble in my shoe, a time bomb, because the child will grow up and who knows what they will think of then. How do I neutralize this threat? Much better, although clearly one out of two shitty options, is to keep this closer to home and under my control. If the mother agrees, let's get the baby, get the mother out of the picture, since it's the mother who is a real threat and not a baby. The baby will grow up in our house. I will be its mother, for all practical purposes. There is no need to wonder about what if, open yourself up for guilt, or be reproached that "you made me abandon my babeeeeee!" The mother is out of our life forever. The child is right here. It sucks in its own way but at least it's under control. And no money is going out of the house that I don't know about. The baby is cute, I can learn to love it with time.

My uncle's wife found out that he had fathered a child through an affair, and she took his daughter in. She was already around 8 when his wife found out. This is in a different country, and my uncle and his wife were already raising other relatives along with 3 biological children(one of my aunts had died and they had taken in 2 of her children; they also raised his wife's younger sister).

When my family thanked her for being so kind, she responded that it was not a big deal. She added that if she could do it for nieces and nephew, why not for her husband's daughter?
The other woman was much poorer and not educated, and my uncle's wife felt that the child will have a better chance at a good education and life if she grew up in a stable home.

I can comfortably say that she did this for the girl. There was no way my uncle was leaving his wife to be with the other woman. He did not suggest that his wife take in his child. He hid the child from her and immediately she found out about it, she asked for the child to come live with her. The child's mother agreed.