Reply to DH has affair & baby

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

Reply to "DH has affair & baby - did you stay? "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]These stories are really sad. My friend's father had a secret love child. His mother found out when my friend was in middle school. His mother did not divorce his father because he was very wealthy and she did not want to give up the lifestyle. His parents are still married. My friend occassionally sees his half sister socially since they are now adults.

However my friend is pretty f&#ked emotionally. He is a very unhappy guy with a lot of insecurities. He says it goes back to what his fathet did.[/quote]

I don't know anyone in this situation but why would it impact the children of the intact family?  Did the father bring the other child around and that caused issues?[/quote]
Of course it affects children of the intact family.  Any time and resources the father spends on the love child is taken from the intact family, and has to be compensated somehow, typically by the cheated-on spouse.  You can assume the love child and children of the marriage are in contact, and when they grow up and put two and two together, it can lead to all kinds of emotional issues. For the children of the marriage, it's about losing confidence in their father. For the love child, it's about insecurities and unmet emotional needs because daddy always goes away to his real family and no one wants me. [/quote]

Gotcha.  I was assuming a situation where the father was not involved with the love child.[/quote]

NP. I'm really surprised that you can't see how this would affect the kids of the "intact" family even if the father had no contact whatsoever thereafter with the OW or "love child" (even forgetting about the siphoned money/resources which in most families would be a BIG deal).

A legit child in this situation would likely grow up knowing that while other fathers were playing football with his kids at the park, etc etc, his father was out betraying his mother and abandoning his family to get sexual pleasure from some random woman/women, and lying to everyone in the process to get it. And also being totally reckless about it - not caring about the physical health of his mother in terms of STDs etc or the financial health of the family. I can see how it would make a child feel unworthy, a bit the same as kids of alcoholics - daddy is at the bar all night instead of being home with his family, maybe driving home drunk despite whatever bad stuff will happen, etc.

Anyway, best wishes, OP. Very tough position. FWIW, I couldn't stay...[/quote]

On the second paragraph, I just assumed it's something that wouldn't be discussed and the intact family would just move on.  Admittedly, I'm probably thinking of an affair in a limited set of circumstances that mirrors where I happen to be in life (i.e. kids are too little to remember if dad was out of the house) and I'm also assuming it wasn't a long-term affair.  I'm also assuming that biomom eventually gets married and the new husband adopts the child although like I said before I don't know anyone in this type of situation so I don't know how often that actually happens.  From the few stories I've read on other forums most affair children with uninvolved bio-dads aren't that interested in forming a relationship with them when they are adults so I also assumed that the affair child would grow up and do their own thing.  I realize that's a ton of assumptions though so it seems like it would be a facts and circumstances kind of thing.

The resources point is a fair comment.  Again, I only know how we spend money with what we make and it's probably a different financial picture for people with lower incomes.  For us, the money would just come out of what we save and I would just work for another few years to make up the shortfall.  Then again, maybe the dad can make a few lifestyle adjustments (keep his car longer, no expensive hobbies, etc.) to make up for some of the unavailable resources going to child support.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics