Anonymous wrote:Now go ask your husband if he can love the child you conceived in an affair with another man if this man insists on staying in touch with his child and in your lives just as your husband and you get on with rebuilding your marriage. He visits. He calls and texts you. He asks you questions about the child. He comes to her graduations, birthdays, recitals - right there next to your husband as he seethes and imagines you two between the sheets.

You say you can love your husband's love child? Of course you can, because you imagine that her mother has just disappeared somewhere ten time zones away and is never coming back, so you get to pretend you are the real mother. Now imagine that instead of Thailand, her mother lives, say, a ten-minute drive away. The child lives with her and your husband visits - because he's a decent person, isn't he. He pays child support (which means your child cannot take that horse-riding lesson after all). He sees the mother regularly because there's no way around it. The mother texts and calls all the time, about the child, about the money, about anything at all, really. Your husband responds, because really, how can he not? The child wonders, aloud, why you live in a nice house while her mother lives in a small apartment. The child wonders, aloud, why she gets to be with her dad some of the time, and your kids, all of the time. The child asks you why her mom is sad all the time. Your kids are watching and wondering.

But I'm sure you still love her. Because you don't understand, still, what this conversation is about. The objection has never been to the child. The objection is to the continued contact with the other man or woman, which is damn difficult to avoid when their a child involved. This is why the recommended solutions for the survival of marriage center around excising the affair partner from your life, whether that means complete integration of the love child into the family (and exclusion of the birth father), or complete separation from the mother and child. Unless, of course, the mother very considerately signs off all her rights and vanishes into the sunset, leaving you to get on with life. You know not all APs are that accommodating.

I understand that it is very complicated. But to me, there are only two choices: I either stay or I leave. If I choose to stay, I choose all the drama that comes with taking care of the child and dealing with the crazy/not so crazy AP.
If I do not think my husband is worth that drama after his cheating, I will go. There is no third option for me.

The marriage center can go to hell if I do not think my husband is worth the mess he created by cheating.

Anonymous wrote:I love all of the replies of what you would do in this situation. I would have responded the same way a few years ago, until it happened to me.

I am divorcing, my kids know about the OC and want nothing to do with him. They may change their minds when they are older but that will be their father's relationship to facilitate.

No one wins in this situation.

Hugs to you. I'm very sorry.

How old are your kids?

Now go ask your husband if he can love the child you conceived in an affair with another man if this man insists on staying in touch with his child and in your lives just as your husband and you get on with rebuilding your marriage. He visits. He calls and texts you. He asks you questions about the child. He comes to her graduations, birthdays, recitals - right there next to your husband as he seethes and imagines you two between the sheets.

You say you can love your husband's love child? Of course you can, because you imagine that her mother has just disappeared somewhere ten time zones away and is never coming back, so you get to pretend you are the real mother. Now imagine that instead of Thailand, her mother lives, say, a ten-minute drive away. The child lives with her and your husband visits - because he's a decent person, isn't he. He pays child support (which means your child cannot take that horse-riding lesson after all). He sees the mother regularly because there's no way around it. The mother texts and calls all the time, about the child, about the money, about anything at all, really. Your husband responds, because really, how can he not? The child wonders, aloud, why you live in a nice house while her mother lives in a small apartment. The child wonders, aloud, why she gets to be with her dad some of the time, and your kids, all of the time. The child asks you why her mom is sad all the time. Your kids are watching and wondering.

But I'm sure you still love her. Because you don't understand, still, what this conversation is about. The objection has never been to the child. The objection is to the continued contact with the other man or woman, which is damn difficult to avoid when their a child involved. This is why the recommended solutions for the survival of marriage center around excising the affair partner from your life, whether that means complete integration of the love child into the family (and exclusion of the birth father), or complete separation from the mother and child. Unless, of course, the mother very considerately signs off all her rights and vanishes into the sunset, leaving you to get on with life. You know not all APs are that accommodating.

Are you two ever going to give it a rest?

I love all of the replies of what you would do in this situation. I would have responded the same way a few years ago, until it happened to me.

I am divorcing, my kids know about the OC and want nothing to do with him. They may change their minds when they are older but that will be their father's relationship to facilitate.

No one wins in this situation.

Anonymous wrote:What's an OK quality of life? The other woman lives in an apartment and you live in a 5,000 sqft house; is this an OK life? The OW drives a Honda and you drive a Mercedes, is this an OK quality of life? A normal employed mother can almost always provide an "ok" quality of life for the other child assuming no abuse, just a lower SES.

Yes, the cheated spouse feelings come before the child, for the simple reason that said spouse needs to cooperate if the child comes to live with them. Without her enthusiastic consent, he or she does not.

What love do you have for a person if you cannot love their innocent child? Why don't you ask your husband if he can love a child you'd conceive in your affair with another man. If he says no, blame him for using marriage as a convenience.

I would say there is no way a child of mine is growing up in Thailand while I live in the U.S. (I will never cheat either so there is that). I do not know enough about Thailand but that would definitely not qualify as an "ok" way of life compared to mine.

If my husband cheated, and I chose to stay with him, there is no way his child will grow up in Thailand just because I am hurt. Of course, we would need permission from the child's mother to bring her over.

I am and will always be all in or all out in my marriage. Choosing to love my husband will mean choosing to love his child no matter how she came to be. If I can forgive him, I can love her.

My husband said yes, and I am certain he will. The question is will he still love me? That is the question he cannot answer. But he absolutely agrees, that if he takes me back, the child comes with the package. I admit that it makes the package more complicated, but you cannot pick one and not the other.

What's an OK quality of life? The other woman lives in an apartment and you live in a 5,000 sqft house; is this an OK life? The OW drives a Honda and you drive a Mercedes, is this an OK quality of life? A normal employed mother can almost always provide an "ok" quality of life for the other child assuming no abuse, just a lower SES.

Yes, the cheated spouse feelings come before the child, for the simple reason that said spouse needs to cooperate if the child comes to live with them. Without her enthusiastic consent, he or she does not.

What love do you have for a person if you cannot love their innocent child? Why don't you ask your husband if he can love a child you'd conceive in your affair with another man. If he says no, blame him for using marriage as a convenience.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

So a marriage is more important than the well-being of a completely innocent child?

Got it.

Yes. It sounds awful but the situation is awful, and there are no good options in it. The therapist's position is that recovering from infidelity starts, as a precondition, from complete severance of ties with the affair partner, and that the marriage cannot recover as long as the wayward spouse maintains contact with the AP. When affairs produce a child, and the wayward spouse wants to maintain contact with the child (which necessarily means contact with the AP parent), the marriage has very low odds of recovering because few marriages can withstand the pressure of constant contact with the AP and ongoing reminder of infidelity. Bluntly speaking, the betrayed spouse cannot begin recover until the AP is completely out of the picture.

Preserving the marriage protects the children of marriage and the wife, who are completely innocent as well. So, the choices are between the wellbeing of an innocent child of the affair, and the wellbeing of the innocent children of marriage + wife. The therapist votes for protecting the innocent children of marriage + wife.

The child still deserves its parents, at the very least the financial support of both its parents. That's law. Children raised without a father are at a higher risk of lots of things (sexual abuse, for example) than children raised with an active father figure. Quite incredible to me that anyone would advocate denying the existence of a child for the wellbeing of a marriage.

Who cares? Th mother should have known what she was getting into by having a child by a married man. I agree with this article. We are asking way too much of the spouse who was deceived. Their feelings come way before the child that came of the affair.
He makes one good point: the little satisfaction that the affair gives the cheater does not justify the tremendous pain it causes his or her spouse.

It depends on whether the other woman can provide an "ok" quality of life for the other child. Otherwise, nope, the cheated spouse feelings do not come before that child.

If I couldn't take in my cheating husband's child(if the child needed a better place to live), then there is no marriage left to save.

What are you trying to save? What love do you have for a person if you cannot love their innocent child? Or is the marriage just a convenience at that point?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She can't. I believe some variant of this happened to her and her My Marriage Trumps All thing spills out from that. But I would bet hers is a deeply unhappy marriage.

Please explain why consideration for the child of the affair should trump consideration for the children of marriage+wife. It would help if you didn't get personal and relied on logic.

Why is it better for the wife and children of the marriage - whose happiness you evidently consider to be all important - to be tied to a man willing to put their emotional wellbeing at risk by CHEATING IN THE FIRST PLACE? Denying the existence of the child of the affair does not mean that the affair didn't happen. Maintaining secrets is a cornerstone of dysfunctional families. No one wins in your "ideal" scenario.

There are no ideal scenarios in this situation. Everyone loses in every single one of them.

No one has to be tied to anyone. The wife in this situation has every right to divorce. Many do. For those who decide, together, not to, it's not a bad idea to know about what happened to others who have been there before. Certainly for a man who decided to ask for and earn the forgiveness of his wife, making her wellbeing a priority is a good idea.

No one is denying the existence of a child. Just like there are estranged families, no one denies they exist, people just decide to create distance because that's what is best for them. There are no secrets between spouses in this scenario. Both know what happened. As for children, we all keep age-inappropriate things from them.

BTW that toneless repetition of 'children of the marriage + wife' reads very The Handmaids Tale. There's something unsettling, repressed and ragey about the poster talking about that above all else.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

So a marriage is more important than the well-being of a completely innocent child?

Got it.

Yes. It sounds awful but the situation is awful, and there are no good options in it. The therapist's position is that recovering from infidelity starts, as a precondition, from complete severance of ties with the affair partner, and that the marriage cannot recover as long as the wayward spouse maintains contact with the AP. When affairs produce a child, and the wayward spouse wants to maintain contact with the child (which necessarily means contact with the AP parent), the marriage has very low odds of recovering because few marriages can withstand the pressure of constant contact with the AP and ongoing reminder of infidelity. Bluntly speaking, the betrayed spouse cannot begin recover until the AP is completely out of the picture.

Preserving the marriage protects the children of marriage and the wife, who are completely innocent as well. So, the choices are between the wellbeing of an innocent child of the affair, and the wellbeing of the innocent children of marriage + wife. The therapist votes for protecting the innocent children of marriage + wife.

The child still deserves its parents, at the very least the financial support of both its parents. That's law. Children raised without a father are at a higher risk of lots of things (sexual abuse, for example) than children raised with an active father figure. Quite incredible to me that anyone would advocate denying the existence of a child for the wellbeing of a marriage.

Who cares? Th mother should have known what she was getting into by having a child by a married man. I agree with this article. We are asking way too much of the spouse who was deceived. Their feelings come way before the child that came of the affair.
He makes one good point: the little satisfaction that the affair gives the cheater does not justify the tremendous pain it causes his or her spouse.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She can't. I believe some variant of this happened to her and her My Marriage Trumps All thing spills out from that. But I would bet hers is a deeply unhappy marriage.

Please explain why consideration for the child of the affair should trump consideration for the children of marriage+wife. It would help if you didn't get personal and relied on logic.

Why is it better for the wife and children of the marriage - whose happiness you evidently consider to be all important - to be tied to a man willing to put their emotional wellbeing at risk by CHEATING IN THE FIRST PLACE? Denying the existence of the child of the affair does not mean that the affair didn't happen. Maintaining secrets is a cornerstone of dysfunctional families. No one wins in your "ideal" scenario.

But she got to keep her husband so she WON and the family continues TM Marriage Builders or somesuch.

I'm not playing her game, I wish others wouldn't, either. It's beyond damned obvious this poster was 'scorned' and it's tiresome to pretend otherwise.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She can't. I believe some variant of this happened to her and her My Marriage Trumps All thing spills out from that. But I would bet hers is a deeply unhappy marriage.

Please explain why consideration for the child of the affair should trump consideration for the children of marriage+wife. It would help if you didn't get personal and relied on logic.

Why is it better for the wife and children of the marriage - whose happiness you evidently consider to be all important - to be tied to a man willing to put their emotional wellbeing at risk by CHEATING IN THE FIRST PLACE? Denying the existence of the child of the affair does not mean that the affair didn't happen. Maintaining secrets is a cornerstone of dysfunctional families. No one wins in your "ideal" scenario.

Anonymous wrote:She can't. I believe some variant of this happened to her and her My Marriage Trumps All thing spills out from that. But I would bet hers is a deeply unhappy marriage.

Please explain why consideration for the child of the affair should trump consideration for the children of marriage+wife. It would help if you didn't get personal and relied on logic.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

So a marriage is more important than the well-being of a completely innocent child?

Got it.

Yes. It sounds awful but the situation is awful, and there are no good options in it. The therapist's position is that recovering from infidelity starts, as a precondition, from complete severance of ties with the affair partner, and that the marriage cannot recover as long as the wayward spouse maintains contact with the AP. When affairs produce a child, and the wayward spouse wants to maintain contact with the child (which necessarily means contact with the AP parent), the marriage has very low odds of recovering because few marriages can withstand the pressure of constant contact with the AP and ongoing reminder of infidelity. Bluntly speaking, the betrayed spouse cannot begin recover until the AP is completely out of the picture.

Preserving the marriage protects the children of marriage and the wife, who are completely innocent as well. So, the choices are between the wellbeing of an innocent child of the affair, and the wellbeing of the innocent children of marriage + wife. The therapist votes for protecting the innocent children of marriage + wife.

+1 Million

Some people cannot seam to grasp that 100% fairness is simply not possible in life most of the time. Trade offs are real.

The trade-off that you are advocating is abandoning a child to a life without a father. In return, the children of the marriage are allowed to maintain a relationship with their father that is based on the lie that their Dad didn't cheat and that they don't have a half-sibling out in the world.

Your solution does a disservice to both the children of the marriage and the child of the affair. Children of the marriage need to know the truth, even if it's painful and results in divorce. The child of the affair needs to have a father in his life.

Children of the marriage can be told the truth when they are older. Nothing told to children results in divorce because children don't divorce. Certainly a flawed father is better than no father for them.

The child of the affair is not abandoned to a life without a father (and certainly, this is something his mother should have thought about before getting pregnant). The mother can marry an available man who will be a father figure to the child.

What if the other woman didn't know he was married? You still think this "solution" is perfectly acceptable, I'm sure.