Five weeks ago my wife have separated after moving back to our hometown.
In 2005, I was in a long-term relationship, which I ended when my ex told me she wasn’t sure if she wanted to get married or have kids. I was thirty at this point and wanted to get married and start a family. A month after my break up, I went to a strip club at the urging of co-workers. I had no intention of dating anyone at the time, but it was there where I met my wife. She was an exotic dancer and I was immediately attracted to her. We talked for a few minutes, but once she realized I wasn’t interested in a lap dance, she started to leave in order to find a willing man. I stopped her, slipped her a twenty along with my number, and walked away.
She called me and we talked for a few weeks before she finally admitted that she was in a relationship. I told her that I liked her a lot, but wasn’t looking to be someone’s sidepiece. A few days later, she broke up with her boyfriend and we started a relationship. At first, I thought it’d be a short-lived fling that would help me forget about my ex-girlfriend and ultimately lead nowhere. However, after a few months, I had fallen hard and told her that I loved her. She was exciting and we had both chemistry and compatibility, which I never felt with my ex. I was so in love that I missed all the warning signs. My family, particularly my mother, didn’t care for her, but I was so smitten that I didn’t care.
Six months into our relationship, she began having an affair with a customer that frequented the restaurant she waited tables at. The few times I went to visit, he would be there. Looking back, he was always a little too cozy around her. She ended the affair after six months when he wanted to be more than sex buddies. In retaliation, he told me about their fling and I broke up with her.
For a few weeks, I became depressed. My ex-girlfriend reached out to me and wanted to give things another try. I considered it, but decided against it. I realized that I no longer had any real feelings for her. I blamed it on the fact that I missed my wife. I finally decided to reach back out to my wife, who had attempted to contact me a few times to apologize. I decided to give things another chance with her. I never told anyone what happened.
A couple of months later, I asked her to move in with me and she quit her job. After a few months of living with no responsibilities, while I worked long hours, she got bored and wanted to do something with herself. She got a new job working as a cashier in the evenings. Since we were both working, we didn’t have much time to spend together. During this time, she befriended a coworker and started hanging out with him during the day while I was at work. After a few months, she told me she was starting to fall for this guy and that she wanted to be honest with me before I found out some other way. She quit her job and cut off all contact with him shortly after.
However, after a couple of months passed, she began texting him again. She told me they never met in person after she left her job and stopped all contact with him after she found out she was pregnant. A few weeks later, I proposed to her. She was pregnant with my child and I always wanted to be married to the mother of my child. She accepted and we got engaged. In January of 2008, we moved to a new city over twelve hours away for a fresh start. A few weeks later, our oldest daughter was born. In April of 2008, we got married. The night before our wedding, she started having second thoughts and had a one night stand with a stranger. I didn’t find out about this until earlier this year.
The first year of our marriage was difficult. My wife developed severe post-partum depression that went undiagnosed for almost a year. During this period, she was barely able to function. It wasn’t until I finally convinced her to see a doctor, who put her on antidepressants, that she started feeling like herself again. She became extremely motivated and went back to school. She graduated grade twelve with honors. Our marriage was doing well. We were happy. My wife told me she loved me and showed me every day that I was the one for her. Her confidence was through the roof.
In 2011, she started working fulltime. This is how she met the other man. He was her immediate boss and a manipulative, egocentric piece of shit. He picked up on her vulnerabilities and low self-esteem. After working there for six months, my wife was offered paid schooling in return for a two-year contract at the company at the recommendation of the other man. I encouraged her to take it. Little did I know that it was during this time the flirting started. She started spending more and more time with him. She worked late, which resulted in her spending less time at home with me and our daughter. He guilted her into thinking she owed him for getting her the position. This was the beginning of their affair.
The affair went on for just over three years. In 2014, the other man had an employee terminated, who informed me of what was going on. By this point, my wife had already checked out. When I demanded that she quit her job, she refused. She told me that she no longer loved me and wanted a divorce. We were married six years. I was blindsided, but since she wasn’t willing to quit, I took matters into my own hands. I contacted the HR department and told them the other man was sleeping with employees on the job, but didn’t provide any names. He was transferred out of the office, officially ending any contact between the two of them.
Fast forward a few months, after begging for her to give our marriage one more shot, she stopped talking about wanting a divorce and we attended marriage counseling. After a few months, things seemed to have gotten better.
In 2015, on our seventh anniversary, we were out celebrating and my wife told me she wanted to have another baby. So for nine months, we tried to conceive. We started seeing a fertility specialist, who told us that I had a varicocele. I opted to have surgery to correct the problem and we started trying again. During this time, the other man transferred back to my wife’s office in a different position. She never told me at the time, but later she said that he approached her and their affair started again. It was almost a year later, when I finally started to give up on us having another baby, that she got pregnant.
From March/April of 2017 to May of 2018, my wife had no idea if me or the other man was the father. In January of 2018, she gave birth and never said a word to me about the affair. She let me believe the baby was mine. During this time, she started to become more emotionally detached from both the other man and me. The fact that she knew she was never going to stop cheating made her extremely guilty. She wanted to end things with the both of us.
In May of 2018, she approached the other man and asked if he’d take a DNA test. This was the one and only time he ever laid eyes on my daughter. My wife claimed she was sure that I was the father, but needed to be positive. She didn’t want to tell me there might be some chance that I was not our child’s father. They took a private test and she retained the only copy, which proved he was the father. Only, at the time, I didn’t know it yet.
Around this time, she began to say she wanted a divorce again. She told me that she wasn’t happy and hadn’t been for a while. She told me that she didn’t love me. I refused to acknowledge her desires. She even printed “do it yourself divorce papers”. She told me that she didn’t want to drag things out any longer than necessary. When I wouldn’t cooperate because I didn’t understand why she wanted to divorce, she served me with divorce papers at home. I texted, called, and begged for her to tell me what was going on. She finally responded and told me we needed to talk.
That night, she sent the girls to a babysitter for the night. I asked her why she wanted the divorce. She started by saying that she didn’t love me anymore. She admitted that she had been cheating on me and told me that she cared about me as a father, but that she couldn’t live like this anymore. Then she started to cry. I tried to hug her, but she pushed me away and blurted out that I wasn’t the father of our daughter. There was a deep silence. After some time, I finally asked her who it was, though, deep down inside, I already knew. She confirmed it, then showed me the results of the DNA test.
I remember not saying anything. I got up, went into the living room, turned on the television, and just sat there. I was neither happy nor sad. I wasn’t even angry. I felt nothing. My wife came into the room, and I told her to leave me alone. She just sat there for a bit before she finally went to bed. Eventually, I joined her, yet said nothing to her. I was numb. I tossed and turned all night. When I woke up, I took a shower and even made breakfast for my wife. I couldn’t even look at the divorce papers. When my wife woke up, she told me that I needed to stop. I told her that it was too bad if she didn’t like my behavior, because I wasn’t going to stop. She left for work without another word.
Shortly after, I left for work myself. That entire morning, I couldn’t focus. My mind was racing and I started to feel angry. I felt my world crashing down around me. I was losing my wife and my daughter, and the only person I wanted to blame was that other man. Against my better judgment, I left work early and went to my wife’s company.
I approached the front door and stopped for a moment. I was having second thoughts when a woman stopped and asked if she could help. I told her that I was looking for my wife. Just as the woman went back inside the building to get my wife, the other man exited. I followed him into the parking lot, where I confronted him.
I don’t remember everything that I said, but I was mad. Security was called. They apprehended me. I thought for sure that I was going to get arrested. While they had me detained, the other man mocked me. My wife came over just as the other man was going on and on about how she didn’t want me and how the two of them were going to be together. When I saw her, my demeanor changed. I felt defeated. The other man went up to her and told her that they could finally be together. That’s when she told him that she didn’t want to be with him anymore then she wanted to stay married to me. The other man stormed off in a rage. The security guard was going to call the police to have me arrested for trespassing, but my wife convinced him to let me go.
After I left, I drove around until it was time to pick up my daughter from school. I couldn’t stay at home. The following day, my wife and the other man were both fired after she admitted to HR that she was having an affair with a coworker.
The other man was pissed. He threatened to take the baby away from us. I wasn’t willing to let her go without a fight. She was planned. My wife and I planned her and I was her father. I began to dig around for anything I could use against him. During my search, I found out he was married. I confronted my wife about this knowledge. She was shocked and mad. She claimed that she had no idea he was married.
I sat on this knowledge for a few days. My wife brought up getting a divorce again. I asked her if she was planning on taking the baby away from me. She was surprised and assumed I wanted nothing to do with the baby. I told her that I wanted to be her dad and tell the other man to fuck off. That was when I told her about my plan to tell the other man’s wife. She agreed to this idea.
I wrote a letter to the other man’s wife, including proof of the affair. She responded and asked to meet. I met her, we talked, and she was completely blindsided. I told her about my baby’s true paternity. She asked me what I wanted and what my wife was intending to do. I told her straight up that I wanted her husband to back off and that my wife and I were going to be parents to the baby.
In the meantime, we had hired a lawyer and put our divorce on hold until we figured out what to do about the other man and the baby. At this time, the other man stopped messaging my wife and I started begging her to give our marriage another chance and not let this setback pull us apart. A part of me wanted to keep my family intact and I knew that if we stayed married, it’d make things a lot harder for the other man to get custody of the baby.
In June of 2018, I found out that I could make a transfer within my company and relocate back to our home state, away from the other man. We decided to relocate the following month. My wife made it clear that she still intended to separate and that we’d eventually divorce. The original plan was to lease a place for six months, then separate, but my wife changed her mind at the last minute and rented a one-bedroom apartment on July 1st, 2018.
[This message edited by FamilyMan75 at 10:45 PM, June 22nd (Saturday)]
