Hi All,

I got married to my wife 1 year ago. My wife is 6 months pregnant for me and when her mother past away in Sept 2015 she told me that she has a 5 year old son who lives with her ex-boyfriend's sister. When I married her she never told me this, I think the passing away of her mother fuelled the disclosure. I am thinking about divorcing her but now she is pregnant. I'm not sure what to do.

Regards,

Matt

What is her reason for not having her son?

She visits her son every 3 months and brings him some gifts. She explained me that she was in an abusive relationship and that her previous boyfriend was not serious. She gave the child to her ex boyfriend's sister to take care of at the age of 3. I feel that their always be a connection between the father of her child and my wife. I don't want to be lying down in bed with my wife and this guy calls.

The main reason why she is not having her son is , only if she rekindles with her ex boyfriend and lives together with him and her son she can see her son on a daily base. Now she is Maried to me and the ex boyfriend complains why she is not visiting her child anymore. She explained him that she is pregnant and he did not seem amused

Did she file a protective order against him? Has she tried to get custody?

We've had many board members leave abusive relationships and are able to maintain no contact with the ex-spouse even when there are children involved.

Have you read up on parallel parenting?
Parallel Parenting

She has still not told you the whole truth. Without this you cannot decide what you should do. It sounds as if the child is living with his father and that she has ongoing contact with him. Does she lie about other things?

The fact that there is a child on the way makes it worth trying to fix this. The solution does not lie in the mistakes and deceptions of the past. It lies in establishing a future free of any contact with the former lover. There are many complications here. If I were you, I would email mbradio@marriagebuilders.com and pose the question to Dr. Harley.

Hi I will read on parallel parenting.

Thanks,

Hi,

You are right, I feel that she is still hiding many things from me. The ex boyfriend calls her, I think my wife wants me to accept that she has a child since I married her already and is under the assumption that I will not leave her. When I asked her why she did not tell me this before,she told me that she intended to this after the marriage in March 2015. But only when her mother passed away, she was crying about 5 hours per day and then it become too much and she revealed that she had a child. I know that if her mother did not died she would have not told me this secret.

Hi,

Thank you for your encouraging words. I would like to settle everything with my wife, but I don't want to stay in this marriage just because of a child that we will have together. I married her because I love her, with or without a child. The fact that she was not honest to me really hurts me. I will take up your advice and email Dr Harley.

Regards,

Matt

I think what Brainy might be asking is: Why did she give her son away in the first place?

We do understand adoption, which is the right thing for someone to do if they need it. However, why did she give her son to her ex's sister? What is the story behind that? I take it he is the father of the child? Why give the child to his sister - why was she unable to take care of it herself, and if she wasn't able to do so, why his sister? And why, then, if she sees it from time to time, not tell you about this and marry you under false pretences?

How does your wife envisage going on with this situation? Is she happy to have the child stay with her ex's sister for good, or was that intended to be a temporary situation? Does she want the child back, now that she is settled and can give it a home? Have you offered to have the child come and live with you? Would you be prepared to do that?

If you could do that, then you could create a set-up where the father collects his child from his sister's house for visitation (or from someone else, if she lives too far away), and neither you nor your wife ever sees him. If she or you sees him, your marriage will never thrive. He needs to have access to his child (if he wants it) but never, ever, to either of you.

What is the legal situation with this custody arrangement? Does your wife have the right to have her child returned to her, or did she sign away her custody rights, and if so, why? Apart from when she cried and confessed, have you talked to your wife properly about this situation, and what she would like to happen now that you know?

You've posted a very incomplete story here and it is impossible to give Harley advice unless we have the full picture. Dr Harley would also need to know the full backdrop before he could advise you himself.

But you need to work out whether, because of her huge dishonesty (and we do realise what a massive lie this was for her to have told), you are willing to divorce her and not be a full-time father to your own child. (You won't be able to divorce while she's pregnant, by the way). If you divorce her, you will probably have you child living with you 50% of the time (unless your wife was in some way unfit, and that is why she does not have the first child living with her). You will then, in your next relationship, be the spouse who has a child with someone else. Blended family situations are not easy, and the divorce rate for those marriages is even higher than for non-blended families - and the reason is mainly due to conflicts over the children from the first marriage.

If your child lives with you 50% of the time, that means it will be living with your (ex) wife and her latest partner 50% of the time, and you cannot protect your child, or know that it is being brought up well by another man - or series of men - when it is not with you. If you want to be the best father for your child you need to live with it, and give it a happy family life.

You do need to sort this out "just because of a child that you will have together". Your child's life is too precious for you to abandon it to who knows what other man, and who knows what unstable life your wife goes on to create for herself. And since you say that you love her, that should give you the motivation to sort things out so that you and your child do not suffer estrangement. You need not be separated from your child, and lose the woman you married for love, because of the way you were deceived about the other child. What you can do instead is create a strong loving marriage for you, your wife and your child, in which the ex-boyfriend is out of the frame.

You can create a successful blended family with your wife's first child, and be a proper father to your new child, if you both take Dr Harley's standard advice for blended family situations and do not have a relationship with the first child's father. Give him the access he is legally entitled to and communicate only urgent information at arms length. Your wife should never communicate directly any way with the man that she had a highly charged emotional relationship with; your marriage would permanently be under threat if she talked to him, or worse, saw him.

Alternatively, if you do not think you can have the first child in your life, you could ask your wife not to see the child until it is at least 18, as might have been the situation had she had it properly adopted. Your wife might be completely unwilling to do that, but you do not know if you do not ask.

The point is that both she and you have decisions to make, based on your recognition that you may or may not want to be with each other now that this has come out, and on what the best future is for each child. If you can't stand being married to her any more because of what she has done, then there is no need for you to post on Marriage Builders - just divorce her once the baby is born, and get the best custody and financial deal that your lawyer can arrange. However, if you want your marriage to survive and thrive, then Dr Harley has a solution to make that happen.

That whole situation has to be overturned if she is to stay married to you. She must be completely transparent with her communication devices, and she must agree never to communicate with him again. If she won't gladly do that, you might as well accept that she is having an affair with him.

The other option you should discuss with your wife is for her to maintain the relationship that she has now with her first child; for her to have visitation with it (it can come to your home on a regular basis, where you can see what is going on) but for it to stay with the sister. That would probably be the best option for your marriage, as long as you can know for a fact that there is no communication with the father. I don't see why your wife or the sister would object to what would be a continuation of the status quo, and the father has no right to say anything about your wife's relationship with her child, and lack of relationship with him.

It would surely be in everyone's interests to get a custody and visitation arrangement made legal. Right now, it sounds as if the father is threatening not to let your wife see her child. Put an end to this game-playing by getting a legal judgement.

Hi SugarCane,

Thank you for commenting, I appreciate it. The main reason why she gave away her son away in the first place is: she terminated the relationship of 3 years in 2012 and went on to live on her own. Her ex boyfriend insisted that if she would not continue the relationship he would give the son to his sister without her having any say. She often tells me that she was in an abusive relationship. My wife visits her son every 3 months and keeps in contact through telephoning her ex boyfriend�s sister who lives in a town 3 hours from New York.
My wife would like me to see her first child as my own and establish a good relationship with him and ultimately life together. Something that is psychologically not easy for me. If I knew about her child at an earlier stage before marriage I would have been able to prepare myself psychologically.
My wife has set up a meeting next month for me to meet her son for a 3 day visit at our house. I�m doing working along because she is pregnant and will see the outcome. There is no custody arrangement.

Hi SugarCane,

I agree with your statements and discussed this with my wife to stop communicating directly with him. She told him on the telephone not to call again since we got married in March 2015. His sister seems to be genuinely happy for my wife that she is married to me. But as I mentioned earlier on the visits to her son are becoming less frequent and that seems to bother the ex-boyfriend.

Why are the visits becoming less frequent? What reason does she give? If she has a desire for you to take the boy on, why is she seeing him less than before?

But he seems still to be in contact with her. What is your wife willing to do to stop that?

She is coping different with the pregnancy, and has many pains and still vomits a lot. My wife told her ex boyfriend that she is pregnant and that he has to understand that she cannot travel long distances for now as she is in her 3rd trimester. She does speak to her son on a weekly basis through the ex-boyfriend's sister. In the beginning when she revealed to me that she had a son 5 months ago she told me that she was fine with the arrangement that she currently has with the sister. But anytime we go out to a restaurant for example she always stares at other peoples children as if she misses her son.