"And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends; also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before." Job 42:10

Job's friends wanted Job to curse God and they turned their backs on him when he was down but as Job forgave and prayed for them, God turned the whole situation around and restored everything back to Job and more!

I don't know how to directly apply this to your situation Murph, but I think the key is prayer and forgiveness and not holding grudges. So maybe if you just keep praying for your wife, asking God for wisdom to carry on each day, moment by moment, loving and forgiving her, praying for the xOM and health of the baby-to-be, I'm sure the Lord will turn YOUR captivity and work everything out to your good because you love Him.

Keep the faith!

<small>[ August 20, 2003, 05:56 PM: Message edited by: BINthereDUNthat ]</small>

Bin,

Thanks for the reminder, that I can't do this on my own!

I need to kep praying and pursuing what the Lord wants for me and my family.

Thanks again

Murph~

Great news that she no longer works w/ x-om.

Yes indeed, it has been a short amount of time since A and contact ended. I think it explains much of her behavior.

You are not a whiner, but if ever you are, it would be well earned. Of course, whining to us is preferable over whining to her. Also, in my estimation the only whining on here that is intolerable is that from an unremorseful WS.

I hear you on the cheerleading. At times, I have been my H's cheerleader but not nearly as often as he has been mine. His pom~poms have been damn near bare more than once!

Take good care,
~aut

Hello Murph,

I think it is great that you are trying to repair your marriage. I know it is a 50/50 chance that the child is yours. Can I give you this bit of advice. Not sure if you and your wife have other children but can I suggest you discuss this situation with a family lawyer. This does not mean you have to obtain a divorce but I think it would be prudent to see if you might be labored with child support for a child that is not yours if down the road the marriage does not survive.

Most states assume a child in the marriage is yours. I am sure I will be labled a cynic but it does not hurt to hope for the best but plan for the worst. There have been a couple of marriages on the board that for what ever reason just did not recover from the deception of the A and the birth of the OC. I do not mean that you will be one of them but how would you feel say three years from now if you are forced to pay child support for a child that is not biologically yours.

Now there are a couple of men such as K and Pops who are raising children that are not theres. Both show the different ends of the septrum. K has full custody of the OC with his wife. Pops, on the other hand, had his wife sue for CS. Both are doing what is right for them. Disscuss everything with a lawyer and be armed with knowledge so you too can make the best decision for yourself.

murph,,,, i hate to welcome you to this place under the circumstances but as you have already experienced, you will get alot of good advice and support here.

reading thru your thread i have noticed that you are willing to work on repairing your marriage. i have a couple of questions for you.

does your w want to stay in your marriage?

is your w ready to work to repair the damage her A has caused?

if you are willing to except this child why does she feel she needs to notify om?

if om is not notified, can you raise this child and never look back on his/hers questionable origin?

if om ends up in the picture somehow, can you raise this child without having the A run thru your mind every time you look at the child?

if you find out thru the testing that om is the father of the baby can you support your w while she is carrying another mans child? (personaly this was the most difficult thing for me to deal with)

i don't mean to sound negative but these are some very direct questions that you and your w need to be able to answer in order to get thru this. it is possible to have your marriage survive this ordeal. only you know your own heart.

reading your thread it seems to me that you are the type of person who can survive this.

there are many different ways to skin this cat and each one depends on your individual situation and you and your w's heart.

i am raising an oc. my w's A was in the spring of 2001. we do receive cs. and om does have visitation. these were not easy decisions to make but for us they seem to be working for now. we looked at tons of scenarios from what seemed like a hundred viewpoints and these seemed to work best for us.

i read regularly but type so slow that i don't respond much. i will try and help any way i can and if there is something you feel to sensitive to ask thru this forum you can e-mail me if you wish.

please be aware that i tend to be direct and to the point with my reply's and they reflect only my take on the situation at hand. i don't generalize.

Pops,

You hit me with some tough ones. I don't believe that she is ready to work on the marriage. When we talk she points out that the affair was something real between two people and not just something that a formulaic plan can fix.

But when we discuss it further, she says that she's scared that we'll fall back into old patterns and simply repeat the mistakes we've made before.

In regards to the baby, in my heart it is mine and will be. I do not want a paternity test any more because I don't think I can handle a result that puts the xOM in our lives again. I don't know if wouldn't be "thinking about the affair." At least not in my present state of mind.

Murph

murph,,,, a couple more things that i am curious about. was your w's A a long one? and when you said she left for a couple of days resently, was it to be with om?

the reason i ask these things is that it will help me see where your w is and what i would suggest to you. WARNING: although i believe in trying to save a marriage even in these difficult circumstances. i don't believe that all marriages can be saved.

in my own experience with this i was completely lost when all this hell came out in the open. i felt that there was no way i could go on without my w in my life. it seemed that i was trapped in at every turn. financialy, how could i raise my kids alone, how could i manage as head of my household without her, how could i explain this to my kids and tuck them in at night with tears in their eyes. but as i was living through the trials i realized that i was in fact doing everything i was so afraid of anyway. this gave me a feeling of freedom. then i heard a pat benitar (sp?) song "i'm gonna harden my heart" and things fell into place. i was not rude to fullhouse (fh) (my w) or mean to her in any way. i just started to make plans for a life without her. i prepared divorce papers, started changing the house out of her name, let her know matter of factly that when she left she could take any and all things she wanted out of the house. there was Nothing here that made me feel sentimental or was worth me fighting with her over. and i started going out with friends without her. i didn't allow myself to fall into an A but i even went to a reunion with an old friend (female) from school. these were huge things in her decision to try and come back and work on our marriage. she told me that it made her realize that i was just eraseing her from my life.

i had no intention of doing that and in mb terms i quess that was a form of plan A.

interesting fact here is that when i first felt she was falling into her early EA my friends told me to do exactly those things i mentioned above. i refused as i was in denial or to blind to believe that she would actually have an affair. you know what they say about hind sight.

anyway my advice to you now would be if your w is not ready to commit to your marriage then you need to start preparing for the fact that it may end.

if your w's A was so real let me ask you this. if you and her were to end up divorced would she and the om be prepared to make a life together? if not, then her A was no more real then a good fictional love story.

she and you need to understand that her A was the product of some emotional need that she percieved as not being met by you. whether you feel you were giving her what she needed or not doesn't matter. it is what she saw thru her eyes.

this does not in any way mean that she is not responsible for her actions. it just means that you 2 are not communicating well enough.

Pops,

My W EA began back in December and then escalated into a physical affair in April culminating with her leaving for a couple of days in July.

Your words have great meaning to me because those days that she was gone, I felt like, "how can I go on and take care of my daughter?" But the fact was, I did. And I survived. Great Pat Benetar reference btw. As a child of the 80's I appreciate it. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" />

Hear's where I don't know how to proceed. With her pregnant right now, it's not like I can ask her to leave or that she'd want to. She has quit her job and given up all ties to xom. The fog sometimes is quite thick, I feel.

Yesterday, she was talking to me about my feelings on having an abortion. Initially when we found out she was P and that she had been with the OM and myself, I wanted no parts of the P and thought abortion was the answer. A fresh start to our lives, with no chance of the xOM entering it in this way, but knowing my wife I knew she couldn't just "kill" what's growing inside her.

Her reason for bringing it up was so that there would be no need for paternity testing early on and we would not have to involve him in our lives or struggle with the burden financially. All these are sound reasons, but I don't want her to feel the burden of the abortion for the rest of her life. I told her that we would have to discuss it more and that we'd have to be going to counseling together in order to deal with it and the repercussions of it.

I love her so much, and it kills me to see her in such pain. I don't know that I can harden my heart, but I've got to try and focus on me, my relationship with God and with my daughter more than running the emotional treadmill.

Do I simply call a lawyer, just to be prepared? What do I ask?

Murph

I've been following your posts and here are my thoughts...I belive that your wife&#8217;s pregnancy is not the only issue here.
You say that your WW feels the affair was real. Ever wanted to know how she felt about your marriage? While marrying you she would have thought of having her dream family with you.
Has she analyzed how far you and she have made through? Have you?
If you feel it was satisfying she too certainly does feel that your marriage is real and would want to give it a try. She would not want to shatter her dream family just because of the affair. Soon she might find out the affair wasn't real.

But then, she might even feel that your marriage was a mistake. In that case she is just staying, because she thinks it is the right thing to do.
You can never change this attitude of her. In that case the continued existence of your marriage will just bring more heart-breaks to you in the future

murph,,,,, from reading your posts i gather that your w is still having trouble letting go of om completely. if that is the case you need to start preparing yourself for the worst. this DOESN"T mean throw on the towel. just prepare yourself so you can protect your interests for your d and yourself.

i would suggest that you set up a consultation with an attorney. make sure you tell him all the facts. you will have to give him information on your income, her income earning capability, assets, and if you are interested in primary custody of your d. your w may agree to this as she will be very busy with the newborn if she decides to carry full term.

i am no psychologist by any means but i can tell you that in MY opinion if your w has the baby she will forever carry a soft spot for its father. i feel this is true of fh also. i feel in ways she wishes that he and her could be friends sort of like a hollywood divorce.

as for the abortion thing. i am a pro choice person. fh tried to have one prior to her admittion to me of her actual A. i also asked her to have one. we (i, as she was against it) also looked into adoption. don't get me wrong my oc is a beautiful little girl and i wouldn't hurt her for the world now but there are times still that both fh and i wish that she had been able to abort. it would have made our marriage recovery much, much easier.

my w's A was a short one of a couple months as was your w's. same thing with a coworker, she quit her job and started elsewhere. but there are triggers for me all over town. even knowing that she allowed him to ride to different places in our car.

Murph and especially pops,
I read where you think your W may feel a soft spot for father of oc forever.

Oh! pops! NO!!! FH is with you but you invited XMM to be part of Graces' life and now look at the fall out.

Pops, I'll bet if FH could change the past, it would be that YOU were the father of Grace.

Murph, you listen to pops. He will guide you through all of the mess of your W's A.

He is a living example of how to proceed in this and will give you invaluable information.

Above all, tell God your feelings and have faith.

HE will be your main guide in all of this.

Blessings to you.

Pops, give FH the benefit of the doubt. Talk to her. Who knows her better than you after all these years?

Please let her know your feelings. You are her "main man" I suspect and nothing else will ever change that. I'll bet she wishes and feels YOU are Graces daddy.

prayers of peace
Debi

Hello-

I found out five years ago (at the age of 23) that I'm the product of an affair my mother had. She was ten years into a marriage with an alcoholic man and already had a 7 year old son. She didn't disclose this information to me willingly. I asked her because a friend of mine pointed out that I didn't look German like the rest of my family. He then mentioned that I should ask who my real father is. I asked my mother (who at the time had been divorced for 13 years) and she surprisingly told me.
My non-biological father (who died in September 2002) never knew that I wasn't his, nor does my brother know that I'm his half-sister. It's a dark family secret that I've held for my mother because she's sworn me to secrecy for the past five years.
I've recently begun therapy and am planning to tell my brother about my true identity. My mother is furious with me and has no remorse for what she has done. My biological father was friendly with me for many years, but has recently cut off communication supposedly because he doesn't approve of the man I'm living with. He isn't willing to give me a blood test to prove paternity. Likewise, when I mention to my mother that I'd like to tell my brother who I am she says that I can't actually prove it and that there's always a chance I'm the other father's daughter.

I feel alone with my story and would love to know another person who is dealing with an issue like this. I welcome comments or questions.

If you're a parent dealing with a child born of infidelity that you should definitely be honest. Tell the child the truth about his/her identity as soon as it is appropriate. I believe that my mother's secret has seriously injured me emotionally.

Would love to hear back,
Arianna

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by Murph94:
<strong>My wife and I have been married for 9 years. In the last six months she has revealed to me that she has been having an affair with a co-worker. She recently left for a few days and then returned home.

Now that she is home, we have found out that she is pregnant. There is a chance that it is the OM's, but I don't know. She doesn't want to abort; it truly isn't something I believe in either. But if it is the OM, then how can he be removed from our lives??

I'm struggling hard to love her and support her, but it is so hard and I still feel that she hasn't "signed on" to recovery.

Any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

Help</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

Pops,

Thanks again for your words of wisdom and experience. We went away for a few days and have decided to go ahead with the abortion. We are scheduling an appointment for this week; my hope is that we will be able to begin recovery in a more earnest way.

She has been consumed by this P and not knowing who the father is. It has, I feel, really slowed any form of recovery because the P is like an albatross slung around her neck and she can't feel in any way like the person she used to be.

Pops, I am very much afraid of contacting a lawyer. The symbolism of it is almost too much for me right now.

Please keep me in your prayers,

Murph

Murph~

It seems the time away gave the two of you a lot of time to think and make decisions. The thought of abortion saddens me, but we all have different views, and I respect yours. Abortion was something I thought I would never consider, but in fact did consider when first in my situation.

Just a few thoughts, if I may.

Are you sure you don't want to find out who the father is before making this final decision?

Can you be so certain that the abortion won't also be like an "albatross slung around her neck", and yours too for that matter?

Are you positive it's the P that is stalling your M recovery, and not your wife's reluctance, (might she not be slow to want recovery even if not P)?

Have you thought through on your own and decided you want to raise this child as your own, no matter the DNA?

Do you think you might could love this child someday?

If you answer yes to the latter 2, and haven't told your W, I hope that you do. In fact I hope you have shared all your thoughts with your wife. Perhaps the load of the P will be lifted if she knows where you stand.

I wish you all the best in whatever you do, you have my prayers.

Take good care,
~autumnday

murph,,,,, i'm glad that you and your w had a chance to get away and talk. don't get me wrong as i am not trying to straddle the fence on the subject of abortion. just make sure that your w is sure of her decision because if she is not it could bite you both in the butt.

in my case, with all our kids it was sort of celebritory with all our family and friends when i had my vasectomy. so everyone knew that fh's preg could not have been caused by me. there was no hiding her A once she decided to carry full term. if i would have had some inkling that i could have possibly been the father i may have viewed tiungs diferently. i don't know. we had not been sexually active (her choice at the time) during the time of her conception so i can't say for sure what i would have done.

i can say that i wish you both all the best and will keep you in my prayers for making such a difficult decision. i hope that you understand that an abortion in itself will not cure your marital problems. you both still have a plethera of work to do.

as far as your not being able to fill out divorce papers because of the symbolism. i think i disagree somewhat. if you think back to when you and your w first met i'll bet she was working her magic to hook you because you seemed somewhat independent. if filling out papers is out of the question, ok. but even though you want to let her know you love her be careful not to do it in a (for lack of a better term) sucky, sobby and overly needy way. (this was one of my mistakes). if you were like that when she fell in love with you in the beginning she probably wouldn't have.

that was another eye opener for me. one morning about the same time i heard the "harden my heart" song i was doing what i'll call blubbering to fh as she was getting ready for work how much i love her, how could she do this to our family, you know the whole mushy, whining thing of begging her to stay. her reply to me was " i didn't know you were so soft and mushy". i realized that in that state i was not very appealing to anyone let alone someone that fell in love with me for my independence and strength.

so don't be rude or cruel but start living your life for you and your d and leave the door open to your w to join you if she wants.

keeping you in my thoughts and prayers, pops

<small>[ August 27, 2003, 11:33 PM: Message edited by: pops ]</small>

To everyone who has been praying for us,

As you know, we were discussing having an abortion and even set the appointment up for tomorrow. However, after my W went for the initial consultation today she was dead set against having one. The irony of it all is that we also had the ob/gyn appt. scheduled for today.
We went to that together and have been discussing how we will deal with this situation.

We will be keeping this baby and having the amnio at the appropriate time to determine paternity. As my W says, we can't make decisions about how to proceed with the baby's future without information. Can't argue with that. No matter what my personal fears and concerns are. The baby's done nothing to deserve any of this, so I have to think of "him" first and my W as she struggles through the morning sickness (all-day) and lethargy.

It must be hard for her to work through the "fog" when she's dealing with a raging hormone imbalance and a tired out body. P on top of withdrawl.

And thanks pops, for reminding me not to be mush. I have been doing that at times, trying to reminder how much I love her and probably weeping way too much.

The nice thing is classes begin in a week and I will be too busy with students to think about this every minute of every hour of every day....ugh!

Keep praying,

Murph

'He' could turn up to be a 'She'(I'm a dad of two young ladies).

Love knows no DNA.

Remeber, if you find out that your not the bio dad, that doesn't matter. Your the one who will be helping and caring for your wife during the pregnacy, birth and raising the child. It takes more than DNA to be a father. Think of the Om as a sperm donor.

Also, check with the laws in your state. Being married could automaticly make you the father dispite DNA. A case has went to the supreme court where the Om had a DNA test proving he was the father and lost.

Great news, Murph!

I will keep you and your W in my prayers. Those prayers will include that you be the bio-father. That would be so awesome!

No matter who the DNA says is daddy, your real work and challenges remain the same...your M. If you can get that back to where it was, or better yet...to a much lovelier M, issues re. OC will be much easier to deal w/ as a united couple.

If it turns out baby is OC, I sense by the character you've displayed on here, you will fall in love w/ her <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" /> in no time!! If she is an OC, just think of her as being on your team...the only 2 innocents in this whole mess!

Take good care,
~AD

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by Arianna:
<strong>
...I feel alone with my story and would love to know another person who is dealing with an issue like this. I welcome comments or questions.

If you're a parent dealing with a child born of infidelity that you should definitely be honest. Tell the child the truth about his/her identity as soon as it is appropriate. I believe that my mother's secret has seriously injured me emotionally...
</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Hang in there Arianna, you'll be all right. It sounds like you are being strong about it and I'm glad your mom came clean with you. She should get some credit for that, right?

It's time to move forward with your life and don't dwell on the past and what it could have or would have been. Thank God for your family and keep moving forward in your journey.

I agree with you that honesty is a valuable gift parents can give to our kids regarding their difficult situation. Being conceived in a bad situation doesn't mean you are not loved and wanted.

I'm sure your mom did what she did because she thought she was trying to protect you from being hurt. Do you have any kids?