Having someone you love break your heart and your trust is something that is difficult—if at all possible—to recover from; arguably even more so when it involves infidelity.
For this redditor, it was not only her husband’s unfaithfulness that seemingly ended their relationship. It was him moving his affair child into the family home that led to her thinking about filing for divorce. In addition to that, because of her husband’s child, the OP had to move their daughter and all of her stuff to her parents’ place for the time being, too. Scroll down to find the full story in the woman’s own words below.
There can be millions of reasons to end a relationship, a partner’s infidelity being one of them
Image credits: stefamerpik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
This woman had to make significant changes in her life after her husband told her about having a child out of wedlock
Image credits: pvproductions / Freepik (not the actual photo)
Image credits: BeneficialCricket417
Being unfaithful to one’s partner is, unfortunately, not unheard of
Few things can arguably turn one’s world upside down like learning about their spouse’s infidelity. And while it is possible for the relationship to recover after such a breach of trust, oftentimes the latter brings it to a halt instead. According to Gitnux, as many as 30% of divorced couples say that infidelity was the primary reason for them going their separate ways.
As painful as it is, infidelity, clearly, is not that rare of an occurrence. Statista’s data from 2021 revealed that in the US alone, over one-in-five adults admit to having cheated on their partner at least once in their lives. Unfortunately, the OP’s husband, too, was involved with someone outside his marriage, which resulted in him fathering a child out of wedlock.
A study delving deeper into how many children came into this world as a result of one or both of their parents’ being involved in an affair found that historically, the rates of extra-marital births are rather low, somewhere around 1%. However, they were determined to differ depending on social context and location.
Nowadays, despite a growing number of children being born out of wedlock, it’s arguably difficult to determine how many of them enter this world due to their parent’s involvement in an affair, as many people simply choose to create families without getting married.
Men and women tend to engage in infidelity in different ways
Image credits: Image by Freepik (not the actual photo)
Discussing the results of an online survey, answered by nearly 95,000 participants, a Full Professor in the Department of Psychology at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Dr. Maryanne L. Fisher noted that women and men tend to engage in infidelity in different ways and for different reasons. In a piece for Psychology Today, she noted that women are more likely to engage in emotional or online affairs than their male counterparts. They are also more likely to become unfaithful when they have relationship problems or when they’re bored with their sex life. Men are reportedly more likely than women to engage in sexual infidelity, and to do it more than once.
Dr. Fisher also pointed out that the majority of people—just over half of them—who were unfaithful to their partners, confessed about it themselves, while roughly a fifth were caught by their partner.
“These findings suggest that the majority of individuals are willing to confess voluntarily, indicating a level of remorse, a desire to clear one’s conscience, and possibly a desire to repair the damage inflicted by the infidelity,” the psychology expert wrote.
It’s unclear whether or not the OP’s husband confessed, seeking to show remorse and fix any possible damage his actions might have caused. However, coming clean about the affair and about his daughter resulted in his other child being moved out of the house with all of her belongings and his wife planning on filing for divorce. The redditor spoke about her plans to divorce her husband in the comments under the post, where she shared more details with fellow netizens.
Many people didn’t think the OP was the jerk in the situation
Some pointed out that the situation wasn’t the 9-year-old’s fault, either
