A reader posed the question, ” What happens if there is a baby born out of the affair?” Since it’s been a few years since I broached that topic, her question tells me it needs revisiting. It’s a situation that puts a wrinkle in things.
A baby means that the excuses ‘it’s just between us two’ or ‘it’s a matter between two consenting adults’ are now out the window. A baby turns the affair into a cross-generational, cross-familial matter. A baby changes things for everyone.
You can call it a ‘love child’ or some other name, but the nice sounding name doesn’t lessen the impact. One the other hand calling them a ‘bastard’ or whoreson only triggers emotions and adds to the tension.
When a baby is involved, the affair is no longer something that just involves the cheater and the lover. With a pregnancy, the number of people with ‘skin in the game’ has multiplied.
The lover’s family, the cheater’s family, including children, ex-spouses, in-laws and so forth. Each of them now has some legitimate reason to be in the cheater’s business. The baby means that everyone has a stake in the relationship.
Although I know not everyone of those persons will exercise their ‘rights’, but with a sneaky lawyer, they’ll find a way. The baby opens up back doors the cheater never imagined. Sneaky lawyers use the baby as a way into your pocket book and more. They find back doors into your privacy, into your finances and into your retirement.
Not only has the cheater made themselves vulnerable, they’ve also burned more trust bridges than imagined. Trust has been destroyed, and in most cases, the cheater doesn’t realize the damage they have done.
They are surrounded by wrecked lives and dreams while shrugging their shoulders and asking “What did I do?”
They are so focused on the child, they don’t see how their actions have put everyone and everything in their life in jeopardy. They not only violated their marriage vows, they have ripped a huge hole in the physical and financial security of their family.
Before a child came along, the cheater could have said, “It’s none of your business” and make a case for it. With a child, whatever privacy the cheater and lover had is gone.
The baby also suddenly transforms the affair into a lifetime event. The child means that the affair is now a chapter of their lives that has no ending.
If your marriage has been rocked by ‘an illegitimate surprise’, there’s hope. One of the things needing attention is the broken trust. The damaged trust needs repair. The longer the two of you wait in repairing the damage the more extensive it becomes.
The video, ‘How Can I Trust You Again?‘ gives you a clear plan with solid steps for repairing damaged trust.
Best Regards,
Jeff
2 Responses
It is amazing, that these people meet up, have sex, without any measures of birth control or disease prevention. I guess in sense, I was lucky. She met a young stranger had multiple sex marathons over a four year span without any regard to prevention. Makes no sense! Like Russian Rulette
David,
It truly is a version of Russian Roulette. What scares me is that everyday the odds are worsening despite the misinformation campaigns going on. One government site run by the CDC has 28 different risk calculators to determine what your chances of catching an STD are. By breaking it down, they confuse the public and give artificially inflated numbers. They also downplay or dismiss those STD’s that are curable. In my mind, the bottom line is that any affair puts your health and life at risk, which I’ve talked about in some previous posts.