“AITA for telling my husband he can’t spend time with his illegitimate child?”
I think I already know which way most people here are going to lean. My husband(45) and I (44) have been married for 19 years. We have 5 children together. 7 years ago he had an affair with a woman he met at his workplace( she didn’t work there however) and he got her pregnant. He told me the truth about all of this when the woman was about 6 months pregnant.
He also got a paternity test to make sure the baby was his. When he told me this I felt betrayed and destroyed but after marriage counselling and the fact that I still love him, I decided to give him another chance. He’s been absolutely amazing since then and has given me no reasons to suspect he’s up to his former misbehavior. We are going to celebrate our 20 year anniversary in 2 weeks.
After the woman gave birth to the baby she kept custody of him and my husband has been giving money to support the child. We have rarely heard from the woman since then until last week when she approached my husband at his workplace. My husband told me that the woman wants him to be in the child’s life and be a father figure to him, take him to sports games, play with him, go to school related things etc. I told my husband he has no legal obligation to do that and I didn’t want him to. If he did so then he would be spending less time with our children and it would make things in our family and extended family a lot more awkward. As of now nobody else in our family know about the affair and the illegitimate child except me, my husband and his sister. Also, he has never had a relationship with this child so why start now and add even more responsibility to himself. The incentives I provided him are ones that are beneficial to him and to our family.
What do you think? Is she TA? This is what top commenters had to say:
ttrowawway234567 said:
[deleted] said:
He sucks for cheating. You suck for wanting him to be a deadbeat absentee dad to keep up your nuclear bull$h1t family appearance. His son doesn’t suck and doesn’t deserve this treatment. He doesn’t deserve to grow up without family so you can keep pretending yours is perfect.
a-punk-is-for-life said:
I’m going with NAH. You’re totally entitled to be hurt and upset and not want him to bond with his child, but this IS his child and getting to know him is the right thing to do. He wouldn’t be being a father figure to his son, he is his father.
steggie21 said:
ESH. Mostly your husband is the asshole for creating this entire situation, and then doing a sh!tty job of stepping up and accepting responsibility and consequences. I feel bad for the situation you are in but you are being “the asshole” because you are trying to essentially pretend like this did not happen, and an innocent human is the one being hurt the most by all of this.
wanderingdev said:
YTA. Your husband is not a good man, he’s a cheater who is too stupid to use protection. The child should not have to suffer because of that. The kid deserves to have a father in his life and you are being selfish by trying to deny him that.
fxelite said:
YTA. That kid deserves to know his father it’s not his fault how he came along. Also lol at “hes a very good person”. Oh ya? What about him banging another woman and getting her pregnant while married to you says good person? The ONLY reason he even told you about the affair is because he couldn’t hide it anymore.
Verdict: YTA/ESH.
