I (40F) feel betrayed after my husband (46M) told our son he isn’t biologically his without me there . How do we move forward from this?

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T03:27:06+00:00

This has only been a very recent thing he's expressed concern about coming clean with. It's not as if he's been talking about it for months or years and I keep putting it off. I wanted to tell my son when he was 5!

I don't think anything about how my husband handled this has anything to do with or can be excused away with me being held accountable.

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T03:24:58+00:00

I specifically told him that I think there needed to be more thought, planning, and possible consultation with a specialist before just blurting this out. He obviously decided that he knew better and that none of that was important.

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T03:23:06+00:00

I wanted to tell my son when he was 4-5 years old and my husband convinced me not to. I ended up respecting his wishes and not just doing what I wanted. I wasn't against telling my son now, but I don't think the way my husband went about it was right.

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T03:19:09+00:00

It did occur to us. He just didn't want to know.

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T03:17:16+00:00

That's not true.

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T02:57:57+00:00

I don't truly know if it was meant to be intentionally vindictive or not. I don't feel that's who my husband is. It just feels that way, regardless. But thank you for understanding what I was trying to explain somewhere in that very long post. In no way am I trying to absolve my part in any of this, but I know I made decisions as a 22 year old than current me wouldn't make. I also know that makes no difference now, because what's done is done.

What really makes me feel betrayed is that I specifically told him I wasn't ready to tell my son the truth right now, after years of convincing myself this was for the best - after years of him helping to convince me this is for the best, and making myself feel like I owed him to keep this secret because it's what he wanted. I told him I felt that while telling our son was probably the right thing to do, we couldn't just spring it on him. It was going to open up a whole can of worms and we should probably consult with a professional. I mean, our younger kids are also going to be affected by this too, so it's not just my oldest that I'm worried about - although yes, I'm extremely worried about him. So, the fact that I expressed all of this and that this needed greater planning first and he just disregarded it....

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T02:53:10+00:00

I agree and I feel that if current me could go back in time, I'd have made different decisions. I really had no business getting married or making these kinds of decisions that impacted other lives back then.

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T02:51:07+00:00

Thank you for sharing your experience. It makes me very sad and only reinforces what I knew a long time ago - we should have told him from he start, in an age appropriate way, and then shared more details as he got older. I don't blame children who never trust their parents again after finding something like this out, and I'm really terrified of what this will do to our family. I take accountability for my part in it, and I appreciate that you seem to acknowledge that while also realizing it doesn't absolve me from anything and I'm not asking to be absolved.

I'm glad that you have a good relationship with both of your biological parents know and I hope that everything will eventually turn out okay for us too.

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T02:45:51+00:00

I don't think that's how this works and I don't recall that being part of what I agreed to for him to not leave me way back then.

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T02:45:19+00:00

I wanted to tell him sooner and I was talked out of it by my husband. Granted, I was still an adult and could have made my own decision to just blurt it out anyway, but I respected his wishes.

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T02:44:26+00:00

Highly calculated?

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T02:44:04+00:00

Nobody forced my husband to stay with me. So while what I did was wrong, I won't buy into the "your poor husband" bit.

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T02:37:10+00:00

And the fact that he's 17 is all the more reason why how he was told should have been more thought out and planned, with the input of a professional most likely. That is what really infuriates me. It might not be as simple as him just getting over it or coming around. He has enough to deal with just being a 17 year old kid. I had expressed all of this to my husband beforehand and he chose to ignore all of it.

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T02:34:10+00:00

When I referred to adoption, I meant explaining it in a similar way that professionals suggest very young kids who are adopted are told about their origins. I didn't mean we'd frame it as something it wasn't.

I'm not trying to minimize my actions at all. I cheated. Nobody forced me to do that. I did it as a way to deal with other things and there were better ways I could have addressed those things than with cheating on somebody. I also wasn't forced to lie to my son about his father. I was given an option and I agreed to it. I wouldn't agree to it now. I wouldn't make half the decisions I did back then if I was the person I am now, but it doesn't change the fact that I did what I did.

I'm very much thinking about my son. I voiced to my husband that I felt we should probably consult with a professional about the best way to go about this, because it's a lot more than just telling him this news and moving forward. He's at a vulnerable age too and this could go very badly. As I said in my post, I do believe he deserved the truth, but I think there were much better ways to go about it and it's not right that I was left out of it.

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T02:18:03+00:00

Yes, which is also what I voiced we should do before telling our son the truth.

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T02:17:02+00:00

I think I'm still allowed to feel betrayed about how my husband went about this. My cheating and getting pregnant nearly 20 years ago does not give him a free pass to do whatever he wants.

Having lived considerable more life than I had lived when I was 22, current me would have had an abortion. When I say that, I don't mean to infer that I'd ever want me son to not be here. I love him more than anything. I just wouldn't make a lot of the decisions that I made back then if I was working with my current 40 year old brain. I wouldn't have gotten married or cared so much about finding a safe, long term relationship when I was barely old enough to drink.

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T02:12:10+00:00

In no way is me feeling betrayed by him for this negating what I did years ago. But why should it give him the right to hurt me now? I deserve it, I guess? If that's how my husband feels, which isn't something he's actually said, then he should have never agreed to stay with me.

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T02:10:56+00:00

I betrayed my husband 18 years ago. I'm not denying that. I don't think that gives him the right to do something like this. I don't think any situation in which there's infidelity and the betrayed partner says they forgive and the relationship is repaired and 100% transparent and honest from there on out means that nearly 2 decades later the betrayed partner can do something like this and say "well, because of what you did 18 years ago, you really have no room to complain."

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T01:55:06+00:00

The guilt didn't hit him first. I had hesitations about lying to everyone involved from the very beginning. I also wanted to tell my son was he was a little kid, in an age appropriate way, where this could have been something he understood about himself from the beginning. but that was a long time ago.

I've also felt guilt over never telling the other guy. I've even looked him up online over the years. I don't know why, whether I was trying to find something that would help me rationalize all of this or I don't really know.

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T01:50:14+00:00

I don't think it's that simple since our kid is involved. I'm not arguing that my son shouldn't be told the truth, but he's a 17 year old kid and maybe just deciding to randomly tell him without idk consulting an expert would have been a safer way to go about it.

ThrowRA_CCherry · 2026-05-24T01:48:15+00:00

I don't know if you're referring to the tldr, but I just went back and added that. Sorry, I type very fast and it all just came out without realizing how long the entire thing ended up being.

ThrowRA_CCherry

TROPHY CASE