Don’t You Trust Me?
I met my wife when we were in high school and we married in college. We have five beautiful children together—really, I consider them a total blessing regardless of what I’m about to bring up—and up until a couple of weeks ago, I thought that we had the perfect marriage.
We were typical high school sweethearts for the longest time. We go out together, we never fight, and I feel like I’ve done everything a loving husband should do.
I am saying this not to make myself out as the perfect husband, for example my work has always meant I work long hours and maybe I haven’t always been there when she needed me, but I want to stress that I’ve never felt our marriage was in any trouble.
And never in a million years would I ever have suspected my wife of being disloyal. She’s always done everything she could to support me and take care of our children. Now, my eldest daughter recently had an ancestry test done. Well, the results of the test shook me to my core.
They strongly suggested I was not her father. She confided this to me privately, showing me the results, and I could tell this visibly upset her.
Of course, the first thing I did was reassure her that no matter what, she’s my daughter and I’ll always love her unconditionally.
But secondly, the two of us decided to get an official paternity test, since the ancestry tests are not completely reliable. It comes back and I am indeed not her biological father. This news really broke me. I’m ashamed to say I broke down in tears in front of my daughter.
It was a combination of finding out about my wife’s infidelity and how upset I was making my daughter by how I was reacting.
I really wish I had kept it in for her sake, but I didn’t. Following this, I asked my other children, except my youngest, to come and see me.
I wanted to know the extent of my wife’s infidelity—if it was a one off, I could maybe work past it, especially given how long ago it would have been. However, I didn’t want to tell my youngest as she is still in school, a teenager, and really I didn’t think it was appropriate to tell her yet.
We tell the other three what has happened, and I reassure them that I love them unconditionally and that I’ll always be their dad, but that I need to know how long this has been going on. God, I can’t begin to explain how touching their reaction was.
They didn’t care if I wasn’t their biological father, they were just upset at how heartbroken I was. I feel like the only thing that has kept me going these last couple of weeks is their unwavering support. So we have paternity tests for each of the three done.
Not only are none of them my biological children, together four of my children have three different fathers.
Which somehow made it worse. It’s like, she wasn’t just having an ongoing affair, she was having multiple? I can’t explain how this makes it worse, but it just does.
So I confront my wife with this, expecting her to confess and beg for forgiveness. She doesn’t confess. She doesn’t even take it seriously. She says the tests must be flawed. All four? How the heck am I supposed to take that seriously?
I keep bringing it up and she keeps brushing it off, getting progressively more annoyed at me. When I bring it up, she will try and guilt trip me. “We’ve been together since high school, do you seriously not trust me?” etc. But how am I supposed to trust her in the face of such overwhelming evidence?