DEAR EMILY,
It’s been a year since I found out that my then boyfriend, now husband, had a dark secret. And from then on, I just couldn’t move on, knowing that someone could pretend that nothing had happened.
Our relationship started in May 2011. He was like a knight in shining armor, every woman’s dream. He was nice, sweet, chivalrous, no vices, treated me like a princess, an ideal man.
After almost a year of a blissful, perfect, dreamlike relationship, I got pregnant. But I became very curious about his past and wanted to find out why his friends hated me.
I started backtracking on his Facebook wall and found out that he had dated a girl five years his senior. I asked him about her, but he just dismissed it. I browsed through her Facebook page and found out she had given birth in 2011, around the time I met him. He finally admitted he had gotten her pregnant. I was so heartbroken. That’s why I was hated by his friends. They wanted her for him, rather than me.
I became really paranoid knowing about the baby and the hate of his friends. After all the complications, we had a civil marriage anyway, making his friends hate me even more.
We’ve been married almost a year, and are now parents to a baby boy. This paranoia is killing me. I’m confused if I should still be with him, even after all the pain. Do I really deserve to be treated that way? I don’t think anybody deserves to be lied to and cheated on.—Paranoid, Lost and Confused
How badly are you being treated? Clearly, this older woman came into your husband’s life way before your time. She was there first, isn’t that correct? If there’s anybody who should get hurt and angry, it’s this woman, who was abandoned by this man who got her pregnant. Did she even know about you then? How do you think she felt all the while he was being your sweet, kind knight in shining armor?
Why this paranoia when it was you who dug up his past, which all happened before you? The operative words here are “before you.” How could he change his past and make everything better for you when it all happened before you? The baby with the other woman was born before you. Finished! End of story.
He married you, didn’t he, despite his friends’ feelings toward you? And you married him despite “all the complications.” So, why keep looking back and making yourself sick? You accepted everything about him—the good, the bad, the past and the baby. It’s not like you were drugged or tied up when you signed the marriage certificate. You raved about and wanted this knight in shining armor. Sadly, he turned out to be just a common man with feet of clay!
If an annulment process is not in the horizon, shut out the past. You have no business delving in it anyway! It is spilt milk! Make this marriage work! It’s only been a year and already your whole world is crashing because of the past. If you cannot handle what he did way before your time, how will you cope with everyday marital problems that will besiege you in the future? What will be the scope of your paranoia then?
Grow up, kid! What’s done is done. Life is not the fairy tale you have in your head.
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