I Cheated To Get Pregnant But We Both Pretend I Didn't

I didn't get married until I was 36. I'd had a few long term relationships, but most of the time I was busy running my father's small business after he passed. I was able to expand it, and I guess I got so caught up in it that the years got away from me.


I met another business owner. Interesting man, we clicked, and fell in love. He'd been married before, and his first wife didn't want to be a parent, so he'd had a vasectomy. We talked about having children, and he agreed to get it reversed. He thought it would be no big deal and he waited until after we married to have it done, but it turned out that the remains of his tubes were too short and damaged to be reconnected.


He was sorry and felt st*pid, and I was angry and felt just as st*pid. What did I know about the reversibility of vasectomies? We could have spent more time discussing all the other ways we could still be parents, but mostly we became distant and just talked about light, trivial subjects.

Some traveling was necessary for my business, but I usually delegated it. I started doing most of the traveling myself. I met a younger man on one of my business trips and spent several nights with him. I had counted the days since my last period and knew I was probably fertile. I got pregnant. My prenatal tests showed all was well, but I kept it a secret from everyone else.

I had never cheated before, and I wanted to tell my husband but chickened out every time. Finally my usually flat tummy started sporting a baby bump, and I thought, well, here it comes, my husband is going to notice and divorce me and I certainly can't blame him. I had been on my own most of my life, so I figured I would handle being a single mom.

As my pregnancy progessed, my husband didn't say a word about how I conceived. He still made love to me, asked if I was seeing a doctor, and he started redecorating the house and getting things ready for the baby. I don't like conflict either, so I just pretended as well. He was with me in the delivery room when I gave birth to a healthy son who is now a toddler. My husband is a wonderful father and I think I'm being a good mom, but I wish he would have yelled at me at least. I'm grateful we're just moving forward but what I did was wrong and I feel like we should have settled things openly.