Son learns a secret his mother fears will “destroy my husband and my entire family”

The author of the original post (OP) posted on Reddit’s relationship advice forum this week about the betrayal that came back to haunt her after her son made a discovery that exposed her past tactless behavior.

While she was hoping for some helpful advice, most commenters advised her to prepare for a divorce because it might be difficult for her husband to accept almost 30 years of lies.

Read on to find out what happened.

The woman began her post by saying that she and her husband, to whom she has been married for 32 years, have two children — a 27-year-old son and a 30-year-old daughter — as well as four grandchildren.

“I wish it was as short as possible, but I am so scared of what will happen to our lives now that this secret is out,” she wrote, saying her son had recently arrived and she knew immediately that “something was wrong.”

“At this stage I was already very worried, I didn’t think that what he would tell me could destroy our lives,” she wrote, before revealing her big secret.

“My son told me he took an ancestry DNA test because, like his father, he was interested in geneology and wanted his children to know where they came from and what their history was,” the OP wrote, saying her son learned that he and the man he believed to be his biological father “do not share DNA.”

“The secret I kept for 28 years is no longer a secret. I knew my son could have been the result of a mistake I made early in our marriage, but when he was born he looked so much like my husband and I that I ignored it and convinced myself he was his,” wrote the woman, who said her one-night stand with one of her husband’s friends happened when the couple were “going through a rough patch” in their marriage.

“One of my husband’s friends was in our lives when he was going through a breakup and we were trying to be there for him. My husband was at work and his friend and I were drinking and just talking about life and got drunk and yes, had sex,” she wrote. “I don’t even remember, and the next morning his friend and I were so embarrassed and swore we would never bring it up again.”

While she said she “dismissed it as a one-time mistake” and never felt “tempted to cheat again,” she added that around the same time, she and her husband were trying for their second child and she got pregnant. “It was so long ago, I can’t even remember it exactly,” she said of the affair, adding that her son wants his mother to tell his father the truth “because he’ll find out soon enough through Ancestry.”

She then asked readers for advice, adding that “I’m disgusted that this is going to destroy my husband, my whole family,” while admitting that “I know I was POS at the time for what I did.”

“I can’t erase it, but I can’t fathom the pain we’re all going to go through,” she concluded. “My husband doesn’t know yet, but I have to tell him before he does.”

OP received a ton of advice, though many people shared her sentiment – that her long-kept secret would have tragic consequences for her marriage and family.

“So when your husband finds out, it’s important to remember that for him, this didn’t happen 30 years ago. For him, it happened when he found out, and anything you say to the contrary essentially invalidates that,” reads the top comment, which has 8.3k upvotes at the time of this article’s publication.

“Any credit you think you’ve built since then isn’t real, it’s just in your head,” they added. “From your husband’s perspective, it’s something that just happened. Be understanding about it.”

“Him finding out his son isn’t biologically his is the second atomic bomb in his universe,” read the response to that comment, which also suggested that the OP read a book titled “How to Help Your Spouse Heal From an Affair.”

Many commenters weren’t so helpful, though – instead insisting that she had been hiding this awful truth for nearly 30 years.

“She kept this secret for about 28 years and would only tell him because she was finally caught. It’s not just the betrayal, the cheating. There’s also the betrayal of living a lie for so long,” one wrote.

He added: “28 minutes is ‘I made a mistake when I was drunk’, 28 years is ‘I lied to you for 28 years’.”

“28 years of seeing the same friend at his house and cynically being a part of his life while he was unaware of it. Man, OP really screwed this up,” another commented.

Others told her she should “mentally prepare for divorce,” as many of them said any of his reactions – short of aggression – were justified.

Despite her post garnering nearly 2,000 comments, she only responded to three of them. In one, she reiterated that her son had taken an ancestry DNA test … while in another, she insisted that her story was not false, and that her son — or someone claiming to be him — had not posted his side of the story anywhere else on Reddit.

The most insightful response, however, came from someone who sympathized with the woman’s “poor son” who “had to carry around this secret.” Her response: “My son told me the DNA result is irrelevant. He’s his father and that’s all there is to it.”

What do you think about this?