I caught my husband sleeping with his office temp – now she’s pregnant but I still want to forgive him

DEAR DEIDRE: I VISITED my mum for a long weekend and came home to discover my husband in bed with his office temp.

We have been together for eight years. He’s 37, I am 33. This woman is only 24, slim, dark-haired and very pretty. Me and my husband have both done some tit-for-tat cheating during the past couple of years and we’ve had silly arguments over trivial things. But I knew deep down he only wanted me.

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I went ballistic when I caught them, threw her out and made him sleep on the settee for a week. We both knew this woman. She is a single mum with a four-year-old son who lives around the corner from us. We’d often chat with her down the pub on a Friday night, when her mum has her little boy.

Her ex cheated on her and walked out last year. My husband recommended her for the job at his firm to help her out. She left the job after I caught them together and I thought things were starting to calm down for us. But then we heard that she is pregnant and saying my husband is the father.

He is angry with her for telling him she was on the Pill and wants nothing to do with her or the child when it is born. He says it was a moment of madness and he has no feelings for her. She came on to him and he was too weak to refuse.

But I am devastated. I replay every scenario over in my head. I had stopped thinking about the image of them lying in bed together, but now it is there all the time.

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I love him as much as I always did, and he wants us to be together and for this not to break us up. He says we have been through too much to let that happen but I see her walking down the street, all smiles and looking smug.

I hate her. I do want to forgive him but I just don’t know if I ever can. Do I give him the benefit of the doubt that he won’t cheat on me again?

DEIDRE SAYS: I wonder just how smug she really feels, expecting a baby as a single mum. Did she actually lie to your husband about being on the Pill, or in the heat of the moment did he not think to ask?

I hope you can rebuild the trust in your marriage but it shouldn’t be at the expense of a child having a caring dad. If this woman is indeed pregnant by your husband, he can’t just turn his back. He has a legal obligation to help support his child.

If a conversation is likely to get heated, write to her together. Explain you would insist on DNA tests but that your husband would then fulfil his obligations.

He is a grown-up and no one forced him to have unprotected sex. None of this is the baby’s fault. I’d think that doing right by this baby would make your husband far less likely to cheat again but my e-leaflet Cheating – Can You Get Over It? may help.

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