I Stole a Married Man from His Wife and Three Kids. A Year Later, Pregnant and Happy, I Found a Note at the Door. I Read It — and Everything Inside Me Went Cold…

I met him at work. He was older, confident, successful. He wore a wedding ring but said the marriage was dead, that he and his wife were only staying together for the kids. I believed him. Or I wanted to believe him.

We started dating secretly. He said he would soon get a divorce, that it was just a matter of waiting for the right moment. I waited. For months. And then I got tired of waiting and gave him an ultimatum: either he leaves his family or he leaves me for his wife.

He chose me. Or so I thought.

When his wife found out, she called me. She cried on the phone, begged me to leave him alone, talked about the children, the fifteen years of marriage. I was cold, harsh.

— Stop whining, — I told her. — He made his choice. He is with me. If you were a good wife, he wouldn’t have left.

I hung up the phone feeling victorious. Naïve, foolish girl who thought love justified everything.

We moved in together. He moved in with his things, leaving behind a home, a wife, three kids. I was happy. I thought I had finally found my family, my love.

Six months later, I was pregnant. He said he was happy. We started setting up the nursery, picking names, planning the future. Everything seemed perfect.

A year passed since the day he left his wife. I was seven months pregnant, happy and confident that life had turned out just the way I wanted.

That day I returned from the doctor with the results of another ultrasound. I wanted to show him the baby’s photo. I approached the apartment door and saw a note taped to it.

My hands trembled as I tore it off. Something inside already knew that something terrible was about to happen.

I unfolded the slip of paper and read:

“I’m leaving. I met someone else. She is younger, understands me better, doesn’t pressure me with family obligations. It’s easy with her, like it once was with you. Sorry. P.S. The kid — your problem. I’ll pay child support through the court if you demand it.”

I read these lines three times, unable to believe it. This is a joke. This is impossible. Not after everything we’ve been through.

I called him — the number was out of reach. Wrote to him — blocked everywhere. Social media, messengers, email. He disappeared from my life as suddenly as he had once disappeared from his family’s life.

I sat down on the floor in the hallway, clutching the note to my stomach, unable to breathe. It was like a punch to the chest. Did I destroy someone else’s family for this? Did I take a father from three children for a man who left me pregnant a year later?

A few days later, I found out the details. A mutual acquaintance told me that he had been seeing someone from his new office for two months. She’s twenty-four, free, without commitments. Just like I was a year ago when we started.

I realized — he is incapable of being true to anyone. Not to the wife he left. Not to me. He just finds a new, more convenient version of a relationship, and when obligations, problems, responsibilities arise — he leaves for the next one.

I was not special. I was just another one.

I gave birth to my son alone. In the delivery room, next to me was a nurse, but it should have been him. I looked at the tiny face of the child and cried — not from the joy of motherhood, but from shame and despair.

He pays child support — the minimum, through the court. He’s never seen the son, never asked how we are. He lives with his new girlfriend, and judging by social media, he is happy.

And I was left alone. With a child, with guilt, with the realization that I destroyed another family for the illusion of love.

Three years passed. I accidentally met his ex-wife in a store. She looked at me, at my son in the stroller, and there was no hatred in her eyes. Only tired sorrow.

— Now you know how it feels, — she said quietly. — To be abandoned by a person you believed in. The difference is, I lost fifteen years and a father for my children. And you — just a year and your illusions.

She left, and I stood there unable to move. She was right. I destroyed her life, and he destroyed mine. And now we both have to pay for this man’s choices.

I do not seek excuses. I did everything consciously. I thought that love gave me the right to interfere in another marriage, to destroy another family. And I received a lesson I will never forget: a person capable of betraying one family will betray a second. And a third. And any next one.

My son grows up without a father. Sometimes he asks where dad is. I don’t know what to tell him. How to explain that his father — is a person who only knows how to leave?

Now I understand the woman to whom I once said “stop whining.” I understand her pain, her despair, her attempts to save the family. And I live with this burden every day.

Do you believe that a person who left a family for a lover can be faithful in new relationships? Or is someone who betrays once doomed to betray again?

***************************

I took a married man away from his wife and three kids. Back then, I believed love justified everything. I became cold and cruel. His wife called me, crying, begging me to leave him alone. And I replied:
– Stop whining. He made his choice. He’s with me.
A year passed. I was pregnant and happy. Certain that my life had finally turned out the way I wanted.
I came back from the doctor, walked up to my door, and saw a note.
I read it, and my blood ran cold.
It said…
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