My Ex Demanded Child Support After Cheating—But She Still Won’t Prove the Kid Is Mine

A Questionable Pregnancy and the Confrontation

Then one day she sat me down with tears in her eyes and said she was pregnant. I was stunned.

We hadn’t been trying; in fact, we’d barely been intimate for over a month before that. I travel for work sometimes and I had just gotten back from a week-long conference.

I was also sick as hell that entire week like nyquil fever not getting out of bed sick. But somehow she said it must have happened right when I got home.

I did the math and it didn’t add up. But again I wanted to believe her.

I wanted to be the man she married and I wanted to be a dad. So I shut up and committed.

I painted the nursery. I worked extra hours to save for a better place.

I even started therapy to deal with my trust issues, thinking maybe the problem was me. Our daughter Lily was born in the spring.

She was beautiful, I mean it. She looked like a porcelain doll.

Everyone said she looked just like Clare. No one said she looked like me ever, not even as a joke.

Still I held her and cried the day she was born. I promised her I’d always be there.

I meant it. For about a year things limped along.

Clare and I barely spoke unless it was about the baby. She always had an excuse not to be intimate, not to spend time together, and not to go to therapy with me.

I was basically living with a roommate who resented me. And then I made the mistake of checking her phone.

There was a text from a contact saved as M. The message read, “He still doesn’t know i feel bad but I can’t stop thinking about last night it’s always better with you.”

My hands went numb. I kept scrolling.

There were dozens of messages and pictures. There were jokes about me and about how clueless I was.

I felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. I confronted her.

She screamed and denied it. She said the texts were old or taken out of context.

Then she smashed her phone on the floor and broke it. She went into full meltdown mode.

She cried on the kitchen floor and said I was emotionally abusive for going through her phone. Somehow I ended up apologizing.

I stayed. I know how weak that sounds but I stayed for Lily.