Woman Finding Out Partner Married With Kid Splits Views: 'Tell Her'

A woman has been left torn after discovering the man she has been enjoying a casual relationship with is a married father.

It's a situation that has seen her abruptly end the relationship, yet she remains in two minds over whether to tell his wife. Worse still, after taking the dilemma to Mumsnet, she found users equally conflicted on the issue.

The unfortunate reality is that cheating is a relatively common occurrence.

In a YouGovAmerica survey, one in five U.S. adults admitted they had been unfaithful to a partner with the study finding little discernible difference between the sexes, save for the fact that more men (41 percent) than women (28 percent) admitted to thinking about cheating.

But while the study's results highlighted how cheating can, and often does happen, the predicament faced by one Mumsnet user is a little more complicated than most.

Writing in a post under the handle lyadw, a concerned woman detailed how she discovered the man she has been seeing for nine months is married and has a kid.

"I met him at a work event," she wrote. "He told me he was separated, with one child. He wasn't wearing a ring."

She said that at the time she wasn't looking for "anything serious" and they soon embarked on a casual relationship that saw them communicate over WhatApp and Facetime often "sexting/swapping pictures."

They met up on several occasions to have sex in a hotel, but she said she never suspected anything was wrong.

"I have never been to his house which I know is usually a red flag but it's something that genuinely never crossed my mind...I thought it would be easier to meet him there," she said.

Things changed, however, when, during one meet up, he casually mentioned that he had been busy doing something to raise money for charity.

She later Googled it, uncovering newspaper articles that featured pictures of her partner and his wife. From that she was able to find the wife's Facebook file which was full of pictures of them "looking happy together" with their child and one from a recent holiday which she realized he had actually called her from.

"I will never contact him again but it's left me feeling like s***," she said. "I have never (knowingly) been with a married man." Conflicted over whether to "tell his wife or just walk away," knowing that to confess would be like "throwing a bomb into her life," the woman turned to social media for advice.

Unfortunately, the response she got was similarly conflicted. "Tell the wife. I'd want to know," Pineappleflowers wrote. Isthismylifenow disagreed, commenting: "Just walk away. By telling her you are involving yourself into his life even more."

Mamato3boysand2dogs, meanwhile, though it was right to 'tell her" adding: "she is living a lie. Absolutely no one deserves that." ShandaLear concurred, writing: "If you don't you're effectively condoning his behavior. I would 100% want to know."

However, others like ChilliBandit thought it was best left alone. They wrote: "You've done the right thing by blocking him. I would just move on if I were you."

While Mumsnet users appeared torn over the dilemma, relationship and dating coach Kate Mansfield told Newsweek she should "walk away immediately" and resist any urge to contact his wife.

"Tempting as it is to tell his wife she should stay out of it. It's his business to sort out," she said. "Take the focus off of him, and seek some professional help to uncover why she was attracted to him in the first place. When we look honestly there are usually red flags that we refuse to look at, it's tempting to blame him as he is obviously in the wrong, but it's not going to help her to understand what really matters—why and is there a pattern of being attracted to unavailable men?"