A few days ago, I have received a call from someone telling his story after a successful ‘0’ alimony paid divorce. A divorce that is considered a dream for many husbands with children, didn’t take him anywhere to fulfill his desires to have a family life afterwards. Here is his story written by me in his language. –

Today, I am going to tell you something that no one would have told you earlier. MRAs may know about this problem but the issue needs to be understood in a broader perspective. While extramarital affairs have become very common nowadays, its long-lasting consequences for men are not discussed fairly. Consequences that follow your exposing your adulterous wife, after getting evidence of her affair, illicit child (which is very difficult to get) and getting a mutual consent divorce. But the divorce from your cheating wife in such cases, can’t really ensure your wishes of having a family again,e.g. getting married a second time.

Extramarital relationships have become very common nowadays and the consequences of divorces to men with children need to be understood better.

Before I proceed, I will tell you the case in brief so that you understand the background. I got married in 2005 and within 6 months, I caught my wife’s affair with her another friend. Long calls, lewd messages, messages at night time, messages during our private time, while we were holidaying and what not. Initially, she kept telling me that all these calls were from her family and friends but while she took female friends’ names, the voice from the other side always seemed to be a male voice.

Check Out My Adultery Series – Here

It didn’t take time for me to understand that she was having an affair with another guy and she was continuously telling me lies. I laid a trap and within two years of our marriage, I caught them in my house. It followed a huge ruckus in both families but even after catching them red-handed, I was the one who turned out to be the fool. I was not aware of the gender-biased laws then and I used to think of our legal system as fair to punish criminals irrespective of one’s gender. I didn’t know that equality propagated in media was fake.

Soon, I realized how wrong I was about our laws and I was forced to live with her as I was afraid of the consequences and I believed in her cries and promises that she will never keep in touch with her lover. I wanted to give her another chance but later realized that it was all lies, and they became cleverer in their rendezvous and secret affair and that had actually gone worse. If I didn’t find any more messages or calls in her cell phone, that was because those were deleted immediately after those happened secretly without my knowledge.  So, while I was being happy that after 2 years of problems, she changed her adulterous life, she actually didn’t and continued her secret meetings with her lover in our own house and the result was that she got pregnant in 2009. We didn’t have any physical relationship at that time, so I was completely surprised. But without any evidence, I could not do anything.

So, after two years I secretly got my child’s DNA test done from a private lab. Now let me warn you about these tests. No DNA test is considered a piece of concluding evidence, unless it is ordered by a competent court under certain circumstances; and in a matrimonial case, where the husband is the aggrieved party, it is never ordered. So, if you as a husband demand a ‘legal’ DNA test, you may dream about that for decades, but that day will never come. You will only keep taking rounds of our courts with the hope that it will happen one day, and that day will never come.

So, I chose the simpler way of getting a respectful mutual divorce with ‘0’ alimony. Now, many men may consider that itself is a big victory in this biased legal system, that I didn’t pay alimony to my adulterous wife or to her illicit child (btw courts consider no child as an illicit child). The DNA test evidence from the private lab and a few of her confession emails to her lover were submitted in the court as prima-facie evidence to file my divorce case on adultery. We were constantly asking for a DNA test, but as she filed an HMA 24 maintenance case, only that case was being heard. In parallel, all other criminal cases filed by her were being heard but not my petitions.

So, my decision of agreeing to a Mutual Divorce after two years of cases seemed right, because after that I stooped traveling between cities and giving money to my lawyers.

Till my divorce, everything was fine and smooth. My family members were happy that at least we didn’t get arrested in her false criminal cases or pay any alimony to my cheating wife. I had a feeling of defeat though as I could not punish her. I also did not get alimony from her even though she was at fault. She was not jailed despite her committing domestic violence against me, despite ruining my life. I was happy that I could, to some extent, save my hard-earned money and time.

But even after divorce, I did not realize that my wishes of social life will not be fulfilled. Initially, I did not want to marry, but after some time I wanted to start trying for a second marriage. I have always been a family person. So, I wanted to give it another try. While after the first divorce, many men decide not to marry, I wanted to give it a try. Even though I understand it is risky for men, I hoped to get one like-minded woman.

But after almost six-years of search, I went back to square one. Yes, I agree that I hate feminists and rejected many for their feminist viewpoints, but there were many women where both of us were interested to proceed, but there was only one point that broke the future relationship chances – The illicit child of my ex-wife. The child doesn’t even remember me now, my ex didn’t use my name in his school. In fact, she didn’t give anybody’s name as the child’s father in school records.

The child doesn’t know my name but in all possible alliances that I tried, all-girls’ and their families had a problem with the child who is not my child and who probably doesn’t even know my name. The concern that kept coming in all discussions was “he can come back any time and demand your property”. I am here talking about those women who probably didn’t want to marry because of my money because they were equally well-off if not more.

While women refuse to marry men with children from previous marriage even when the children do not live with the men, single mothers continue to expect men without children to marry them.

The concern is, why do women imagine a distant possibility which may never happen? Or even if that happens after the boy becomes an adult, he still needs to prove that he is my child. But no one is ready to buy that argument, because they say, courts will not listen to me and will not order any DNA test. They say that in my mutual divorce agreement, I agreed that I didn’t have any more complaint against my wife. The concern here is, I didn’t ‘win’ my divorce based on my allegation of her ‘adultery’ and proved that the child is her illicit child. Even though I tried to make them understand, that it is just impossible in India to prove a child as ‘illicit child’, as no court will ever give such a judgment because no court can declare a child as ‘bastard’ and hence proving that he is not my child is an impossible situation to achieve. Courts will not give a DNA test order easily in these cases.

So, what should a man do in such cases? If one gets a mutual divorce in such cases with no alimony, still a man can’t get married a second time. Now you MRAs will say – ‘good for him’, ‘let him enjoy’, ‘what’s there in a marriage’, ‘no woman can be trusted’, ‘you don’t know your wife until you meet her in court’, etc. But the point is, if a man in a similar situation wants to get married a second time, he has only one option, marrying a woman with one child or more.

During my search for a partner for my second marriage, I found many women with children who were interested in marrying me. But my idea was clear. I didn’t want to marry a woman with a kid. The reason was simple, no matter what, the child (who is someone else’s child) will become my responsibility after our marriage. Why should I take responsibility for someone else’s child? If I really needed to take responsibility for someone else’s child, what problem did my wife’s illicit child had? I loved him as well. So, it was better for me to continue with that cheating wife instead. So, I rejected all such alliance offers.

A situation emerges where even an illicit child seems better

So, you can see that while women with children living with them don’t hesitate to advance to men without children for marriage, they don’t want to marry men whose wife had an illicit child. In these cases, women marrying these men don’t need to take care of any child, nor the future imaginary burden (if any) will be on them, there is no guarantee that the child will come back to the man in future and demand his property, but still, all women rejected the alliance. To my surprise, this was true for some women with children living with them as well.

Here lies a bigger social consequence for men. Men are always viewed as providers and women want to pass on their burden to men. Like in my case, those women with a child (or more) from their first marriage, approached me for marriage, wanted to pass on their child’s responsibilities to me, whereas none of them would have agreed to marry me if they didn’t have a child. They would have imagined my wife’s illicit child coming back to me demanding my property in the future. So, even though apparently it may seem that these women are not greedy for my property, they still don’t want to marry such men for a fictitious reason.

Even though I understand that children should not be declared ‘bastards’ by courts, but why protecting women’s dignity becomes so important in adultery cases? In such cases, courts say DNA test evidence is not concluding, as DNA test says the probability of a child belonging to a man. So, there is always a probability, however small, that the child belongs to that man. For instance, the DNA test may say, there is 95% probability that the child doesn’t belong to the lineage of the man, but still, there is that 5% chance that he belongs to the man. So, in these cases, the testimony of the mother in the court matters. There is another catch here, Whatever the mother says in court regarding the father of the child is considered as truth.

So, the question is, why isn’t divorce granted to a man the moment a wife deviates from her marriage vows and start an adulterous relationship? After all, when a woman herself deviates from her marriage vows (that prohibits a woman from going astray) and engages in an adulterous relationship, then why is that marriage not annulled immediately with the punishment given to her? The leniency shown to women in such cases only leading to more fatherless children, immoral women and breaking families. This is also leading to women not able to marry such men even when they agree that this is only an accident for the man.

Read – Seven Vows of Hindu Marriage

Men suffer the most in adultery cases. They suffer by paying maintenance to such women and their illicit children. But when they get zero alimony divorce, they also don’t get the option of any possibility of getting another family. They are left to die alone.

In this case, I don’t want to get into the debate of whether the second marriage will succeed or whether the new woman will be supportive at all. The point here is, a man is deprived of all his life’s choices because of laws of morons, foolish judges, and the whole system which is extremely biased against men. It is happening at a time when we are supposed to live in a patriarchal society biased against women. But the reality is, even after cheating on me for six years, having an illicit child, subjecting me and my family to extreme cruelty for six years, my cheating wife is now happily-married with another guy (her lover ran away), and I am not getting any woman for my second marriage- because my wife had an illicit child.

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