I Had an Affair with Her Son. Now, She’s Family.
By: Shannon Ashley
Tags: Family, Love, Parenting, Relationships, Life

My ex and I had a very volatile and very dramatic breakup. Our arguments about his responsibilities and the future happened daily and lasted more than two years — far longer than our actual romance.

It was awful, and neither he nor I were in the right. I was clinging to him and constantly waiting on scraps of his attention. He was content to lead me on when it was convenient and similarly push me away. I wish I’d moved on sooner, but it took me time to figure out who I was and adjust to motherhood.

After giving birth, I discovered that my ex was consistently painting me as this crazy woman who was obsessed with him, or, determined to ruin his life.

I got so sick of my ex labeling me like that, I began taking screenshots of our conversations and emailed them to his girlfriend and mother. The texts were embarrassing and explicit, and definitely not the sort of interactions I wanted anyone to know about. But they seemed to be the only proof I had to show my ex was lying. Despite his allegations against me, the texts made it clear that he was continuing to come onto me and jerk me around with his definition of a “labeless” relationship — one that he kept secret from everyone else.

His girlfriend and mother never replied to my emails, and yes, there were multiples, but they clearly got back to my ex, and he hated me for revealing too much. To be honest, though, that was my other purpose in sending those emails.

I wanted to be free from our dysfunctional and addictive relationship, and I suspected that “outing” my ex would help make it happen.

For the most part, I was right. Or, at least, it set things in motion for me to move back to Minnesota just a few months after our daughter was born. She and I didn’t return to Tennessee until she turned two-and-a-half, because, by that point, I trusted myself to live closer to her dad without getting into more drama with him.

The decision to move back down to Tennessee was complicated, of course. But by then, I’d proven to myself that I could manage motherhood on my own. And I never wanted my ex to be able to say I kept our daughter from him. At the very least, I wanted them to be close enough in proximity that they would have a chance at a father-daughter relationship.

So, we moved, but we moved to his hometown, which offered cheap rent, but no public transportation, and I didn’t have a car or license. My ex had been living about half an hour away in a bigger city, until he abruptly moved an hour further just before we arrived.

His mother, however, was closer, and she often offered to take me and my daughter out to run errands. I was nervous, at first, to reconnect with her. I gained a lot of weight after giving birth and still felt ashamed about the entire situation, plus, the overall direction of my life.

Even though I knew I was still getting back on my feet, I felt deeply inadequate.

So, I was pleasantly relieved when his mother reached out and treated me kindly — and not at all with the attitude that my ex suggested she had about me. In fact, during our very first trip to the grocery store, I realized that she didn’t blame me for the situation at all and that she recognized her son was constantly making life choices that didn’t jive with fatherhood.