My cheating boyfriend has a baby son

DEAR BEL,

I AM in a relationship, but my boyfriend cheated and had a child by someone else. He did not tell me about the child. I found out what had happened by going through his phone.

I have asked him to get a blood test to prove paternity, but he keeps saying: ‘My mother says he looks like me.’ I think he may be scared to know one way or the other.

He continues to take care of this child and does not seem to care about how I feel.

I don’t feel like I should be in this relationship if he doesn’t have enough respect for me to take the DNA test. Can you let me know your opinion on this situation? Thanks! MEL

YOUR very terse email (where I even had to insert words for clarification) made me wonder whether young people like you (I’m guessing you are under 30) have, because of texting and social media, lost the ability to communicate properly with anybody.

It’s a serious question and not meant in any way to be a put-down.

You see, I would have liked so much more information — such as how old you are, how long you have been dating, whether or not you have moved in together, whether your boyfriend formed a relationship with the other girl or was it a one-night stand? And is he actually paying child support? That kind of thing.

I ask you to consider whether, when you communicate with friends, family and your boyfriend, you give due thought to what you are saying and how you say it.

Please think about this, because in the long run it may help you. You need to give in order to receive.

Without any more information I shall have to reply with a quick, gut-level response. Sometimes those are the best, given the hopeless messes people make of their lives and the convoluted emotional hoops they jump through to justify that chaos. Sometimes you just have to cut to the chase.

So yes, it will be obvious to any sensible person that you certainly should not continue with this relationship.

Your boyfriend’s mother has met the poor baby he fathered so carelessly, and thinks it looks like him. Does that suggest she doesn’t care much about your relationship with her son?

If he doubted the paternity for a minute, then surely he’d be willing to take the DNA test? Since he doesn’t want to find out, that probably indicates he feels involved with the baby and feels some sort of bond with the mother (and I should jolly well hope so!).

The fact that he cheated on you and is now continuing a sort of relationship with mother and baby seems ample proof that he has no intention of committing himself to you — now or in the future.

Therefore I would like you to look in the mirror for a while and then say aloud: ‘Hey, girlfriend, listen to me — why the hell are you wasting your precious time?’

Then repeat it a couple of times more, getting louder.

I think many of us would benefit from this mirror-interrogation. Ask yourself whether that face in the glass looks like someone who is respected, or disrespected, by the man she loves.

But what am I thinking? You didn’t use the word ‘love’ at all.

You might have been in too much of a hurry to press ‘send’, or maybe you don’t truly care for the man at all, but just want to have a boyfriend. Some women are like that, aren’t they?

It seems to me that the way forward is to cut your losses, end this entanglement and spend some time on your own to work out who you are, what you can bring to a mature relationship, and what you most want for the rest of your life.