My Wife Pampered Our First Child And Ignored The Rest Until The Truth Came Out

We have three children: the first a boy, the second a girl, and the third another boy. They look carefully planned if you consider the age difference between them. It’s three years between all of them. The first child was very difficult to come by. We were married for four years before he came along. We visited hospitals, talked to doctors of all forms and specialties until one day he came along.

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We named him Israel because we wrestled with God and fate before he came along. He’s my wife’s favorite, and I could understand why. He was the one who was at the tip of her breast the longest. He spent longer days in our bedroom even when his own room was fully furnished to receive him. When it came to the school he had to attend, my wife selected the fancy school for him.

What you suffer to gain, you suffer to protect, so my wife did everything within her power to seek the best protection for him. The next two children who came along felt normal. They were not special. Their births weren’t met with any fanfare. Don’t get me wrong, we were equally happy to have them, but they came when all had been said and done.

It got to a point when I felt my wife was doing too much for him at the detriment of the others, so I raised a concern. She called me a liar. According to her, I was the one seeing what wasn’t there. I gave her instances where she showed favoritism—where she gave him more food and attention than the others. I said, “They are kids, but they are not blind. They see what you’re doing, and you better stop it.”

One dawn, it was raining and thunder started roaring. It was loud and very consistent. Sometimes it hit right over our roof. None of the kids woke up, but Israel did. He ran to our room, telling us he was scared of the thunder. My wife bundled him up and gave him a place to sleep between us, all the while telling him not to be scared.

From that day on, anything that looked like rain would push this boy into our room, and my wife would give him space to sleep. He was gradually using our bedroom as his own when one day he entered, and I shouted at him to go back to his room. My wife woke up from her sleep to see him standing there. I kept shouting, “Go back to your room before I pick a belt.”

He was still standing there. My wife said, “Why are you shouting at a child who’s already scared? Come here, Israel. Come and sleep.”

I got up, held him by the arms, and pulled him to his room and placed him on his bed. “Look at your siblings,” I said, pointing at them. “Are they not sleeping peacefully? Why can’t you do the same? If you step into our room ever again, I will beat you.”

My wife got offended. She said I was maltreating him when he was only being a child who was scared of the rain. She left our bedroom and went to share a bed with Israel. That wasn’t the first or the last time. Each time it rained, because he couldn’t come to our room, my wife would get up and go to their room and spend the night with them.

This preferential treatment went on for so long it caused a separation between the children. Israel didn’t come to me when he had a problem. He would go to his mom even when I was the one who could solve his problem. The rest of the kids came to me naturally. Israel one day asked his mom why I hated him.

I heard and gave him the answer he was looking for. “I don’t hate you. You’re the first child, and you ought to behave like one instead of running to your mom at every little chance. If you don’t stop acting like a spoilt child, you’ll think I hate you.” His mom added, “Don’t worry, I’m always here for you.”

The school of the children did a carols service before they vacated for Christmas. All three kids were playing roles in their class, so when they came home, we took them through what they were supposed to do and how to memorize their Bible verses. On the day of the event, I couldn’t go. My wife went.

When they came back, I asked her how they did, and she said, “Oh, they did marvelously well…” And then she focused on what Israel did, saying nothing about what the others did. She showed me the videos she took. She didn’t capture a single moment of the two other kids. Every video was about Israel. I asked her, “The others didn’t perform? Where is the video of their performance?”

She twisted my question and concluded that because I didn’t like Israel, I was eager to see the others instead of him. “This is the reason I focus on Israel, because you like the rest and hate him. How can you have three children and choose to love only one?”

This issue escalated into a huge fight that defined our marriage and everything that came with it. Even deep into the night, my wife was still ranting, accusing me of what didn’t exist and shouting at me to change my perception toward the boy and love him equally. It didn’t make sense how she fought back to make a small issue turn into a furnace. All night, I kept asking myself, “Yes, we struggled to have him, but he’s ten years old now. Isn’t that enough time to relax about him?”

Before I was able to nap a little that night, I had concluded there was more to Israel than met the eye. “Maybe my wife got him from a special place, that’s why. Or he’s not mine. Look at the kids, he’s quite different physically—stout when the others are all slim. No, I have to find out.”

So I secretly carried out a DNA test. When the results came and I was called, I didn’t go for it immediately. By that time, our marriage was good, and we were laughing again, so I had rested my mind from the thoughts I was having when I did the test. But the facility didn’t stop calling me. They said they could deliver it to me if I was busy.

One day after work, I passed through and got it. I opened it right there, and it said the probability of paternity was zero. I asked the guy there to explain it to me. “Zero means I’m the real dad, right?” He gave a wry smile. I understood it even before he spoke.

I was shaking while walking home. I took my wife out of the house so the children wouldn’t know what was happening. I showed her the results, and her face changed immediately. “Does it mean he’s not our child?” she asked, pretending to be dumb about what was happening. I asked, “Where did you get him from? I knew it from the way you treated him. Who is the father? Say it before I start spreading the news.”

All she did was cry and accuse me of showing fake results. She did her own test too, and we did tests for all the kids. The other two were mine—Israel wasn’t.

While I was breaking apart and everything around me was a blur, I knew I was walking out of the marriage, but I wanted to know who was responsible first. She couldn’t say it, and to date, she hasn’t been able to pinpoint Israel’s father because the men involved were many.

What Nobody Tells You About Divorce

I got the divorce I was looking for and rented a new place close to my parents’ house so my mom could help me raise the two kids who were mine. This didn’t happen yesterday but writing about it now makes the wounds feel raw, like I had the cut yesterday. We were frustrated, but nothing gave her the license to cheat and have a child. She’s the one carrying all the shame now, so she has left town to a place where no one knows her story.

—Eric

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