Dear Pastor,

Please help me. I am British and my fiancé is Jamaican. We have been together for six years and I love him dearly. He has hurt me so much that I cannot accept this situation. I have a grown child but he has none. I am 47 and he is 44.

Three years ago, I got pregnant and had a miscarriage. He immediately impregnated a girlfriend of his who didn't have any children. We broke up, but she also had a miscarriage and I took him back. I became pregnant again last July and I had another miscarriage. I told him I wouldn't try again due to my age. We agreed that when he is ready to get a child, we would separate because I am not willing to consent to him impregnating a woman whilst in our relationship. I have just found out that he has a week-old daughter with the same woman he cheated with three years ago. He got her pregnant a month after my second miscarriage. I am heartbroken.

He says he loves me and she is only his babymother. He says it is common in Jamaica to accept these circumstances but I feel deceived, and he has destroyed my planned future. Surely, if I stay with him I would be a fool as he has proven he cannot be trusted? He swears that you will say otherwise and I promised I would follow your advice as it is impartial.

A.G.

Dear A.G.,

If you plan to stay with your husband, you should expect to hear that he has another child. What he has not told you is that he has never really ended the intimate relationship with the woman he calls his babymother. And believe it or not, he will always pay more attention to her because his desire is to be a father. So whenever he is not with you, he would be visiting his babymother and his child. And if you were to fuss about it, he would remind you that a good father has to spend time with his child or children.

I must also tell you that the day is going to come when he would tell you that he would love to have his child spend some time at the house with him, so you would have to agree to play the role of a stepmother and also cooperate with the child's mother. Both of you would have to live amicably and even become very close friends. The question is: are you willing to face up to what I have said? If you are not, this man and you might have to go your separate ways. Laying down rules won't improve the relationship between this man and you.

But before I go, let me tell you that some women who have not been able to have children for their husbands have allowed them to have children with other women. Sometimes these children grow up to love their stepmothers more than their biological mothers. But some of these women constantly antagonise the wives of these men and the children are often disrespectful to their stepmothers.

I am afraid that your husband planned to have a child or perhaps more with this woman and he needs to come clean so that you can decide what to do about the relationship.

Pastor