Barkley rushed to answer, worried that the
noise might wake her six-week-old son..
However, it soon became clear that a
screaming baby was the least of her
problems..
''Calmly, this female voice I didn't recognise
announced:
"I've been dating your husband for three
months. We were together on the night your
son was born," ' she says.
'She told me that if I didn't believe her, I was
to check his bank account. Apparently, he'd
withdrawn £1,000 two months earlier, when I
was pregnant with his child, as a deposit on a
flat they were going to rent together as a little
love nest.'
It was a vicious blow to deliver to any woman,
not to mention someone who was hormonal,
sleep-deprived and vulnerable, having giving
birth only weeks earlier.
Adele, 39, a learning support worker from
Doncaster, rang her husband Paul, 40, at work
and ordered him home — immediately. He
raced back, fearing something was wrong with
his wife or son. When she confronted him, he
flatly denied it..
''He laughed in my face and said: "You're going
crackers, you must have post-natal
depression," ' says Adele. 'But I reeled off my
conversation with his misress and said: "I've
got her number here. Shall I call back and put
her on loudspeaker?"
Cornered, Paul confessed all. The woman was
someone he'd met on a night out. The pain,
Adele says, can best be described as a 'glass
figurine, thrown to the floor and shattering
into a thousand pieces'..
Paul was the only man she'd ever loved: as
well as Cain, who is now eight, the couple have
two older children, a 19-year-old son and 13-
year-old daughter. Her life, her trust in men,
her future and family would never be the
same again.
What makes a man cheat when his wife is
pregnant? Surely, there is no greater betrayal.
According to the psychologist Robert
Rodriguez, author of What's Your Pregnant Man
Thinking?, 10 per cent of fathers-to-be cheat
on their partners during pregnancy. Some say
they do it because they feel usurped by the
impending arrival and fear their position in
the family is being undermined..
Relate counsellor Denise Knowles, who has
counselled many couples — with varied
success — through these betrayals, says some
men try to excuse these dalliances as an
escape from the stress of stepping up to the
role of father and family provider.
Many attribute their betrayal to feeling
unloved and undesirable as sex is put on the
back burner.
Others, Denise says, claim they were driven
into the arms of another because they found
their wife's changing body a turn-off.
Ironically, Adele puts her husband's infidelity
down to his new-found body confidence:
around the time she became pregnant, Paul
lost an astonishing 12 stone after being
overweight for years. He revelled in the
attention he was getting from other women.
Adele says:
'Paul basically accused me of letting myself go
and blamed me for making him stray.
'I've been a size 10 all my adult life and always
took pride in my appearance, so dealing with
the big changes in my body during pregnancy
was always hard for me.
'The curvy woman who stared back at me when
I looked in the mirror took a bit of getting
used to and made me feel quite vulnerable.
'Ashamed though I am to admit it now, in
those dark months following my discovery of
Paul's affair, I would look at our son Cain and
wonder if he hadn't happened whether our
family would still be complete.'
Adele threw Paul out of the family home
shortly after that bombshell phone call in
October 2006. He moved in with his mistress,
but the relationship foundered after a few
months. Then, in December 2007, Paul begged
for another chance. Keen to give their
marriage another go for the sake of their
children, Adele agreed.
But the relationship was never the same again.
The husband Adele loved and trusted had
gone. They eventually split for good in
December 2013.
'I should never have forgiven him. I would
have spared myself and my children a lot of
heartache. There's simply no forgiving a
betrayal like that,' she says.
When contacted by the Mail, Paul admitted
he'd cheated on his wife when she was
pregnant, but blamed her for the split.
'It happened because she was a control freak,'
he said. 'She wanted to control everything I
did.
'It happened because she was a control freak,'
he said. 'She wanted to control everything I
did.
'I'm not sorry I cheated because by then we
were clutching at straws pretending our
marriage would work.
'We got back together afterwards for the sake
of the children, but it couldn't work because,
instead of forgiving and forgetting, every time
we argued — which was often — she'd sling
insults at me for being unfaithful.'
Clinical psychologist Roy Shuttleworth says it is
not unusual for partners who have been
forgiven after an affair to struggle to make the
relationship work.
'Whatever desire drove them to create a
distance between them and their partner by
cheating is often still there,' he says.
'So it's not a huge surprise when they keep
sabotaging the relationship with their poor
behaviour.'
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