TL;DR: My wife and I have been together for 5 years, having recently gotten married and had a baby. Today I found out that my wife is two years older than I had previously been led to believe and was using a misprint on her drivers license as her real age. Looking for help through this situation.
When my wife’s family was visiting earlier, we were talking about how long we would wait until we have our next child. I asked my mother in law how long she waited between having children and she said 4 years… My wife corrected her and said, “no, 6 years” which I could see my MIL reacted oddly to. Reason being, my brother in law is 37 and so if he’s 4 years older than my wife, that would make her 33. After seeing this exchange my heart sank because I knew in my gut that my wife had been lying to me about her age. This is because this event marked the third time in 2 months that I had encountered information that suggested my wife has been misrepresenting her age.
The first time was in the hospital when my wife was going into labor 2 months ago. On the display of the medical device, it listed her birth year as 1990, and I pointed out to the nurse that the date was incorrect. They said they would need proof in order to change that date, so my wife showed them her old ID (with her maiden name) and the nursing staff was able to make the change. I thought it was weird that the system would have the wrong date, but my wife said her old ID had a clerical error and that was the one that she had registered with the hospital. As I understand it, these errors are rare and can only be corrected by showing two copies of your identification (in this case, passport and birth certificate). For some reason, this stuck with me in my head and I started questioning myself on the subject, but ultimately I decided to believe my wife. After all, I had seen her ID before and it said 1992 and we filled out our marriage license with that date without issue.
The second time was a month ago when my MIL was visiting and talking about when my wife was a baby. Since I was already having questions about my wife’s birthday, I asked her, “and what year was this” to which she replied, “1990”. I asked her if she meant 1992 and she said “oh… yes”. At this point I was on high alert that something was up. I mentioned to my wife after the family had left that it was silly of her mom to forget what year she was born. My wife responded that she didn’t know what I was talking about and that she didn’t think her mom would have said that. I told her that I definitely heard her mom say that but she told me that I must have misheard her or her mom made a mistake. At this point, I went through my wife’s closest friends’ Instagram profiles and saw that the majority of them were in their mid thirties, not early thirties. Being overwhelmed by what I was seeing, I convinced myself that I was probably overthinking this whole situation and that the clerical error, her mom forgetting her birth year, and her being the youngest of all of her friends by a bit were unlikely coincidences but not impossible. I stopped short of going through my wife’s belongings as that would be a massive invasion of privacy and she would certainly be aware as she is home on maternity leave.
That leads us back to the present and the family discussion about her brother’s age gap. Of course, I brought this up with the thought of entertaining my suspicion, but seeing my MIL’s reaction to my wife’s correction told me everything I needed to know. This was the third insinuation that my wife was born in 1990, and at this point I couldn’t deny it any longer. I excused myself for a bathroom break and her family left shortly after I returned downstairs. We cleaned a bit and got the baby changed, and when my wife sat down I said that something was bothering me and we needed to talk. I explained to her that 3 times over the last couple of months, there’s been insinuations that my she is 33 years old. She responded that it’s because she is.
After some silence, I asked my wife to explain herself and she said that this all traces back to when she got her driver’s license in 2018. A clerical error had indeed been made, but one that printed her birth year as 1992 instead of the one on her birth certificate, which is 1990. As a result, she started getting jobs with that identification and for reasons that remain unclear, decided to use that age on her dating profile before we met. At that time, I was 23 and was only looking for matches between the ages of 20 and 26 so I distinctly remember her profile having that age setting, something which she still denies intentionally doing. On our first date, I even remember looking at her license since we got cocktails at dinner and sure enough her birth year indicated that she was 26. I asked her why she would lie about her real age, and she said that she never knew our relationship would get this serious… the longer time went on the bigger this lie became. She said that she has wanted to come clean about it for a long time but she was afraid early on in our relationship that I would have left her if I knew she was 5 years my senior. To be fair, she may be right as this would have been a larger age gap than I would have been comfortable with at 23. She even tried feeling me out at that time asking questions like, “what would you do if I were even older than I am” and I had answered basically that we probably wouldn’t be dating in that case. For fear of losing me, she let this lie fester, and she said that this lie was in the back of her head during every major milestone we shared together. When I asked her to be my girlfriend, when I asked her to move in with me, when I asked her to marry me, when we got pregnant with our baby, when we got married, when we welcomed our baby into the world… Unknown to me my wife had an inner conflict that our relationship had been built on a lie and each time one of those milestones passed she chose to keep up the act instead of coming clean.
She says now that she feels much better for having finally come clean, but now we’re so far down the road I don’t know what to do. I don’t quite know how I would have reacted in the past to this discovery, and that was before we got married and had a kid together. She’s my love and my best friend, but I can’t shake the feeling that our relationship was built on a lie. I’m also wondering what else my wife is capable of lying about if she could keep something as foundational as how old she is a secret for so long. In fact, all of her new documentation (license, passport) has her correct birth year on it now since she changed her name, so it was only a matter of time before I found out. My wife said that she recognized this and was getting ready to write me a letter on the subject. She even showed me her draft of this letter in her phone, dated back a month ago after the second event I mentioned earlier. Apparently, her mom had mentioned to her at that time that she needed to get that date “corrected”, and today reinforced the point that she needed to say something to me after the third event. MIL encouraged her to be positive about the situation and that she is still the same person, regardless of her age.
MIL is right about this part, I do love my wife as a partner and a mother, but I’m struggling with the notion that we would have never met if my wife didn’t lie about her age and probably would not have continued our relationship had I found out earlier. Now we have a great family life but it all started and was perpetuated by a lie. I have no idea how we are going talk about this with my family or our friends, as this could seriously impact how they see her. My wife and I both grew up in broken homes and neither of us want to impose that on our children. Part of the reason why my wife claims she didn’t tell me the truth is that she was convinced that I would walk out on her and get a divorce. I haven’t done that and am instead looking for recommendations on how to navigate this situation. How would you recommend we broach this topic with our friends and family? How can I rebuild my trust in my wife? How can I handle my feelings of betrayal?
UPDATE: I want to thank you all for the feedback, good or bad. One thing I want to emphasize is that I do not care that my wife is 5 years older than me. Sure, there was a time where this would have been an issue for me, but we are well past that. The issue for me is and has been the continued lies and actions to support a mistake that was made a long time ago. I also spoke to my wife again today after gathering my thoughts and considering the advice that’s been shared here. I told her that I love her, that I have no interest in divorcing, and that I want to be a husband to her and a father to our child. But I also expressed again how hurt I was by her lying to me and that we were going to have to work together to reach a point where I can trust her. This will take time, but I’m sure we can do it, barring any setbacks. We agreed to meet with a counselor weekly until we feel comfortable and are working this week to resolve our documents that have her errant DOB. We also have no plans on discussing this matter with friends or family unless there is reason to. The one thing we won’t do is be deceitful.