Do you have any advice on getting my wife and children to approve of my relationship with my girlfriend?

The example I’m about to share may not be useful as a reference at all, but I feel it contains some kind of truth, so I’ll share it anyway. My mentor lives with what you might call his second wife. Since they live together, his primary wife and their daughter are there as well. He pays the second wife 30 million yen a year, and more than three times that amount to his primary wife. What I’m getting at is that Eiichi or Yukichi—the money—might make something like this possible. That said, his greatest asset is his generosity of spirit. He maintains an incredibly delicate balance between his primary and second wives. That’s not something an ordinary person can easily pull off.

Make a lot of money, give your wife around ¥3 million a month for living expenses, and give your second wife ¥500,000 a month—that should solve the problem. That’s what I would do. If you can’t do that, the best option is to keep it completely hidden. Your girlfriend will just have to accept being “the other woman” for the rest of her life. Still, it’s wonderful that you’ve met a woman you could fall for that deeply. Honestly, I’m jealous.

The questioner seems to see the world only from the perspective that suits them. It would be worth considering how you appear from the perspectives of your wife, your child, and your girlfriend. From your wife’s perspective, if she finds out about her existence, she would likely either ① divorce you and claim compensation from both you and your girlfriend (since the affair would probably constitute grounds for divorce), or ② continue maintaining a purely superficial family while her feelings toward you have grown cold. Your child will probably see it in the simplest terms: their father abandoned his love for them and ran off with another woman. From your girlfriend’s perspective, she will never be able to trust you completely, because in the end, you didn’t divorce your wife and choose her. As for what you should do, your only option is to keep hiding it from your wife and child until you die. If they find out, you would have to either ① cut ties with your wife and child or with your girlfriend, or ② keep throwing large amounts of money at the situation every time your wife or girlfriend complains, in an attempt to calm things down—assuming that would even work with them. Even if things are fine now, I think your later years will be miserable. There is no way to deal with your child once they find out. You probably want to escape because continuing to lie is painful, but there’s no convenient solution like that.

Are you saying that you’re a married man with a wife and children, but you want to spend the rest of your life with your girlfriend as well? I was actually discussing something similar the other day, and we came to the conclusion: “Keep the girlfriend hidden, but give your wife complete freedom with the money.” If your wife is intelligent and strategic, she’ll probably realize your girlfriend exists but choose to stay quiet about it—not exactly approve of it, but not confront you either. - Keep your girlfriend’s existence as hidden as possible - Don’t do anything that would make her resent you - Make sure your wife has plenty of money I think these three points are important.

If she’s your girlfriend: > “She wants to be together forever, too.” If she wants that as well, she’ll naturally interpret things in the way that feels best to her, even without you saying anything. So I think it’s better for the man not to deny or affirm anything, allowing her to feel more secure in her own understanding. If she’s a woman from a dating club, the fact that you have a wife and children may actually make her feel more secure, so I don’t think there’s any need to say anything. **Addendum** After reading Tsubaki’s answer: Once the relationship becomes openly acknowledged, the public and private sides merge, and I think it will become less enjoyable for the man than it is now. It’s precisely because his wife doesn’t know that he can enjoy the excitement of both relationships—his second wife and his wife in the public role. The key to making things last with a second wife is to make sure she never feels that she has lost to your wife, and never realizes that she comes after your wife. Making the relationship official would force her to confront that reality. Even if it continued, it would end up being nothing more than an affair. If she wants the relationship to be acknowledged without feeling any competitive feelings toward your wife, then perhaps she’s only interested in the money and doesn’t truly love him.