A young woman left her childhood sweetheart after striking up a secret affair with his 61-year-old married dad.
Mackenzie Yocum, 25, revealed how she started admiring her soon-to-be father-in-law when her own relationship hit a rough patch.
Walmart worker, Mackenzie, from Illinois, USA, was grateful when her fiance’s dad Jeff Scholl, who was going through his own divorce, offered her a shoulder to cry on and the pair began a six-month affair.
Following a six-year relationship with Jeff’s son, who she has chosen not to name, Mackenzie said she was surprised to fall in love with his dad who is 36 years her senior.
The pair say they were eventually caught out but that this only secured their love for one another.
Mackenzie, who now has a child with Jeff, said: “The one thing I regret is not being honest and starting a relationship with Jeff before our previous relationships had ended.
“We should have just been honest about our feelings and said we weren’t happy.
“There’s emotional cheating and there’s physical cheating. The emotional cheating went on for around one year and the physical was six months.
“I was with his son for over six years, but Jeff was always so welcoming. I was really unhappy in the relationship with his son at the same time that Jeff was on the brink of a divorce.”
Mackenzie claims her fiance and his mum discovered their affair in 2018.
When both relationships ended, she and Jeff, who already had three children with his ex wife, were able to continue their romance and went on to have a son together, five-month-old Wyatt.
Mackenzie and her former fiance met at high school and got engaged four years later.
When that relationship started to crumble at the same time as Jeff’s marriage break down, the pair were able to offer each other a shoulder to cry on.
Mackenzie said: “When we got together, we were in love but people either grow together or grow apart.
“After we got engaged and I started fighting with his mum, I started to confide in Jeff and ask for advice. That’s when we started getting friendly.
“I don’t know who it was, but someone told my fiance what was going on and he ended the relationship and Jeff’s wife filed for divorce.”
Retired farmer Jeff claims he no longer has a relationship with his son and some of Mackenzie’s family members have chosen to cut her off. But Mackenzie is speaking out to offer an apology to the people she hurt.
She said: “My brother decided to stop speaking to me because of what we did. Jeff has two daughters and one has been really supportive but one doesn’t speak to us anymore which I do understand because it did hurt a lot of people.
“We obviously didn’t want to hurt anyone. That whole year was just really tough because I had a miscarriage before we had Wyatt.
“I just want my ex and his mum to know that I am sorry for what happened, and I do feel bad.”
Mackenzie and Jeff are hoping to buy their own home together and plan to get married in the future.
She added: “We have a normal relationship and the age gap doesn’t bother us. It’s funny because a lot of people look at us and think our age gap is so big but what we’ve found in each other is what we were missing in our previous relationships.
“Even though there’s the age gap, we are more compatible than the people we were with before. We want to get married but we’re just waiting for the right time.”
