Hi, my first post & I'm looking for opinions.
I had a brief fling 36 years ago when I was 17 with a girl from another town. I was fairly new to this [censored] malarkey & thought getting it so easily was great, especially when she told me she was on the pill. Anyway, a few weeks down the line fella's in the local in this town were warning me that this girl was shall we say 'easy', (Mr naive here never even registered), but I heard rumours it wasn't just me she was seeing so I broke it off, lesson learned. I started dating another girl shortly after & we've been married now for 30 year with 3 daughters.
Anyway, after I broke up with this girl, I got a phone call from her mother about 2 months later to tell me she was pregnant with my baby. So baby was born, and to be sure (no DNA in those days) I went for a blood test. I went to court to find out the result, I was then told by my solicitor that she was with a new fella & didn't want me to have anything to do with the baby & I wasn't to know the results of the blood test. As a young man & deeply in love with a woman who was to be my wife, this was fine by me & a bit of a relief if I'm honest.
Now through the power of that facebook this baby is now in her mid 30's, says I am her Dad, (her mums got the court letters...which I believe is B.S as no UK court would tell the mother the blood test result & not the father, this is what my solicitor told me) ...and after all this time I really don't want contact or know if she is mine or not, I'm really happy with my family life.
Question is..;.if you don't know for sure if she's yours or not, who here would disrupt their perfect marriage to find out, and bare in mind here if I did have a DNA test just to find out yes or no, I'm not the sort of fella to ignore that & wold have to have contact, although this would put a massive strain on my marriage. My wife really isn't happy with this.
I'd like to know your opinions.
I think you could try to explain to your wife that this all happened a long time ago and there's nothing you could really do to change things.
But maybe if you could both see things from the girls (womans) side. She has spent her whole life not knowing who her real father is. She's bound to have questions and want to know where she comes from, what her family and the family history is like. It must be a hard thing to spend all your life not knowing. Who knows, maybe her stepfather wasn't so nice?
If it was me I think I'd give her a chance. Even if you just met her to satisfy her curiosity it would be a kind thing to do.
I understand it's your decision and you have the right to choose one way or the other. You could find that you burn bridges and might regret it in the future.
I think the problem now is that it is out in the open, and however much you don't want to know, and possibly the same for your wife, there is always going to be that unspoken question. I would say that it absolutely must be a join decision between you and your wife, but you need to discuss how it is best to move forward without both of you skirting around the question.
My wife and i have discussed it at great length, she's really struggling with it and to be honest I love being married to her. It's a massive risk to our marriage if go for a dna and it shows positive.
In which case, have you considered relate? It worries me that if you don't find a resolution, it could break up a really good marriage.
this is from a time before your marriage and before you even met your wife and sadly we cannot change the past. as suggested i would seek some form of counseling? does your wife feel threatened in some way?
As hard as I can understand this is for you and your wife try thinking how much harder it is for this lady, growing up not knowing who your dad is, is hard, my wife grew up not knowing her dad for 18 years and has never felt the need for a dna test because you can see she is his daughter, for the first 7 yrs of them getting to know each other it was really hard for them both, he all of a sudden had this 18 yr old daughter he always knew about her and her sister but their mother wouldn't allow contact with them, she on the other hand had a dad, after 7 yrs my wife told him you either want me in your life or you don't I'm not going to be the only one making all the effort, my wife is now 40 years old and to see them together you would think he was never out of her life they are so close, do the dna test and find out, if she's your daughter then talk things through with your wife about it, I personally couldn't go through life knowing she might be mine and I done nothing to find out if she was or not, she may just want to know if you are or not and not necessarily want you in her life, if she is yours then you might also have other grandchildren that you will never know.
very nicely put π
That must have been so hard for this lady to grow up not knowing....... it's not like you had an affair.....this was before your wife. I would consider relate because it's not just about you and your wife, there is another person and their emotional wellbeing to consider. I think the lady has a right to know who her father is.