I don't want to give away too much identifying information.
Approximately 20 years ago, my life at the time allowed me to know a fella.
We weren't dating.
His girlfriend got pregnant. They were so young. About early 20s.
I remember at the time. He was so happy and proud of his baby girl. She was given his surname at birth.
About a year after her birth, something happened within his family.
There was a drunken night out which led to a massive row. I wasn't there. His uncle committed suicide from that night out.
His relationship with his girlfriend fell apart.
A few years pass and my life took me in a different direction and I didn't get to see him. I heard from his brother sometimes.
Life threw a different thing in my way. Through my work I was able to spend time with another girl and also her mother. That girl was about 4 or 5.
She used talk openly about jot having a daddy.
It clicked with me. She was his baby.
She had the same first name. Her surname was changed. Then I met her mother and I was right.
I never quizzed the child or her mother about the other person. In all these years I never siad anything. Obviously something happened but it was none of my business.
It did play on my mind from time to time through the years. That man was so happy with the birth of his daughter and he was involved in her life for the fors year. Then something happened where it all fell apart.
I do suspect maybe the mother kept the child from him.
I knew him all them years ago. He wasn't a bad person but no one knows what another is like when in private. There was something said years ago by the man's mother.
He was beaten up badly and threatened.
They weren't able to say anything else but it was from the ex girlfriend. She organised it. I do suspect he was bullied to get out from his child's life.
Anyways that girl is going to be 18 next year. I don't know what stance she has on her birth father. She never knew him.
I don't know if she has any desire to find him and likewise if he has any desire to find her.
Naturally I will stay out from it all.
If I ever hear the girl talking about the thing and finding her birth father, do I speak up and tell her and tell her that I know who he is.
None of it seems right to me. He wanted to be involved when she was born nd he was so happy and proud but within a year he was written out from her life.
He looks utterly depressed on the rare occasion that I do see him in the locality.
Has anyone here ever had anything similar? Maybe growing up without a father and maybe searching for him as an adult? How did it go? Or any other similar scenario.
In my mind I am thinking she has a right to know who her father is and he has a right to know who his girl is.