To tell him or do I let this go?

[Furrbabymama1987]

I just want to say before I type this that this is a new account, but I have been on MN for years under basically the same user name but for a few digits. I had to start a new one under a new email address as had trouble getting back into the old one. So anyone is free to check that if this seems odd for a newish account.
A few years ago I met this guy on a night out. We had what I thought was a one night stand, but then a week later, bumped into him again in the same club and history repeated itself. He told me he was 19 and I had no reason to think otherwise. He looked 19, he was confident and was being served alcohol at the bar. He later admitted he was 17 and I felt bad about it but I liked him by then. I was 22 or 23 at the time.
I developed feelings for him and we wanted to be together but I was ashamed about the age gap and that he was a student when I was an adult woman with a young child, so kept it under wraps and it fizzled out eventually.
After a while I met a new partner and we later had a child together. We were argumentative and frequently split up and got back together. He was a bit abusive in some ways and I wasn't happy but found it hard to leave. So, I started texting this guy again and we met up and had sex and it led to a casual sex thing that went on for about 2 years, every time I split with my now ex, I would go back to this guy. I wanted there to be more between us, he did too, but we were afraid of other people's reactions.
I went on to have another child with my ex when we got back together.
Everyone comments she looks nothing like him. I'm now married to someone else and ex isn't in my children's lives at all anymore.
I recently saw this guy in my doctors surgery. He lives relatively local to me but we've never crossed paths. This was the first time in years. I saw him looking at me but we never spoke. I can't stop thinking how much my child looks like him. He will have moved on and I'm a distant memory now and he won't be expecting this. He deserves to know but I don't know if this is just opening up a can of worms. She has a father figure, my husband and doesn't need the confusion, but I'm unsure what to do. I feel shame around the fact I potentially had a baby with a teenage guy, although he would have been around 19 when I conceived. And she could be my ex's although she looks nothing like him, or me for that matter.

I didn't think it was relative to the thread. I was promiscuous. I probably still would be if I wasn't married but I love my husband and I don't want to fuck it up.

When will you tell him

Yeah, so you keep saying. But this isn’t actually about you anymore. It’s about a little girl whose mother hasn’t a Scooby who her father is.

A mother who seems just a little bit too preoccupied with the ‘young guy’ she was sleeping with at the time, who may or may not be the kid’s father.

It’s a bloody mess, all of it. But you need to lift you and your past and your current preoccupation with the potential father out of it (not to mention your strange attention seeking on here by telling us all about how promiscuous you were and how you still would be were it not for your husband…?) and so what’s best for your 2nd/3rd child. I can’t work out where she falls in the order of things.

That is of course, if this thread isn’t just a ruse to wind MNers up…

Im not attention seeking, there's nothing to gain from that when it's anonymous. I said about the promiscuous stuff when I was questioned about my motives on the thread. Just because someone may be beneath you in some way or do things that you don't like, it doesn't mean I'm making it up or that I'm a bad person. We're not all perfect. I've fucked up in life. But I love my kids and they have a stable life. This isn't some chaotic lifestyle I'm leading. 2 of my kids were to short term flings, 2 were from long term relationships. There's nothing really shocking about that.

Don’t sleep with the guy.

we all know that’s coming next. But just…don’t.

No I'm not going to sleep with him. I'm not going to cheat.

This whole thing kicked off because you saw this man and thought how handsome he still was. You mentioned how he was looking at you.
You've now talked about how much you loved him and how pleased you are to have a child with him now as it gives you a connection with him.

You're looking at this entire thing through a lense of him.

You should have been doing this for your daughter. You should have done this years ago, as soon as you got your head on straight and stopped leading a chaotic life. You've been married and had another child and claim to have grown up and sorted your life out. Sorting your life out would have included checking your suspicions about your daughter.

Even if you needed a jolt to do it, and seeing him was that jolt then fine. But you'd be doing it for her and for the truth and so this man may have a chance at being in her life.

Instead, your posts and your thoughts all seem to lead to his man, your past with him, your desire to have a connection to him etc.

It is a slippery slope and you need to grow up, get your head out of the clouds and stop thinking about yourself and your past feelings from a chaotic time in your life.

I almost daren’t ask, but how are things going @Furrbabymama1987 ?

I've still not told him. I don't think I will now to be honest. I'm not completely closed off to the idea of telling him in the future but I don't think it's the right thing to do right now. When my daughter asks about who her dad is I'll tell her the truth. For now she doesn't really get it so I'm not going to push all this information on her.

What a selfish person you are.

You're doing that for you and your husband. Not for her. Keeping it secret from her is to make your life easier.

She deserves a chance at a relationship with her dad and he deserves to know. What you're doing is despicable and she will not forgive you when she finds out, although you'll probably take it to your grave and just never tell her.

Sorry but you don't know me. I'm not rushing into telling him so I can update a mumsnet thread with the drama. This is my life. In trying to decide what is best for my developmentally delayed ,autistic daughter, I'm thinking introducing a man who she doesn't know into her life could be detrimental to her. Nothing to do with me and my husband.

And by the way, what do you mean when she finds out? Finds out what? She knows my husband isn't her birth father.

You’re not serious?

You’ve already robbed two people of the truth for all these years, don’t continue down this path just because it’s easy for you.

Imagine if you’d been denied all your child’s baby years, if you’d missed out on all her early childhood. Because that’s what you’ve done to this man.

What if he moves away and you’re not able to contact him and your Dd asks about him down the line? Don’t bury your head in the sand.

When she finds out that you knew who her dad was. And that he isn't the asshole who walked away from them. He is someone else entirely and you found out now but don't tell her until it's too late to have a father/daughter relationship.

I think @WeAreBob means when she finds out you purposefully kept the truth from her and from him. When she finds out you decided on everyone’s behalf to keep a huge secret and that it’s because of you that your Dd didn’t even have the option of knowing him as a child.

If I found out my mum had done that to me I don’t know how I’d feel. It would be awful.

This is my life.
There are three lives involved here.

In trying to decide what is best for my developmentally delayed ,autistic daughter, I'm thinking introducing a man who she doesn't know into her life could be detrimental to her.
I can see your concern but doing a paternity test and contacting the father doesn’t automatically equal introducing them straight away.

There are supportive ways you can go about this. You and your husband and daughter can all go to family therapy together for example. And you can introduce him (if that’s what you all decide to do) slowly, at her pace.

Right, so blame the woman who raised three kids singlehandedly and gave up a lot to do that for the sake of a man who got away scot free. Nice one.

I think you need to tell him. Your daughter deserves a chance to know her biological father and he deserves to know she exists.

The man only ‘got away scot free’ because you kept the truth from him! If he has zero idea he has any responsibilities how can you hold him responsible?

He could have been paying child support for example... but only if he knew he had a child! It’s not like he’s run away from his duties, he literally doesn’t know he has any.

No he would have only been 19 when she was born. I doubt he'd have wanted a baby. He was a student so couldn't have been paying anything for for first few years at least. As far back as I remember he knew I'd had a baby, I'm sure he xod have done the maths and worked out there was a possibility she was his.

• could

You definitely need to tell your daughter at some point. I'm on lots of genealogy sites, and you wouldn't believe how shocked people are when they find out that the person who they think of as 'dad' is not their biological father. They then spend years trying to find their biological families and half-siblings.

I'm not saying this will happen to your daughter, but it may come to light when you least expect it.

Legally old enough to have sex.

However Op you cant say you thought he as 19, you knew th second time onwards.

Looking back I can see it was a bit wrong but at the time I thought he was really bloody gorgeous, mature too. I can't remember exactly when I found out his age, if it was just the once or if we had been together a few times but I thought I'm not doing anything illegal, we liked each other and we were on the same wavelength. I would have been embarrassed about introducing him to my family, that's what stopped it from being more than it was. But I couldn't switch off feelings.

Stop blaming other people. This isn't his fault. It wasnt up to him to chase you down and find out. And you said he actually did ask you if it was his, and you told him no anyway. So this is still on you.

You're the one who slept around. You chose to have 3 children to 3 (what you thought was 2) different men within a very short time period. You don't now get to turn around and be angry that you had to raise 3 kids alone and blame this man for it, then in the next breath say that he was 19 so probably wouldn't have bothered anyway.

You were irresponsible back then. Get over it. Stop being angry about it and don't be angry with him. But stop trying to hide it. It is time to fix your mistake and tell the man.