Old flame says my son is his

[PeterPansCaravan]

In short I got pregnant when I was 22. I am still with the father and I’m now 45.

Recently an old flame got in touch. Says he’s convinced he’s the father of my son. He says we got really drunk at a party and slept together. I have no recollection of this happening.

He sent me photos of himself at the same age as my son and they are more or less identical.

I don’t know what to do about the situation. I’m in bits about it all.

My DH and I have 3 other children and have a good relationship.

No judgement please.

I mean I've made some questionable choices whilst under the influence but "I bought a £3000 fossilised raptor claw at an auction whilst drunk" is one of the funniest things I've read on MN in a long time 😅

Who said this man had sex with a woman who was blackout drunk though? OP said she had no recollection of events.

• Drunk sex isn’t illegal as long as both parties are able to consent

• Not remembering sex doesn’t automatically mean someone was “blackout” drunk at the time and therefore unable to consent

For example, someone goes to a party and is drinking, they have consensual sex i.e. they know what they’re doing and enthusiastically consent. They then carry on drinking as it’s a party and blackout, they wake up the next day and have zero memory of the entire party including that they had sex - that doesn’t change the consensual act into rape. Ending up blackout drunk doesn’t mean you’re blackout drunk the entire time and don’t know what you’re doing.

There were times in my younger days when I would wake up after a “session” and have no recollection of the entire night even though I know I started out cold stone sober so actually should remember at least the beginning. Memories don’t only erase from the time you hit “blackout”, often you can be missing memories from hours before as well.

Now OP could have been raped, it may have been consensual, this person could be confused or maybe it didn’t happen at all, who knows.

You may not have had sex whilst drunk but many people do
She msy not recall it now it doesnt mean she was unaware at the time.

This thread has been up almost two hours now, and not a single peep out of the OP since her first post. So I'm off it now. Until the OP comes back. It annoys me when someone posts a thread and then just leaves and doesn't come back. She's been asked questions by many posters and isn't responding. All that's happening is lots of posters are arguing and calling each other names and insulting one another. The thread is serving no useful purpose at the moment IMO.

Off into the garden for some sunshine!

I think the PP has watched too much Jeremy Kyle.

He's not claiming it, other posters with experience of his years of posting are telling you he is

Anyone who has posted here for any length of time will have come across his legal posts

Are you legally qualified?

Is someone stirring by telling him your son looks like him?

When were you with him & when with your OH?

When was the party compared to when your son was born?

Do you even remember going to the party?

But yes, OP, I have to assume that as you're entertaining the notion, you must remember having attended a party at the same time, and having drunk heavily at that time? As otherwise, he's obviously full of shit. That's a really upsetting thing to have to contemplate, especially if you don't believe it would've been consensual.

Best to talk to your husband first, and then together tell your son. Hopefully, however, it's just your ex being an insane person.

But her OP suggests she DOESN’T recall it?

Yes, this. So fucked up.

If there was any chance that your ex was your son’s father you would have been shitting bricks during the pregnancy. You would surely remember that distressing turn of events. Even if you were black out drunk around the time of conception surely that would have been stressful for you.

Do you think that your ex may try to blackmail you?

I think it’s unhelpful to use capital letters as it seems like shouting. Not saying you or the other poster are correct but it’s an important discussion and getting aggressive isn’t really helpful.

That doesn't make him delusional
A shock
But not delusional

Maybe point out to him that if he is the father then after serving a prison term for rape he will need to pay you all the child support he did not pay over the years.

When he raped her? If she can't remember then she was in no state to consent.

No, but she has a CAPLOCK key and KNOWS HOW to use it. 😁

I agree with this. If you had slept with him around your son's conception date you would have remembered being stressed about it.

Do you have any good friends from that era you can talk to and see if they have any recollections of the party / weird behaviour around that time? Sometimes our friends remember different things to us so it's a good idea to crowd source other memories.

If you genuinely don't believe you had sex with this man, then sit down with your DH and tell him your ex sent you a really weird message claiming to be DS's father, but you definitely didn't have sex with him, you just want to get ahead of any potential blackmail etc.

Your ex and your DS might just look alike, a lot of young men do. Like that infamous picture of Prince Harry and James Hewitt at the same ages and they look identical but it was just a fluke snapshot in time.

But if she was intoxicated her consent is not valid. We are not talking about buying raptor claws here.

It can be something you forget, if you drink enough that night.

As a pp pointed out, you could have sex earlier in the night while less drunk, and then drink more, and lose those short-term memories. Or you could appear only mildly affected to others when you're actually not making long-term memories. Or you could be really quite drunk but aggressively all over the guy, who's a bit drunk himself and loving it. Or he could be just as drunk as you, and in no state to make sensible decisions either.

I've seen my friends get a drunk guy they liked into bed (or not bed, as the case may be) while they were just as drunk as each other, and no one (me included) was in any state to make decisions - and then they'd wake up with the guy, and have to ask 'did I sleep with x last night??' or sometimes deny that they'd done so because they had no memory. And I've done the same myself.

It's messy, inadvisable, and irresponsible, but it's not automatically rape. There would at times be predatory guys who raped drunk young women, but that dynamic was different to what I described above.

Was this party around the time of conception? If so and theres a possibility then just be honest with your son, hes an adult old enough to (obviously after the intitial shock and upset) understand that people make mistakes decide what he wants to do himself

170 posts and the OP hasn’t been back? Don’t bother everyone.

For an adult? He has no rights at all. No one can force an adult to take a parity test surely - her son would need to consent.

And ... how would you describe your relationship with alcohol?

Rape myths are bad enough, but deducing OP was raped from OP’s words (below) really is dubious. She may have been too drunk to consent. She may not have been too drunk to consent. As a pp suggested, she may have been giggly but perfectly able to consent, then gone on to drink more which made her memory unreliable. She may have chosen to dismiss the vague recollection of something happening, because she wanted to be with her now husband. We don’t have anything like enough information to decide whether or not she was raped.

‘He says we got really drunk at a party and slept together. I have no recollection of this happening.’