Am I his Dad?

[MrMarple]

To cut a very long story short my OH and I have been married for over 30 years. 8 years into our marriage I discovered my OH had met an acquaintance of ours in a secluded pub. Our daughter was aged 1 at the time.

It took me 2 years for me to finally click what had been going on by which time our son had been born.

My OH stonewalled my questions other than confess to only meeting him once. 19 years later she confessed to a 2nd meeting at that time. She hasn’t owned up to anything else in that time other than it wasn’t sexual. I have enough circumstantial evidence to suspect there were more than 2 meetings and it went on longer including into her pregnancy.

One of the many issues that have resulted is that our son was conceived in or around the date of that meeting at the pub. When you use the reverse calculator of his birth date it lands on that exact date.

This has troubled me for many years (I’ve had to bite my lip for most of those 20 plus years) and as our son grows older, some of his physical features have worried me further.

I have had 2 breakdowns during this time and did demand that we have a DNA Ancestry test done. My OH said go ahead as she didn’t have sex.

Our son is pretty much oblivious to all this but how do you ask him now he is into his 20s? I don’t want to trick him into doing one and I don’t want him to know about our full past.

To add to my previous comment - there are so many different types of therapy that you might find useful to explore -

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Hypnotherapy
Guided Meditation

to name but a few. You might find one or several that suits you and will really help.

Good luck ✨

He needs time to come up with a mitigating drip feed that will back his version of events.

@JadziaD

The fact multiple people have said it and he's ignored it but continued to reply to other people who posted later does indicate that OP is completely unwilling to take on board evidence / facts that don't align with his narrative. He seems to have decided what happened and that's that.

Even when he's been wrong for two decades about the significance of a particular date.

OP if you have seen people's explanation of gestational dating, what are your thoughts now?

Yep

This should be the 'OMG is that right??!' 'How could I have got that wrong all these years!!'

But instead the 10 or so similar posts saying this have been mysteriously overlooked

'

All this 'oh poor wife' and 'you should have left/should leave'...she lied and she could have also left at any point, both chose not to. If you lie about meeting up with a man round the time of conception then yeah, I think anyone would have doubts. Of course it should have been done 20 years ago but it wasn't.

And the son deserves to know. People keep saying he's a person with feelings...yes and he deserves to know his parentage. The fact is she lied, swore on her child's life and lied but for some reason people don't care about that.

Ideally the test would be done and the son only notified of the result if OP isn't his father. Obviously there is a moral issue with asking him to do ancestry under false pretences, but it is better than asking the son for an actual dna test. If the OP is his father (which does seem more likely), he will not be affected. If the OP is not, the SON deserves to know.

The OPs issues are neither here nor there, both adults decided to stay together. The son is the only concern here.

I standby my earlier comment that this is classic narcissistic behaviour. Including ignoring anything that doesn't fit with your narrative, and when holes are poked in your existing narrative finding some new, convoluted, nonsensical reason why it actually does. I particularly enjoyed your exhortation that if we met you in real life we'd see how great you are.... classic narcissistic behaviour. You're lovely in public, shitty in private.

As your wife clearly grew up in dysfunctional relationships it's not surprising she's put up with this for so long.

She lied… about one meeting in a pub with a friend after OP interrogated her and had two breakdowns over the first? Yeah, I think I’d have lied too.

And lets be honest, if a women came on here and said their husband had been lying about meeting up with another woman, then swore on their children's life it was only once but they later found it it wasn't, you'd all be telling her that they are definitely having an affair and 'if he's lied about this, what else has he lied about?'. Not pitying the man because his wife doesn't trust him.

OP why are you not addressing the conception date issue? I am not actually buying this whole drama.

The mind boggles at the level of worry vs denial state you chose to live in for 20 years rather than take a test. It would of been so much easier to have taken a cheek swab when DS was a small child, he would of been non the wiser. Instead you have been in a state of feeling differently towards him than maybe you do about your DD, and put yourself in 2 breakdown situations rather than face it, which I'm sure at least 1 therapist must have recommended, it's obvious how you should of gone about it.
You are not coming across well though on here, on a predominantly female forum, by your talk of your DS being your 'legacy' - this completely misses the premises that your DD is actually every bit as much of your legacy. In this day and age, most people realise it is not determined by gender/sex, and your comment shows you view the status of DD, to DS as not the same which is out of touch and misogynistic.
Perhaps your dim view of women has coloured your whole life, maybe to the extent of - why should I have forked out about £200 for a DNA test when it was something my partner did? We all knew in life that DNA tests were available 20 years ago, as was the Internet for info (all be it dial up). So, I do have a hard time taking on board your weak reasons at the time for not finding out , it wasn't the dark ages.
So, what of now? Maybe in a round about way someone could find out from your DS if he's ever wondered himself, given you claim your appearances are so different. Tell him if he doesn't know already that you've done DNAancestry, then leave it at that as trickery is wrong, that ship has sailed. If he's ever wondered he then knows a way he can find out if he wants to. His wishes trump yours these days, it's not fault his DP's are a mess.

I get the feeling that the idea was to get some validation for his stance from women on the biggest internet site for women that his wife is a liar and a cheat who drove her poor cuckolded husband into not one but TWO nervous breakdowns to the extent that he's a psychiatric basket case who no-one on earth can help, and that that was intended to be yet another stick to beat her with. 'SEE, I'M RIGHT! MUMSNET AGREES WITH ME!'

No surprise to hear about her father, that's for sure.

By the way, holding a grudge over your wife because she met a man in the pub twenty years ago or because you believe the child is not yours (no proof) is abuse behaviour . Basically your wife has been in an emotionally abusive relationship for 20 years and I feel very sorry for her.

Yup, alongside, "all your friends and family think you're psycho too" or "If your friends knew what you're really like..."

Of course, her family are apparently psycho so it was probably pretty easy for him to separate her from them. And at least one of her friends is not her friend any more - he's already told us that. And yet is still willing to give him some sort of supposedly juicy gossip from 20 years ago. So I think we can safely assume me's done a good job of alienating her already so perhaps it's more like, "this is why you have no friends, you're a compulsive liar."

Nope, not after 20 years and something he may or may not have done 20 years ago. I've seen plenty of those sort of posts and the woman is regularly told that she needs to either trust him or not.

If a woman posted about how her DH going to the pub 20 years ago has ruined her life, I think the responses would be pretty similar tbh.
20 years of resentment, with no action is unhinged.

Ideally the test would be done and the son only notified of the result if OP isn't his father. Obviously there is a moral issue with asking him to do ancestry under false pretences, but it is better than asking the son for an actual dna test.

You think you can take another adult's DNA to be tested without their consent and just causally inform them if the result is different to what they expect and think is some ideal way to handle the situation because IMO that frankly fuck up.

If OP really has concerns that his son isn't his - then he needs to have an adult and yes potentially difficult conversation with his son so his son can decide how he wants to proceed. Or he need to have a grown up conversation with his wife and make it clear their son needs the truth.

I've no idea what the wife did or didn't do we only have what the OP claims happened so really don't know if the OP has any real grounds for any suspicions - but I don't think the OP here is rational or a reliable narrator.

Male*

This. You can’t just take an adult’s DNA without their consent.

I was talking about asking him to do the ancestry test with his consent, OP already said he was interested in his own. The moral dilemma would be asking him to do it under false pretences.

It's illegal to do a dna test without a persons consent so he would have to explain to the son why he wanted a paternity test, which if the result came back showing they are related, would cause the son unnecessary upset.

Didn't think my post was hard to understand so apologies if it was.

The only person that matters in this scenario is the son. Another poster has already expressed her upset at being lied to about paternity but everyone has conveniently skipped by that part to encourage the OP to sweep it under the carpet even if it wasn't his son, as if he doesn't have the right to know.

But that wouldn’t be legal either, taking someone’s DNA under false pretences.
OP needs to have a conversation with his son if he wants to go forward but even then the son doesn’t have to agree.

@Cynical85 there are people whose lives have been blown apart by ancestry tests showing them results they didn't expect. It's a known phenomenon.

If op tricks his son on some pretense - presumably the son will get the results directly and not the OP with no prior warning of potential problems which if Op isn't his Dad could place him in an awkward position.

The OP had 20 years to do anything - including leaving his wife - he'd done nothing but now needs to know?

Plus now his needs are more important than his sons - this has implication for identity, health and possible insurance and no-one here has any idea how the son will take that or what's going on in son's life. Your advocating tricking him rather than discussing with him - having the OP make choices for him.

Your post wasn't difficult to understand I just though it lacked any critical thinking focused on what best for the OP who sudden need to know after 20 years rather than any wider impact and advocating yet more lying.

The son deserves a conversation not more lies and deceits - and he should get to make decisions if he wants test - not random on internet or the OP.

Your son may do or receive an Ancestry test one day and get a very nasty surprise without you having any control over it. I suggest you and your partner approach this like adults, explain the situation honestly and do the test. He deserves to know one way or the other. I have sadly been through this and it is enormously traumatic and worse when people lie to protect themselves.

If it is the case that OP is not the father, then it is becoming increasingly likely in this modern world that this is going to become apparent to the son at some stage. A number of scenarios could occur, but for example the son may decide to do Ancestry DNA for fun and out of curiosity as many people do, and up pops some unknown man as a DNA match, who happens to share 50% of his DNA.

I had a kind of opposite situation. I know that my "father" is not my biological father, have known since I was 14 (I am now in my 60s) but I never told my parents that I knew (and they never told me). If I had done Ancestry DNA without knowing this, I would have had a nasty surprise. As it was, it helped me track down some biological relatives and fill in some gaps in my story (and to confirm that, although my mother never did tell me the truth, she did at least tell the truth to the social worker about who my biological father was, when I was adopted by her husband).

I have found it really valuable to me to find out the truth about my paternal ancestry (although it wasn't without anxiety, I found out about a serious disease which runs in the family, and this was very scary until I had testing which ruled it out). Other things have been more fun (for example finding out some ethnic heritage of which I was unaware and which has been very interesting to explore).

The OP does sound pretty unhinged and who knows what the truth is, or whether the OP's story has any truth to it at all (and why is he just ignoring the question of the conception date being wrong?). But this specific case aside, in general regarding the DNA issue, I would advise that it is better to tell someone if there is a chance of a UP (unexpected paternity) situation. My parents did not do that for me, and they were wrong in that.

But why is his mental health her job to fix??

You would have to ask my OH that. On the day I finally realised I’d been duped (if some don’t like word cheated) was a Saturday morning. My OH had once said she had gone to her Mother’s Group in the evening. I wrote it in my diary and completely forgotten about it. It was fact that I wrote ‘apparently’ that made me think oh no what really happened when I looked at it again 2 years later (after he turned up again at a social function and they disappeared).

I phoned the Mother’s Group lady that was supposed to have held the party 2 years earlier to find she had never held one. Her last words to me were ‘I’m so sorry”. When my OH came home I told her about the call but had to rush off to play football. I felt physically sick to the pit of my stomach.

While I was out playing football my OH ripped out a later diary page. She later that evening retrieved it but said a bit was missing which we never did find, well I didn’t.

The ‘truth’ of that came out 20 years later!