my mum told me I have a different dad to my brother and sister...

[TheSquodgit]

I have suspected it for a while after a friend told me that someone who used to live next to my mum had told her I had a different dad.

I asked my mum and she denied it and has done so until she spilled it all out a couple of days ago.

I am the one of the youngest in my family generation of cousins and everyone else knows inc aunts, uncles, cousins and my brother and sis who are 7 & 9 years older than me.

I am 26 years old and I have just been told.

My mum and who I thought was my bio dad were actually divorced well before I was born as he was abusive to my mum but when I was born he came to help with my bro and sis and mum and dad came to an agreement that he would bring me up as his own...even though he has been a fucking lousy father and has never had any relationship with my DS.

My dad's side of the family accepted me as one of them and the only Gran and Grandad I have ever had (my mums mum and dad died before I was born) are not even my blood relatives.

So my mum had a fling with this guy and got pregnant. I don't know all the ins and outs of what was said and when but apparently this man turned up to see me when I was born and my mum refused to let him in to see me.

When I was around 2yo my mum and I saw him in the street and he bent down to give me some money and I didn't know who he was.

My lousy non-dad ran a pub and he was in there when I was sat on a barstool in my teens. He made the effort to sit next to me and lousy non-dad ordered him out of the pub.

So he has made an effort in small ways but was obv put off big time...my mum has a gob on her when she gets going and I'm sure if she had lousy non-dad stood behind her giving him shit then he would run off with his tail between his legs.

I am extremely hurt and my emotions are all over the place. I have told my mum that what is done is done and she has apologised. I have all this bottled up anger but cannot say what I want to say for fear of falling out with her.

One thing she did say was 'you didn't lose anything by finding out'. I said 'I lost the opportunity of maybe having a dad that loved me'.

My stepdad brought me up from about 5yo and we get on well now but we didn't always. He didn't have his own kids so living with a teenage girl was hard for him and we fought like cat and dog. Was v.stressful.

Also I am v.different from my family - esp from my brother and sister in looks and personality so always felt I stood out a bit. This is why I have persisted every so often in questioning my mum about who my dad is.

I asked mum what she was protecting me from by not letting him near me and she didn't have a bad word to say about my biological father...just that she didn't want anything to do with him.

I want to type so many angry and nasty words about their behaviour but I can't let those feelings surface because I'm not sure what I will do.

I dont know if theres anything I can say except you had a right to know and its never too late, when dd1 was little I was in a position where whe had forgotten about her biological dad and I was going down the road of not talking about him, I had to make an effort to talk about him so it was something she grew up knowing, they obviously thought it was easier to pretend than to be out in the open.

Well you definitely did the right thing clueless regardless of the fact that it must have been tough doing so.

I only wish my mum had had the balls to do the same.

I am going to do a different thread about how to find my bio father. I feel I have exhausted all my options using genes reunited and countless other sites. Have a couple of good leads but am concerned that they are bio dad's children and don't think it is a good idea to contact him through his other kids.

I really want to contact him and see his face. Obv not hoping for too much but would like to hear about him and what makes him tick etc. Like I said I am v.different to my family so would be interesting to see if I have any likeness to him.

i was 13 when i found out that the person who i thought was my dad (and i still call him dad) isn't actually my father. But that was it, i was never told anything about my real dad, i only knew his name because i rooted through mum's wardrobe when she was out and found the divorce papers.

I have been angry, hurt, curious.....oh it's all so complicated to explain.
I contacted my bio dad's family when i was 22, but he was 'missing'. A year ago today he got in touch with me and i met him in November.

My situation is obviously a little different from yours but i think i know some of the emotion you are feeling.

I am very interested in this thread. What is your advice to the absent family i.e. father and grandparents. We have been told by our GD's mum that if we (her dad & us) love her as much as we say we do we will not contact her until she is old enough to know her own mind-she will be 2 in April .

queenrollo - does the hurt feeling ever go away?

It just feels that I have been cheated by the people I love and I'm incredibly angry that people who I don't even know (like mum's former neighbour) know stuff about me that even I didn't.

I'm so pleased you have finally made contact with your bio father. Does it feel that you have had some sort of closure now?

midlandsmum - Your son has a right to see his daughter. If your son and yourselves love her then your grandaughter will only gain from that by being in regular contact from you...not by pining for her for years until she decides she might want to get in touch with you. You should get some legal advice but sounds like your GD mum is making this all about her (like my mum did) and not doing what is best for your GD.

i will come back and post when i have time (and peace and quiet) to think properly about what i post. Have a busy three year old demanding my attention right now.

Reality - that sounds really complex. It might be worth trying to find out who his father is whilst DS is still young and doesn't really understand so then it won't affect him as much as if you told him when he is older. Try to sort the issue out yourself rather than letting him do it (if he wants to find out who his bio dad is) when he gets older.

It is a really tough situation that you are in. Do you still know the guys that could be DS's dad?

just to say i haven't forgotten about this thread, it's little hectic here but will have time tomorrow to respond properly.

for you
I can't believe everybody knew but you, although most of my family know we have a cousin that my aunt knows nothing about, I feel awful for her

Did contact the people through Genes Reunited but am still waiting to hear back from them.

Maybe they are asking bio dad what the bloody hell is going on??

Not too sure what to do next.

Contacted a family tracing service who have quoted me around £70 to find him and contact him. The thing is I think I know who one of his relatives is. The guy could be his son or nephew. He is a year older than me, we have similar characteristics facially and MY OWN BROTHER is his friend on Facebook.

They are both in the same trade and worked together once. Not sure if my brother was aware of any connection seeing as he knew the name of my bio dad and this lad shares the same surname. This is all too much. The thing is this lad went to another school but in same small town so would have passed each other frequently.

I could have snogged him for goodness sakes!!! The thought makes me want to vom. I said this to my mum and she said 'well I wouldn't have let that happen'. I said 'you wouldn't have bloody known you mad woman!!'.

She really didn't think about this did she!?!? Fucking lunatic just thought and hoped that I'd never find out.

When do you tell a kid their dad isn't their dad?

My ex is an asshole who would just let my baby down & well he never even made an effort to fight for her!! Plus when I got pregnant he made me wish I wasn't coz he was an asshole!!

Although I knew my dad for 5 years of my life & then 1 day he stopped coming to see me from the age of 5 I started my self-hating because the last time I seen him he had a new family which I wasn't good wnough to be in.
I bumped into him on the street when I was 13/14 that got me smoking because the 1st thing I did was have a fag lol
But his wife didn't like me so I got shunned out again and I started drinking to cover the pain of being abandoned!
I had a step-dad I never got on with but I got on great with his family, If I'd never met my bio dad I would have gotten on with my step-dad and would have had a much different life.

My babys(step)dad moved, got a new job, found us a flat, made me feel good bout my pregnancy,came to the baby classes, was there when she was born, got me through the pnd and has bonded with our daughter since she was inside, she loves him more than me I swear! I often have the when do I tell her, should I tell her, did I do the right thing keeping my ex away?

I dont want her to have the same childhood I did, my ex is more a sperm donor, he's not on the birth certificate, when me n my partner get married he wants to adopt her!

I know that blood means fcuk all, and the word "Dad" has to be earned, dad is the person that is willing to give up evrythin unlike my babys bio he had a job earnin 350p/m got a 1.5K loan out & yet still managed to spend just £50 on a £620 pram that I bought,in fact my ex-boss paid more than he did!
Yet managed to buy lotsa munchies for when he was stoned, fags, a wide screen tv, a car(kina fair enough but he put a silly boy racer exhaust on it!) & all other sorts of luxuries while I spent every penny of MY wage(from a 3hr a day job) went on baby!!

That to me says self-centred ass who doesnt deserve my baby, espec since he put me thru so much stress I nearly miscarried!
I know how upset my partner would be if I let my ex into our babys life.
I mean I spoke to my ex not long ago to see if he'd changed and he told me bout how he'd been out taken e's and gettin wasted and I wont start smokin fags or hash again because I dont want the bad influences of life coming from the main roles of my babys life!!Its not fair on her if I smoke it's stealing my life from her!

I just dont know what the hell to do!!
Chance ruining my babys childhood or giving her a good childhood and takin the chance that she might be pissed at me later!

The Squodgit

It was terrible for you to find out the potential truth of your parentage in such a manner. You were truly kept in the dark - this is something that cannot be readily forgiven.

Have you considered DNA testing; this would be the surest way to know the truth of the whole situation now.

You have every right to know who your biological Dad really is - you need to know your true parentage and where you came from.

I am sorry, TheSquodgit. Finding out as an adult about something like this must be a terrible shock. Not surprised you are upset and angry.

Crackerbean- you need to mention it casually from the very beginning or you will very probably end up with a grown-up daughter who feels as Squodgit does right now. Just tell your baby that her step dad is not her biological dad but emphasize that he loves her like a dad and thinks of himself as her dad. He is even planning to adopt her so he will be her dad, since adoption is a different way of becoming a dad.

Crackerbean - you never hide it is I think the answer. I have never known my biological father. My mum married when I was 4 and I was adopted by her husband. I have never thought of anyone else as my dad, and have no need of any other father in my life. But there have never been any secrets, including with my younger brother and sister. I would strongly recommend that approach.

Thefallenmadonna - thanks for the advice. I'm just trying to figure out how to do the no secret thing..I mean does that mean just bringing the bio one up in conversation but then how do you make them understand what you're talking bout?? It's all stuff like that, I don't quite know how to approach?

When you were growing up, can you remember how you knew or how you're parents managed to make u understand??

sorry scummymummy I never saw your reply to me thanks.
I actually kinda like the way RealityIsMyOnlyValentine said that the dad's called "daddy" but it's not who made him...sorta thing..
But not keeping it a secret is def. what I want to do since a lot of people know the story & I don't want the same thing happening as what happend to the squodgit.

Can you talk about how you met your partner, and about the first time your partner and your dd met? I don't actually remember meeting my dad for the first time, but I do have a memory of going out for a meal to celebrate him adopting me when I was 5. We never made a big deal of things, and I don't recall any seriosu talks, it's just that any questions I asked were answered without any fudging or omissions.

Thanks for your support girls.

I swing between feeling incredibly cheated and upset with my mum to feeling frustrated because I can't seem to pinpoint my bio dad even though I know for a fact someone has a links to him but am too scared to ask them for info about him.

hello again.

a bit more about my situation and the way it made me feel, i hope this will help.

AS i said i was 13 when i found out, in the post office because there was a confusion about my passport forms. My mum changed my name when i was little but not legally, it hadn't occurred to her that this would be a problem when i needed a passport. We went home and i sat in the garden (i was shocked and embarrassed by this) and my dad came out and told me that mum was married before and that man was my dad.
And that was IT. Nothing more. I was too scared to ask.....and didn't know what to ask. So i spent my teenage years knowing nothing, not where he was, who he was, why he had left, if he was dead or alive.
I saw a photo of him when i was 21. I found his family when i was 22. At this point my mum broke her silence and told me he was a 'free spirit' who wanted to travel the world.
During the 10 years between finding his family and him getting in touch i had to deal with this alone. I couldn't talk it through with mum, the family got collective amnesia.....nobody could tell me why they split. I started to become convinced that i would never meet him, or find out anything about him. I did try to find him, but had very few leads, all dead ends. I was so frustrated, and at times really angry with him for just getting on with his life and not being there for me.
When he made contact i told my mum, and suddenly she started to tell me about him. Not much but very important things.

I was not told about him because my parents bury their heads. They never deal with any issue. My dad did not want me to be told about him.

This is hard to articulate, there is so much emotion.
I have my mum's (abridged) version of events. My dad refuses to talk about it. My biological father told me all sorts of things.......and while some of it may not be true, some of it makes me realise why my parents never told me. Because it puts them in a bad light. My bio dad is by no means perfect, far from it, but he admits his faults and problems. Some of what he has said is backed up by snippets of information from people i trust. His arrival in my life has caused upset, but i cannot help how other people deal with (or rather DON'T)his prescence.
I have had to take this all on board, and then file it away. I am concentrating on building a relationship with my bio dad, not about who did what to who.

For those of struggling with how to deal with the knowledge of an absent father.....and how to tell your children. Well you need to judge your own child......but please DO give them this knowledge. Let them know they can ask questions, that it is not a taboo subject. It may be hard for them to deal with the emotion of why daddy isn't around....but at least you can give them answers as to why. I had no support through that, in my teens. Please don't let them 'find out' the way i did or the way TheSquodgit did.
And I want you to know that for ME dad, the man who took me on when i was 3, who worked shitty jobs to feed and clothe me, who i was sick all over in the surgery when i was 6 and very poorly, this man is my DAD. I love him.

i don't know if this helps anyone on here......if you have questions please ask and i will try my best to answer them.

queenrollo thank you for sharing your story, what a shock it all must have been.

My DS1 is not my husbands biological child, he was seven months old when I met DH and his bio father had not been involved since he was six weeks old, we were also apart during the pregnancy.

Dh is, as you say DAD, but I never want DS1 to feel that we have all lied to him, so every now and again I will just talk about how I met daddy and how much he wanted to be his daddy etc. I/ we also tell him that another man made him but was not able to be his daddy properly. I'm sure he will want more detail in time and that I dread with all my heart. He was a terrible excuse for a human being at the time, violent with a drug problem, quite what he is doing now I don't know and only care because of my son.

I just think honesty is best. My mum telling me my bio dad (B) was a free spirited hippy made me have all these wonderful daydreamy thoughts about him. He was very active with environmental groups in the late 70's/early 80's, but.......he was openly sleeping with someone else all the time he was with my mum, he drank, he was heavily into LSD....in one of the first e-mail exchanges i had with B he admitted that over the years he has had an ongoing addiction to coke. He no longer drinks. There were other mentally cruel things he did to my mum while they were together, and finding these things out made a huge difference to how i viewed him, and how i felt about my mum. I suddenly realised why it had been so painful for her to talk about it. But i have harboured a lot of ill feeling towards my mum over the years, and this could have been avoided. Sadly the damage to our relationship is already done
What i will say, and i told B this.....is that i am glad i grew up without him (or his disfunctional family) in my life. Apart from this being an 'elephant in my teens' as it were, i had a very stable and happy upbringing. If he had been part of my life i doubt that would have been the case. By the time i met them i was an adult. I do have some confidence issues, but by then i was able to set the pace myself and be up-front about how i felt.
it does feel good to talk about this, i've never really had the chance to.

queenrollo - Thanks for sharing your story. A lot of it is similar to my situation - not only has my mum (and whole fecking family that knew about it inc my sister) not told me about it but they are refusing to help me or even talk about it.

I feel I cannot bring it up with them now as it is still a taboo subject in the family. No one has offered any help or support in helping me find him even though I have expressed to them that I really want to find him.

I feel like mum has shifted the weight of the secret from her shoulders and I am bearing the whole responsibility on mine. I just have a heavy heart at the moment.

No one has contacted me on Genes Reunited yet either. Starting to feel frustrated.

Oh Squodgit, how terribly sad for you. I do hope you get somewhere with your search it all sounds emotionally exhausting.

The thought of my lovely ds ever feeling like this just horrifies me. Do you think your mother really understands how you feel or is she just hoping it all goes away? It is still only a few days since she told you maybe she will tell you more or help you in time. I hope so.