Parenting is never easy. There are a lot of ups and downs during a child’s life. But when they reach adulthood, their parents can’t help but have mixed feelings. There’s a sense of pride, but at the same time parents are filled with sadness.
Dear Bright Side,
My wife Sarah and I have been married for 20 years, and our daughter just turned 17. We were celebrating her birthday when my wife approached me, and I must admit I never expected the bombshell Sarah was about to drop concerning our daughter.
She pulled me aside, saying we needed to talk, but she seemed hesitant. I followed her into the living room, and we sat down, but it took her a while to speak. But when she did, my world fell apart.
Sarah confessed that days before our wedding, she found out about something. That she had kept a secret from me for all these years.
I asked her what she was talking about, and she told me that she started feeling ill before the wedding and thought it was just stress. But someone told her to do a pregnancy test, and for some reason, she thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea.
It only took a few minutes for her to find out that she was pregnant with another man’s child. I sat there frozen, trying to comprehend what it was that she just told me. So I asked her how she knew it wasn’t my child.
She said that she was lonely while I was on a business trip about six weeks before the wedding. She went out with some friends and met someone. They ended up in bed together, and she never saw him again after that.
She was six weeks pregnant when she found out, and because of that, there was no way for the child to be mine. We were both too busy at the time and hardly saw each other. I was crushed. I always thought we were a strong couple with no secrets between us. But this was too much.
I spent the next few days rethinking my entire relationship. Was I going to stay or leave? And what about my daughter? I raised her, spent her entire life with her? But is she even entitled to anything I own? Was there a reason for me to keep her in my will?
I don’t know what to do anymore. She’s my daughter in every sense of the word, but at the same time she isn’t, and I don’t know what I’m going to do about that. I don’t even know if I should tell her the truth.
We know that you’re hurt and confused, but you also need to take your daughter into consideration here. This was your wife’s mistake, not your daughters. You need to look at the pros and cons of keeping her in your life versus sending her away, and understand that each decision you make will affect her life as much as it affects yours. Ask yourself the difficult questions and come to terms with what you decide.
Your daughter has the right to know who her real father is. It’s up to you to straighten this situation up and tell her what you know. The discussion won’t be easy for either of you, and she might feel exactly the same way you do, but she also has a choice to make in this matter.
If you’re confused about what’s happening with the relationship you had with your daughter, you might want to ask her what she wants. She might see you as her father either way, or she might want to reconnect with her biological father. But you won’t know until you ask her.
