A child your partner never knew about turns up via Facebook. What next?

Well, that’s awkward. Dani* writes

My partner and I have been together for 15 years, exactly half my life. We have a wonderful (hectic but fun filled & successful) life with three beautiful daughters aged almost ten, five and three. We have a strong relationship built on trust, respect, love, friendship and mutual life goals. Of course this is not to say that life is always
peachy, we do live in the reality. In the early days of our relationship, largely because we were both so young and needed to work out what we wanted from life, we did a bit of “break-up” get “back together” but after our first daughter was born and we adjusted to the massive change that brought to our life we both let go of our fears of being with the one person our whole life and fully committed to our relationship and our family, since then our relationship has only gotten stronger and our lives more filled with joy.

The blip on the radar if you will is that just prior to us falling pregnant with our first daughter, my partner had a one night stand. It was a complete one off, he was totally honest about it and since we were “on a break” (thanks Friends for that term) it didn’t really affect our relationship, except maybe to bring us to a point where we realised we didn’t want to be with other people – so a positive in the grand scheme of things.

Anyway fast forward almost 10 years to an e-mail (thanks Facebook) from this woman which advises that her almost 10 year old son may well in fact be my partners child – his one and only son. To say we have mixed emotions, fears and excitement about this revelation is an understatement.

So, I was after some advice from the Mamamia community…..

How this will impact our life and family if we confirm paternity? How do we go about telling our children and our close extended family? How does this boy fit into the mix? How does his mother? I

am very concerned about doing what is best for everyone involved, particularly all the children – from the little we know about this boy he already has a family, a mother, a step-father and three other siblings, plus a relationship with the paternal grandparents of his other siblings – so do we have a place in his life or do we hang back until he initiates contact to minimise disruption to his life… the questions are endless really.

We are very family orientated people – nothing is more important to us, and we do generally operate on ‘the more the merrier’ ethos. I guess I am just after some advice on how to proceed and how to minimise any difficulties for us all.

Image by Aleutia

UPDATE

My partner , with my support made contact with the woman who sent the Facebook message (lets call her Kylie*) to determine the likihood of paternity and to find out more about this boy, his life & Kylies* intentions so to speak.

Anyway – It turns out my partner was one of two possible daddy’s, and from her reports on the other potential certainly the most desirable choice. This other guy is the personification of a deadbeat – 6 other kids to 3 women that he knows about, and he has nothing to do with any of them!

My partner met with Kylie* to discuss the whole situation – as it turns out she’s a normal mum, not that different from me – she just wants the best for her kids & wanted to establish a pathway for a connection should that be in the best interests of her son – so I have nothing but respect for her for that alone, it can’t have been easy to make that first step.

At a face to face meeting (no more Facebook) my partner did meet the boy in question – only in a casual, “this is someone mum used to know” sort of way & got to know a little more about him – if we are going to be honest, both of us kind of warmed to the idea of potentially adding a son to our family, even if the method was unexpected. Kylie was happy to do paternity testing & take it from there.

So after a couple of weeks (and lots of distracted “what if’ thoughts) the results have come back yesterday… as a 0% chance that my partner is his father & I have to say it came as a shock. We know according to the laws of probability it was only a 50/50 chance but I guess we got a little carried away with the rosey picture we had began to paint in our minds of the one big happy family. Of course there was relief – no world upside down revelations to family & friends, no change to our happy little unit… but honestly we feel shell-shocked.

The most heart-wrenching thing is the fact that by the process of elimination this little boy has a shitty dad & THAT fact is resonating with both me & my partner.

Anyway, call it closure or therapy or whatever else might be appropriate, but I wanted to post & let everyone who might be interested how it all turned out. I also wanted to thank all those people who made comments – you’ll never know how inspirational & helpful you were as I explored my own feelings