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agonyaunt2022-07-11 06:29 pm
lemonsharks) wrote in agonyaunt2022-07-11 06:29 pm
Entry tags:
Ask Amy: in which both partners should run t. f. away
Ask Amy: I wouldn’t have gotten involved if I knew the child was his
Dear Amy: I have been with my live-in boyfriend for over three years. He has two children, and I have three.
The issue I’m wrestling with is that he recently found out that he has a third child, a 5-year-old.
When we met, he told me he had already established that the child wasn’t his, via his mom taking a DNA test, which showed that this baby had no DNA connection to his family.
Well, surprise … the child is his.
Now I feel betrayed and duped. I wouldn’t have been with him had I known about this third child.
I am in love with him, and the best way I can describe my current emotion is to say that, to me, it’s the equivalent to being cheated on.
He doesn’t understand why I have such strong feelings about this situation. He said I am supposed to support him.
I’m not sure how I can do that when I feel second-rate to three women who have his children, and yet I don’t have a child with him. He has told me he has no desire for marriage.
So I am supposed to be his girlfriend for the rest of my life, while these women have a solidified place in his life and a bigger connection to him than I am going to have?
I don’t want to end things with him, but how can I help these feelings I have and find a way to accept this and move on?
So Many Feelings
Dear So Many Feelings: I urge you to re-examine your choices — and for now to only do so from the vantage point of what would benefit you and your children.
In the short term, your reaction to this situation is to want what these other women have: a baby with this man.
From my perspective, if you did have a baby with him, you’d be joining a fairly crowded club.
I hope you double up on birth control, because this man is extremely fertile and also someone who has to be dragged into fatherhood.
He either outright lied to you when you first met or is too dim to understand that DNA does not lie.
Furthermore, he responds to your shock about this third child by insisting that your role is to support him.
Well, his role is to support you, too (and, by the way, all of his children).
People are somewhat predictable. Your boyfriend has established a pattern of overall selfishness.
Well-matched partners grasp hands and ride life’s roller-coaster together. If you don’t feel that you two are able to do that, then you should carefully reconsider staying with him, long term.
You say you want to stay with him. If you do stay, you should accept that you might be riding this roller-coaster alone.
Dear Amy: I have been with my live-in boyfriend for over three years. He has two children, and I have three.
The issue I’m wrestling with is that he recently found out that he has a third child, a 5-year-old.
When we met, he told me he had already established that the child wasn’t his, via his mom taking a DNA test, which showed that this baby had no DNA connection to his family.
Well, surprise … the child is his.
Now I feel betrayed and duped. I wouldn’t have been with him had I known about this third child.
I am in love with him, and the best way I can describe my current emotion is to say that, to me, it’s the equivalent to being cheated on.
He doesn’t understand why I have such strong feelings about this situation. He said I am supposed to support him.
I’m not sure how I can do that when I feel second-rate to three women who have his children, and yet I don’t have a child with him. He has told me he has no desire for marriage.
So I am supposed to be his girlfriend for the rest of my life, while these women have a solidified place in his life and a bigger connection to him than I am going to have?
I don’t want to end things with him, but how can I help these feelings I have and find a way to accept this and move on?
So Many Feelings
Dear So Many Feelings: I urge you to re-examine your choices — and for now to only do so from the vantage point of what would benefit you and your children.
In the short term, your reaction to this situation is to want what these other women have: a baby with this man.
From my perspective, if you did have a baby with him, you’d be joining a fairly crowded club.
I hope you double up on birth control, because this man is extremely fertile and also someone who has to be dragged into fatherhood.
He either outright lied to you when you first met or is too dim to understand that DNA does not lie.
Furthermore, he responds to your shock about this third child by insisting that your role is to support him.
Well, his role is to support you, too (and, by the way, all of his children).
People are somewhat predictable. Your boyfriend has established a pattern of overall selfishness.
Well-matched partners grasp hands and ride life’s roller-coaster together. If you don’t feel that you two are able to do that, then you should carefully reconsider staying with him, long term.
You say you want to stay with him. If you do stay, you should accept that you might be riding this roller-coaster alone.
no subject
Why is the third kid more of a problem for LW than the other two? Why is LW attaching significance to reproducing together when neither she nor BF are partnered with the other co-parents of their various children? (At first I came away with the impression that the 5yo was one of the older kids in the extended/blended/exteblended family, but now I'm rethinking that it's a houseful of teenagers and maybe LW didn't sign on to another dozen years of parenting and/or BF's relationship with other-parent-of-5yo was recent enough in his dating history when she got together with BF that she feels particularly threatened by this connection? I.e. she was previously okay with the babymommas who are far enough in BF's rearview as her babydaddy/ies are for her but this more recent relationship and more recent kid have her feeling more threatened?)
And, relatedly, did BF lie to her, did BF's mom lie to him about the DNA test, or is there some other thing going on there?
(I smell something weird going on with the relationship among the babymomma of the 5yo and BF and his family and possibly also LW and this particular babymomma, but I could be way off base here because the information given is... insufficient data to proceed?) (Another possibility is that LW was in what she thought was a permanent monogamous relationship with the babydaddy of her previous children and he left her for a newer model with whom he had a child younger than the ones she had with him and this is bringing all of that back up again.) (But seriously, LW knew the man had two children by two different women so IMO the simplest explanation is that LW is displacing a bunch of insecurities around BF and/or BF's mom not being honest with her onto the idea of having a child with him as being a reliable connection when obviously it is not for this dude. Again, possibly with a side order of there being something about the particular relationship among LW, babymomma-of-5yo, and BF/his family that's causing A Thing that somehow BF's other two children by two other women is not? Insufficient data to proceed.)