Adoptive father relationship

Hi Phil. First of all, thank you for posting and caring for your adopted daughter so much! My story is similar to yours in that my birthfather gave up all rights to me when I was a baby and I was adopted by my dad; he was the only dad I ever knewn until ~1 year ago when I searched for my birthdad (well documented on this site). I am going to come at this from my own experience and you can take it for what it's worth; hopefully some of my advice will be useful. There are may wonderful people on this site that have great advice and being on here has helped me so much! The most important thing is that your daughter knows that you love her. I think secrets are toxic and I lived with secrets until I was 15 years old and my dad finally told me that I was not his biological child. It still hurts me to this day - and I'm 41 years old - that my parents "hid" this information from me (my mom only recently acknowledged that I am adopted). While I don't think it is cool that your wife told your daughter without your support - and the 2 of you together doing it - I do think it is better that your daughter knew earlier rather than later. Have your read the book "Coming Home to Self"? It's an excellent book and helped me to see all sides of the triad more clearly and understand my emotions. If you haven't done a lot of reading about adoption, you might want to start doing that. I thought I had myself all figured out before I started searching; I was so terribly wrong. I now know that the way I am and what I have become in a large part is because I was adopted (and, more than anything, the secrets and lies that went along with it). Your daughter loves you. She really, really does. Even if she isn't showing it and you had an awesome relationship before (you just reaching out on this site tells me how much you care) you can have that again. She might be trying to push you away to "test" your love for her. The most important thing is to get everyone help - someone that is trained in post-adoptive issues. I so wish my parents would have talked to me after my dad told me about my being adopted. Instead, they just dropped the information on me like a 100 brick and left me to deal with it the only way I knew how (which included withdrawing from my family, not believing in my worth as a person, not thinking I could be loved, and truly thinking that because my birthdad gave me up and it was such a secret, he much be a really bad person, which, in turn, made me a really bad person...oh, the things that secrets and lives do to your brain!). As hard as it is to reach out to a 17 year old girl (and, this I know, as I was one once - and not an easy one to deal with!) more than anything she just wants to know that you are still her dad, that you love her, that you won't leave her and that you will always be there for her. I think the 3 of you should all invest in some therapy. And, you and your wife need to go together to get over the hurt and anger you feel - 5 years after-the-fact - of her going behind your back and telling your daughter. Something so big and so powerful shouldn't be done alone (telling your daughter about her birth); it needs to be a united front. I love my dad, the one that raised me and adopted me, more than anything in this world, but adoption plays some pretty cruel tricks on your mind and makes you question everything about yourself. What I do know, what I've only ever wanted, is to know I belong and only my (adopted) dad is the one that has been able to provide me with that kind of love. Your daughter needs you...keep trying...keep loving her...and keep reaching out. If you can't talk to her, maybe write her a letter. In the thick of things, when my dad and I were having a hard time communicating, he gave me a letter (that I still have) telling me how much he loved me and how he always would...your daughter needs to hear that too. Kind regards. May you find peace on your journey. Moonbeam