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I had a very similar experience in my own life and found out in August of 2018 that I have a 28 yr old daughter. I can go into the details of what happened all those years ago, but I will focus on where we are today and how it relates to your situation.
I can relate to all the emotions you are going through as well. I am a good father to my children and finding this out devastated me. I thought I would never get over the incredible heartbreak and that it would eventually break me. I cried for days and weeks on end. I went through every emotion from sadness to extreme anger. There is a term for it, anger grief, it can drive some men to terrible places and some take their own lives because of it. I can tell you that if you focus on getting help for yourself that it will get better. You will never completely understand why any of this happened though and cannot let this drag you down.
Thank you for posting, you are the first dad I have seen in a simu
My daughter initially wanted to keep me at arms length, but we began exchanging messages that led to phone conversations and began figuring out where we wanted this to go. I let her take the lead and made sure she felt in control of this. I wanted her to be comfortable as she is a bit withdrawn and somewhat shy.
I wrote her other father, who knew he was not her biological father, letters that I shared with her before sending to make sure she understood where I was coming from and that I wasn't in this to hurt anyone. I just wanted her to know me and my family. She eventually agreed to meet and we slowly began figuring out how this was going to work.
There are no instructions or manuals to guide any of us in these situations. It was with patience and understanding of our potential impact on the others lives that we inched our way along on this path to know one another.
I had to remind myself, and still do, that she is not to blame for any of this and that she is responsible for how I feel or react to her identifying herself as a member of her "step" family. Its extremely difficult at times not to just blurt out things I want to say about her bio mom and step father's actions. They lied to her all these years and had no intent of her ever knowing I existed or who she really was. But that would put my position in her life at risk and because of that I keep it to myself. I am as cordial as can be when talking to any of her other family. It pays dividends again and again when I do. Much of her early reservations were based on fear of hurting her other family and I focused on reassuring her I would do all I could to avoid hurting anyone she cared about. Again, I gave her control over the relationship.
I am happy to say that we have built a relationship that I could have never expected. I see her as much as possible, we live in separate states, and I step down as an executive in my company to get the flexibility I needed to be able to see her, and my grandchildren she has, at least once a month. We talk everyday and the day she called me Dad, I broke. I cried as hard as I had done in the very beginning of this experience. She means the world to me just as my other two children do.
I hope you can eventually have a similar situation develop and begin to connect as her and I have. I will warn you that it doesn't get easier either, at least in some aspects of how you two might view things differently when it comes to her other family. But it's worth every moment of struggle to have her a part of my life.
I do not know you and as odd as it might sound, I am here to help in any small way I can. I hope you do reach out if things haven't changed for you and her.
An Understanding Dad
Jesse. thank you so much for posting, you are the first father other than myself that I have seen in this situation. It gives me hope that I will be able to get to a better place with all of this. How did your wife and kids deal with all of this? My wife acts as though she is ok with it all but I can tell it hurts her underneath it all and that she is worries about how this will effect our own children which are all still very young.