Messages By: tweaked

I am the eldest of four children, abandoned by our father when I was 11 (1957). I remembered him best, and 25 years later I went in search of either a record of his death, or the father we hadn't seen for all those years. I found him, and much to my astonishment, one of his sisters - a staunch and professed Christian - had known where to find him for the entire time he was missing; yet, this same sister always talked down to us, and said if we really LOVED him, we would engage in a search to locate him.

I spent nearly all of my divorce settlement finding a man who wasn't really lost to HIS family, and a man who was a hopeless alcoholic - which is why he disappeared and never tried to contact any of his children; he believed we'd be better off not knowing him. Sadly, he was more right than wrong.

For ten years he struggled to be what he knew his children wanted him to be - sober - but my younger brother could never fogive him for leaving, and didn't have any qualms about saying so to Dad. So although the three of us had forgiven him and accepted that he'd left with good intentions (he couldn't hold a job because alcohol had a stronger hold than anything or anyone else, and he didn't want us to be teased at school for him being constantly arrested and thrown in jail for weeks at a time), our younger brother's attitude was a constant thunder cloud over the time we were altogether again.

Finally, Dad couldn't bare the hurt of staying sober any longer, nor our younger brother's unwillingness to accept him sober. So he killed himself, leaving a note saying if he couldn't be forgiven by all of us, life wasn't worth living, even though he'd tried to be the father he hadn't been capable of when we were all young and needed him.

I am thankful I was able to spend some adult time with Dad; I wish his demons hadn't been so great, and that we could all have shared my ability to forgive.

I don't think the child support should matter. What matters is being able to share some time with your loved one before it's too late for both of you. Punishing someone over and over doesn't make either one of you feel whole, and it can lead to horrible consequences from which there is no forgiveness and future time shared.

The fact that a "father" ends of paying for a child who is not his biological offspring should not become incumbant upon the child's welfare.

First, if any couple is separated for ANY length of time, when a child is conceived within the next year, BOTH parents should be in favor of DNA testing so that future problems like this do NOT happen.

IF a child turns out not to belong to the husband, then he and the wife should decide prior to the birth if he's going to stay and actually BE a father, or not... IF he doesn't want to assume the roll of fatherhood, this must be a decision spelled out in legal documents prior to the birth of the child, whether he stays or goes.

Personally I can't imagine ANY man staying in a relationship wherein he knows he's not the father of a child, and making the child suffer for the father's failure to learn, and the mother's failure to have DNA testing done for herself.

Relationships are SUPPOSED to be based on honesty!

Having said that, I can't imagine a father staying in a relationship with a woman who is carrying another man's child without wanting to assume responsibility for that child, unless the real biological father is willing to step forward and assume rsponsibility, which (let's face it) most are too cowardly to do.

IF the biological father is upstanding, and wishes to pay support, and even to play a roll in the child's future, then the husband should be man enough to accept a 3rd person tied to the family, and be grateful enough for the additional income to be civil about the entire matter.

But in THIS instance - to learn after a time he's NOT the father, and then sever ties with the child - it's totally unfair to the child.

A child is so fragile. I can't blame this child for being slow to want this man back in her life. How can she know he won't always throw this in her face when she doesn't obey everythng he wants her to do, for the rest of her life?

She can't... And most men are too immature to NOT throw this in her face, for years to come.

Three wrongs will never make a right, or fill the void that this immature father's previous actions created in the life of that innocent child. She is probably better off without him, and he is probably too immature to not use her biological DNA against her at a later point in time.

If she decides to accept him again, she must do it realizing he is flawed, and may never live up to her expectations.

He, on the other hand, must come to grips with the situation, and love her enough to never throw this in her face, no matter how frustrated he may become with her in the future.

Personally, if she allows him back in her life, I think he's lucky. And it shows that as a child she's a lot more mature than he was, when he took his spite against her mother out on her.

All the more reason for using protection during separations, and to ALWAYS have DNA testing when a pregnancy occurs shortly thereafter. Had this been the way these two adults handled this matter, the child would never have had to be subjected to this dysfunctional family problem.