DNA Testing Surprises

Paternity fraud is accepted in Maryland?!

Well, It does NOT protect the best interests of the child. Doubt begets mental illness.

By a huge coincidence that only Chump Lady is capable of, this very minute I just finished listening to my 61 years old sister’s audios. She is crying and depressed and 100% broke and is having to live with our crazy mother who screwed up her life by cheating on my father and having her. My sister was always unconsciously trying to legitimize herself and made many bad choices that set her back, even thought she is really smart.
My poor dad, a brillant engineer, spent his life spackling about his wife and this daughter that stuck out among his five children like a corn stalk in a coffee field.

My mother kept tight control by manipulating every single second of her life the people around her. I can’t begin to list the damages.

Paternity fraud is evil. That simple. The bill will arrive sooner or later.

I teach autobiography and creative writing (with a focus on the memoir and the personal essay) at the college level. One of my students chose to write about the fact that at fifteen she and her siblings and father discovered that she is the product of her mother’s affair. This was and continues to be hugely painful for her, having to wonder whether her father, with whom she shared so much, would continue to love her. They have spent the last five years attempting to integrate this new knowledge into their relationship. Her relationship with her mother has similarly been disrupted, but in that case her anger and her sense of betrayal is at war with her love.
Anyone who says affairs are harmless, or to be celebrated for their “exuberance” or “transgressive transformation,” or, even worse, that they strengthen a marriage, doesn’t know squat.

In addition to all of the emotional damage cheating does to kids, hiding paternity also puts their health at risk because they aren’t aware of bio dads history, or won’t be able to get donor match from relatives in event of medical crisis.

A person I know who was traumatized for years by paternal incest was, in her 20s, contacted by an overseas agency that found her online. They were looking for the father because his overseas children were trying to find him and introduce him to his overseas grandchildren. She told the agency about her history, that she didn’t stay in touch with him for obvious reasons, and suggested that children would be unsafe around him so they should reconsider finding him. One wonders what the agency reported back.

There was no need for any of this, of course, but he and his overseas military peers considered this sort of thing to be completely normal and supported one another in the deception.

If we did a better job of nurturing boys and culturally training and supporting men to be emotionally healthy, sexually functional, and fully self-managed from childhood, the whole world would function better, especially for men.

This is a another twist and turn to infidelity. Lies always have a way of finding you out! My xh cheating on me for 31 years (didn’t know until I did) then I promptly filed for divorce CN & CL saved me from complete insanity! Anyway, he got a vasectomy after our 3 child which we had about 7 years after we were married. I often think that he had to have fathered offspring somewhere, considering the amount of whoring around that he did! I hope if he did that the DNA testing that is the craze nowadays will find him out!

On another note a close friend who is 74, found out from his mom on her death bed that his dad was not his real father. No details, then she died. He was 70. Recently I told him I had done the MyHeritage DNA testing and he ordered a kit to see what he could turn up about bio dad. Sure enough within a week he had emails going on and found his 4 ½ siblings still alive and wanted to meet him. He flew across the country to a place he had never even been. coincidently they were having a family reunion and wanted him to come. For him it was a good ending, his 4 ½ siblings LOOK exactly like him, have above average height and had very similar interests etc. They did NOT know about him either, but as it turned out his Bio dad had been in the Navy and had had an affair with his mom. No-one ever spoke of it because BOTH were married. How sad to take a lie to your grave and have that lie revealed later. He said they all decided it was SOOOO long ago, that they just wanted to keep in touch with their newly found family. A LIE is ALWAYS a LIE!

He was a convincing liar. I was naive and 21 pregnant with my first.

When I was pregnant with my second he was cheating with a coworker. She was big and I found letters confirming the breakup and their cheating. Years later the child passed away and she was pregnant when he was screwing her; she duped her husband.

To tell or not to tell? I know he’d deny it. I’m hoping they check someday but can’t prove it otherwise. For the man who grieved the loss of his son? I’d never want to hurt anyone with that news.

However, Theresa good chance my children have siblings out there. It’s disturbing.

I have a buddy who used to work at 23 and Me and he mentioned the frequency people are finding out their family relationships aren’t what they thought they were.

So I know the main message of this blog is: Don’t cheat or leave your cheater.

But if you know of cheating, and have documented proof, do you tell and if so, how?

I’m not trying to diminish how painful finding this out would be for the adults involved, but it’s even worse for the children, often now adults themselves.

I was adopted, and had my DNA tested. While there was no affair involved ( some things are worse than affairs) I am in an online support group for people who have this sort of “surprise” show up. There’s all sorts of baxk stories. Some were adoptees who were placed for adopted after infidelity and some grew up always knowing this.

One of the sickest parts of all this? There are some women out there who will try to get pregnant by their married man because they think he’ll leave his wife. At least one member in the group found out that’s how she came to be. She tried to contact her dad not knowing he was a married man and as you can expect, the end result was incredibly painful for her, her bio-dad\s wife and her half siblings.

Just another way infidelity is the gift that keeps on giving, I guess.

I think it’s horrifying how many men are eager to immediately dispose of a child who has never known any father but them, who has loved and respected them all their lives, who has *done nothing wrong*, just because they find out the DNA doesn’t match.

Yes, being cheated on sucks! Yes, it’s a horrible body blow to find out that the child you thought shared your genes does not!

But I have no respect for any man whose immediate reaction is “but my rights”.

I’d honestly rather have every baby paternity-tested at birth to spare children the agony of being discarded like garbage.

I grew up as the youngest of 6 children, three of which are products of affairs. Two are from my father’s ex-wife. She told the children when they were 18 (conveniently when my father’s legal financial obligation ended), but both children chose not to tell the my dad until they were in their late 40s. The other sibling is from my mother, who was the OW. This sibling has never been recognized by her father’s family. My parents were married for life, and I am their only child, and not accepted by any of the other children. All the children were treated equally by my parents. While I have compassion for their situation, I also think about how my dad’s ex-wife robbed his biological children of the limited resources (financial, quality time, opportunities that can be easily done with 3-4 kids instead of six, even a choice of vehicle!) by not telling him two of the kids weren’t his. Maybe my parents could have retired and actually enjoyed life instead of working into their 70s before succumbing to to illness and disability. All these lives affected because people can’t keep their pants up.