cdog

first i want to appoligize as i never did read up on all the details of your situation, how long you have been married, children already in the marriage, does your w want to be back in the marriage, can you forgive her and move forward, etc, etc.

all those here have given you excellent advice already so i will try not to be repetitive. instead i will try to tell you some of the hurdles fh and i have and are facing.

the first one you have already conquered. loving YOUR son. for me i faught with myself for 2-3 weeks after she was born before i allowed myself to except her for her and not the om. after i let my heart open up to her i realized what a blessing she was and is in my life.

i insisted on om paying cs. right or wrong i had my reasons and i stand by them. the down side was he was the type of guy who initially wanted something (visitation) for his money. he has grown to honestly love the oc imo. he is very regular and punctual for his visits.

although i still believe that cs was the way to go it was also a double (triple?) edged sword. 1- fh still has a very difficult time with letting oc go for visitations. a- because she is so protective like all mothers and b- because her and om's w don't get along.
2- it means that like it or not since om is so regular with his visitation that he is always there and it has made it harder for me to put some of the (rollercoaster) insecurity and emotional abandonment issues behind me. they still raise up their ugly heads. mostly when i am in the truck alone and pass certain areas or here certain songs on the radio.
and 3- i have been dealing with a new demon in an insecurity of the fact that as the oc grows older and starts to understand who her bio dad is i will lose something with her. i don't know what or why and i know that i shouldn't worry about this but it still gets to me on rare occasions.

this is not meant to tell you what to do but rather to let you know of some of the hardships that may be in your future depending on the road(s) you choose.

It DOES help pops and it says a lot about you that you can reach out to me, a stranger, in this way. Thank you. Don't feel bad about not reading my entire dreary thread. I am basically using it as a chronicle of this part of my experience and I'd be surprised to hear that ANYONE but me read the entire thing at this point. I actually read it fairly often.

I know all about the triggers you speak of. Since my own d-day is so recent they happen to me constantly and they hit hard. For the last couple of days I have been using a concept that bOb pure* wrote about. I can't find the post but he said something to the effect that his feeling bad about his wife's affair was like his choosing to carry around a big bag of rocks. Now when I am triggered (or more likely I trigger myself) I tell myself "put down those rocks!" and so far it has been working. Once again thank you bOb.

I've thought a lot about the contact you speak about between my son and his father and how it will affect my relationship with him. At first I was distraught over my feelings that I would never have the kind of relationship with the baby that I have with my oldest son. But he's getting close to nine months old now and I don't worry about it anymore. Will it be a different kind of relationship? Sure, but then I had no idea of what kind of relationship I would have with my first son (I was 43 when he was born. You and I are the same age) and I am still learning on the job so to speak. But I am the one my son looks to for comfort when he bumps his head or when he wakes at night. I am the one he smiles at when he wakes in the morning. I will be the one who teaches him not to touch things that can hurt him and I will be the one who teaches him right from wrong. My wife's partner in adultery can never have those things nor can he ever take them away from me.

I also want my wife's partner in adultery to jump through the appropriate legal hoops as K so rightly pointed out. So far he has not contacted us but I expect he will. I don't know if you read it in my posts but it was never my intention to conceal his true paternity from my son. I had initially wanted to reveal the truth to him when he was 'ready' but I have since revised my opinion. I don't believe in lying to my children and my son will know the truth from the moment he is able to understand speech. I hope, no, I KNOW that his contact with his father will not damage or detract from our own relationship. Unfortunately I am not so sure about my wife. I can only choose to put down my bag of rocks when I can and trust God to answer my prayers in His own time, in His own way. Some of those prayers now include you bro and I hope He answers those prayers in the way you would want.

cdog

i am going to disagree with you on the relationship being different between you and your son. for me once i allowed myself to make the connection with grace (oc) our relationship was just as special as any of my other kids.

the legal responsibilities were a part of my decision for cs. but not the only one. they were also not meant to make om pay for his part in the A. instead it was more of a way to insure that oc, fh and our children had something to financialy fall back on or help them out in the case of some unfortunate event happening to me.

i don't know all the ins and outs of the law but i believe that for the most part it will be your choice of whether you allow him into your life or not by seeking cs. with cs he does then get certain rights.

it's off to see willy wonka with my 17 year old so i will right later. yeah all those kids have aged another year along with their mom. i however remain at 52 and have actually regressed mentally to about 35. even though my bones say different.

LOL pops, with me it's the back and the knees. I just tell people I ain't old, my body is. Actually I'm in my best shape since 1995 when I blew out my back. I went from 240 pounds of fat to 190 pounds of muscle. Finding out my wife was balling another man really got me off my butt and back into exercise and diet.

I've consulted with a lawyer and he advised me that in New York State where I live that if the biological father seeks to establish paternity and seek visitation then he WILL be granted those rights by the courts. My wife insists that her partner in adultery will go the whole nine yards in order to be 'part of his son's life'. I have strong doubts about that but if he does so be it. I can live with that sorry SOB getting visitation. Not a perfect situation but not impossible. What IS impossible is for me to live with the fact of my wife continuing a relationship in any way with the man she cheated with. We'll see how it plays out.

I hope you're right about my relationship with my son. I know I'll love him until the day I die but I have no way of knowing what having TWO daddies will do to him. I have no doubts that my wife's partner in adultery will waste no time in telling him who his 'real' daddy is when he's old enough to understand speech. I can't control that, I can only love my son and do my best as a dad and hope it will do the trick. Your daughter is seven now, right? How is she handling it?

cdog

"I have no way of knowing what having TWO daddies will do to him"

oc is only 3-1/2 years old. and i am sure that om he has been telling grace that he is her poppy (father) since the beginning of his visitations, about1-1/2 - 2 years now. it has so far not proven to be a detrament to the relationship between grace and myself. in fact when he comes to pick her up she just clings to my neck saying that she doesn't want to go with him. she knows he is her poppy but i am her daddy.

i don't know how things will be as she grows older and around 12 and on starts to figure out the realities of her paternity. she may become rebellous or start to play one side against the other. this does give me concern every once in awhile but rarely. for now when she has a bad dream it is me that goes in to cuddle her, when i come home from work she climbs into my truck to help me park in the drive, it's me that shares a pair of hershey kisses with her each night at bedtime. so all i can do is wait and see what god and time have in store for us.

bummer aboout the laws of your state with regard to this matter. one other thing that didn't stop me from having fh seek cs was that there would be no mistaking that grace wasn't my bio child and there would have been any way i would have been able to lie to her for a lifetime about it. so my thinking was that everyone knew the truth so let him make the choice of whether he could handle a relationship with oc under these conditions. he has actually done quite well with it and i do give him credit for that part. there is no arguing, name calling, yelling or anything else between us.

althoough it has changed and i have eased up quite abit now i was very adament at first that fh had no contact with him during visitation exchanges. it was either handled by myself or our oldest daughter (23). never her.

this is probably because she understands that i would never go thru the torment of working thru another A if she choose to have one. she understands that if she wants out all she has to do is tell me and the door is open. i don't mean this to sound as cold as it does just that i have worked very hard to meet all of the needs she said were lacking that led her to stray. and if she is not happy now then she will never be happy here.

great job on the weight lose. after fh's A i to lost a lot of weight. i went from 22o to 170 and felt great. i was jogging 6 miles a day and working out regularly. i have since had a heart attack and a revisit ti the cardio lab for a 2nd stent. i have gained most of the weight back but althouogh o have a hard time jogging i walk regularly and work out with the weights. if i can get the other work completed this winter i am looking forward to getting back on the quick step.

48 states! wow, i had forgotten that texas was still the largest state back then.

LOL I still remember them changing the flag when I was in the first grade. I thought it was just something they did every once in a while.

pops, if you're still around I am very interested in hearing about your wife's interactions with the OM regarding your child, if you don't mind. My wife still hasn't come to any conclusions I can trust concerning visitation. My own personal belief is that she is resisting because of my insistence about her having NC with her partner in adultery. I think that she is hanging on to this link to him so that she can still maintain a relationship.

How does your spouse handle contact with the OM at this point in your lives? More importantly how do YOU handle it? What sort of visitation schedule has been set up? How has visitation time increased over the years? Does he come to your home or do you or your spouse meet him somewhere? What about contact with the OM when he DOESN'T have physical custody of your child? Have you considered how to deal with your daughter's father being involved in events in her life in years to come such as graduations etc.?

I know I'm asking a lot. These are things that have been on my mind but as yet are things my wife is unwilling to discuss. I know that our situations are bound to be different but any insights I can get from you (or anyone else) would be most welcome.

cdog

let me start with a little background on my life. 31 years ago i carelessly got my girlfriend pg. we had dated for along time and were having relationship problems. i wanted us to work things out with us before we started any family. the pill was very popular and condoms at that time were rarely (stupidly on my part) not used. she became pg thinking it would cement our relationship. it did. i stopped seeing her, met fh a couple of months later, she had the baby, i paid cs and had visitation. i had yje 1st and 3rd weekends of every month and every other Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, 4th of July and sons b-day. the ONLY way i would ever be able to see my son was if i went to her house for pick up and drop off. i had to take the police with me several times because she theatened to have her friends beat me up at drop off time. she would ruetinely hide him from me so i would miss my visits. she drug me into court for something every 6 months. it was miserable for me and my son. i know because he had some problems and when he was 18 began voicing them to me. when he turned 21 i gave him the diary i had kept for his whole life. it helped him see the whole story )not just his moms side) and we are very close now.

so although not from an A fh and i had some experience in visitation to draw from. now to your questions and i don't mind abit. you can ask me anything that cross's your mind. and i mean anything.

"How does your spouse handle contact with the OM at this point in your lives?" ---- there is very little contact between them. every now and then he calls her for a request to pick up oc early, ask for more time (usually met with a no), that he will be a little late dropping her off or about health issues. she tells me imediately as far as i know when he calls her.

"More importantly how do YOU handle it?" ---- my w worked with her om. she had to quit that job. she is still in the same field but with a different employer. so their paths rarely cross and as far as i believe she avoids him. at first i demanded that either myself or our oldest daughter handled all visitation exchanges. slowly that has changed. i have grown more confident in myself again. as you know a spouse who becomes a PIA destroys a mates self esteem for awhile. and not meaning to sound cold or callous but if my wife wants out of our marriage now without trying to counsel or make an effort to improve it, she can go. with him or anyone else or on her own. if after 30 years together and accepting this in our life, i can't make her happy then i never will be able to and it is better for us all to part ways amicably.

"What sort of visitation schedule has been set up?" ---- he has every wednesday evening from 4pm - 8pm. every other wekend from 6pm on friday - 6pm on sunday. and every other Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter. there are specific times set up on those days for drop off and pick up. he also has fathers day and alternating b-days (oc's).

"How has visitation time increased over the years?" ---- NO

"Does he come to your home or do you or your spouse meet him somewhere?" ---- this goes back to my previous experience with my son. he comes here for pick ups and drops her off here afterwards. we however never hide her and always have her ready to go. most of the time it is his w that paicks up and drops off. but always at our house.

"What about contact with the OM when he DOESN'T have physical custody of your child?" ---- as far as i know there is none other then the phone calls i mentioned earlier. one other thing i should add is that for the 1st year of visitation Om's only comtact even by phone was thru me.

"Have you considered how to deal with your daughter's father being involved in events in her life in years to come such as graduations etc.?" ---= again this goes back to experience with my son. there will evidently be times as the child grows that both parents will be in the same room at the same time. that is when we as ADULTS will need to set the example of diplomacy. with my older son there were definately times when all parents were present, weddings hs graduation, funerals, etc. as adults you will have to deal with them. and mostr of these things should happen after so much time has passed that the raw emotions should have been put behind us. i know there will be some very hard decisions for us to make. i have been very active coaching all my sons and daughters in baseball, softball and soccer. will oc want me to coach her. her bio dad wants her to play in the hispanic leagues about 15 miles up the road. only when she is with him. what about when she gets married. who will give her away. could be a tuff decision for her should God grant that much time on this sweet earth. those are hurdles that we can't quess the answer to just take them as they come.

there is no fighting or argueing with om or his w. fh and his w had a couple early on that i had to stop. his w was blameing fh and she was blameing om. so i had to step in and let them both know that the 2 of them showed a lack of character that put all of us is this miserable spot.

as always i hope this helps you. and if tou have ANY more questions please feel free to ask.

Just a quick note to say that I will be traveling for the next few weeks and won't be posting. I'm NOT dropping out and I'll try to grab an internet connection when I can. Good luck and God's blessings to you pops. You will be in my thoughts and in my prayers. Hope to speak to you soon.

-camp

I hope so. I've thought about you a lot in the last few weeks. I hope everything is going well for you.

Not much has changed for me since we last spoke. My son will be 10 months old in a couple of days and as yet I haven't heard from the OM. At this point I'm starting to feel like I won't. He hasn't even tried to establish paternity in almost a year much less sue for visitation. My wife continues to insist that he WILL be taking us to court but I'm not so sure. Of course, I don't see him as the Prince Charming that she does.

Which leads me to my question. Assuming that the sorry SOB just lets his child go how do I deal with letting the other children know the situation? I have a 19 year old daughter and a nine year old son in addition to the baby. How did you deal with it? I have some time before I must deal with the whole thing but it's on my mind. I don't believe in lying to my children and there's no question that my son must know the truth about his paternity.

My daughter is of an age where she will deal with the situation on her own terms. We have a good enough relationship that we will be able to talk about it. I can do little more than that. My older son is nine and he has some idea of how babies are made although he still seems foggy on the actual mechanics of sex. So far he has declined all my offers of explanation. Should he be told now, before the baby can talk, or would it be better to wait? How did you handle revealing the truth to your older children? How did they handle it?

Assuming that his father will make no effort to visit him what would be your advice on letting the baby know about the circumstances of his birth? I don't mean about the affair and everything. Just how would you advise me to let him know that he has another daddy in addition to myself?

I plan to consult a child psychologist in this matter but your practical input (or anyone else's) would be enormously helpful. I hope to hear from you my friend and I wish you all the best in your own life.

hey campdog i'm still here. I think i said it before that i don't visit the site as much as i used to anymore. time is my biggest problem. with work, and 5 kids playing soccer and all of them trying to get some time on the computer there is very little time for me to even use the darn thing.

things here seem to be unraveling like a snowball melting in he!! in this house. go figure. the wife and me trying to work on us, her battling depression, my daughter and her husband getting divorced, her and my 2 granddaughters living with us and my wife and daughter can't live under the same roof withoout fighting. but that is another thread if i ever had time to post. it would also be very long and i am a 4 fingered typist with 2 broken digits. just look at my missed keys.

my situation was a little different from yours as i knew of the a and pg before the baby was born. so, i choose to ask fh to seek cs. with that om wanted to be part of the oc's life. during all the legal garbage is when the light came on as to who he really was. he didn't care about her and it was all about his money and him being in control and raising oc as HE saw fit. if she had never pursued him for cs i think he would have never come around. but i am not sure on that either. i know that he and my wife had discussed them meeting 1 or 2 times a year so he could see oc as uncle so & so or at least so he could see pictures of her. she is unbelivably cute and adorable and i can't help but think that once he saw that he may have tried sticking his nose in. who knows for sure.

i don't know the answer to the how and when to tell the younger ones. my oldest daughter was 19 when the crap hit the fan here. 6 of our 7 at the time still lived in the house. the youngest was 6. they all knew that daddy could never have any more kids. there food rations at the dinner table were safe in that regard. dr vasectomy had taken care of poor old dad. ouch!! sooooo when fh ended up pregnant we had no choice but to tell them all. we felt sooner was better then later. we simply called them into our bedroom in age appropriate pairs and told them mom was having another baby. when they asked how could that happen we just told them that i was not the dad. 19yod was pi$$ed. mom had just spent 6 months preaching to her about std's and pg protection and then she had an A and ended up pg. i think this is the reason behind their bickering to this day. 18yos is so easy going that he just took it in stride. the rest were so young that they didn't associate with the emotions just that they were having a new baby around. the whole point of this rambling paragraph is that don't be surprised if your 19yo gets upset when she hears the news. have a plan to deal with her anger should it arise.

as for the 9 yo. my older brother was born while my mom was legally married to another man. our moms and dads are the same but her divorce wasn't final and he had a different name on his b-cert. i found out when i was around 16 - 17 while looking for my own b-cert and stumbled onto his also. i never had a problem with my parents hiding the info from me instead i just wanted to have an explaination. again the point being that since your son is still young you have time to explain things when he can handle it emotionally.

but if om starts any inkling of trouble about persueing his parental rights (i say what rights) then i think you should tell the 9 yo immediately.

whenever you decide to tell him it will be paramount that you make it crystal clear that no matter who the baby's bio dad it changes nothing as to who you (YOUR entire family) are as a FAMILY. this is also true for when you discuss it with your d.

funny thing you mentioned about your 9yo and his interest about sex. my now 9yo d knows everything about how babies are made and how they come to be. she asked a few questions when our dil was pg about 2 tears ago. wasn't interested until then. but at age 5 i found the victoria secret catalog under my sons bed.

i am no expert by any means and the child psych is a great idea actually for all the kids. i just say that whenever and however you tell them just do it with care, kindness, gentleness and with the reassuring that your love for ALL of them will never change. the great thing you have on your side is that they already know and love their brother and that you can remind them that HE didn't do anything to either of them. the little one is blameless in this whole mess as are they.