r/NPE

So a few months ago I found out my father isn't my biological father. I'm 33 and the youngest of 6 kids. My oldest sister is 15 years older than me. Honestly, I always felt like the odd one out and never connected with my brothers. I feel a bit stupid now that I didn't put two and two together. Looking back at old pictures and family videos, it’s completely clear that I look nothing like my non-bio father or my brothers. A part of me always thought that, but I just never really dwelt on it. I figured I would’ve been told if that were the case.

​My oldest sister called me recently to tell me she got diagnosed with cancer. While we were on the phone she dropped this bombshell on me too. Turns out, when my parents were going through a rough patch back in the day, my mother had an affair with a married man. My non-bio father decided to stay and sign my birth certificate anyway to not break up the family.

​They ended up divorcing when I was 9. Looking back it makes sense because my next oldest sibling was graduating high school at the time, and since I wasn't his biological kid, I wasn't his responsibility anymore once his actual kids were grown. Why stay with a cheating wife?

​After they split, my mother had this "boyfriend" come around. Turns out that was my bio father but neither of them told me. He was still married at the time so I don't know how he even pulled that off. We actually bonded a bit, but I just thought he was my mother's new guy. She said he wasn't a good person when he stopped coming around and I never asked about him again because I didn't want to bring up the past even into adulthood.

​The weirdest part is we had this pin up board in the kitchen growing up. There's a picture of me and this guy just pinned in the corner, standing super far apart. It's literally still there today. I always thought it was weird my mother kept a random picture of an ex on the wall, but now it makes sense. It's the only picture I have with the guy.

​When I found all this out I immediately took a 23andMe and an Ancestry test to see what would pop up. It completely confirmed it's true. Doing some digging, I found my bio father, where he lives, and discovered that I have two younger half-sisters.

​To top it all off, I found out all my siblings knew the whole time. Their excuse was just, "It's mother's responsibility to tell him." The thing is also that three of my siblings have families of their own with kids. Wouldn't they understand as parents themselves how important it would’ve been for me to know this? Telling me they knew about this for so long without saying a word just hurts on a completely different level.

​Before all this I was actually planning to move back to be closer to everyone, but that plan has completely deteriorated. When I found all this out a few months ago I just cut everyone off. I was already going through some other major life stressors, so my stress was through the roof, and adding this on top of it was just too much. I needed space.

​I don't really know if there are therapists who specialize in this kind of stuff or who to even talk to. It's super isolating because I can't talk to my family since they're the ones who betrayed me.

​Am I overreacting by cutting them off? How do you even process something like this and move forward?

I recently found out that my dad isn’t my bio dad. Several years ago I took a 23 and Me test with my wife (before we were married). She had a free one, and I’ve never really cared about these things but it was free and fun. I get my DNA results and no shocks, nothing interesting. 3 years later my dad does 23 and me and sends me his result. He’s connected with several of our family members but not me. we have no genetic relation. So this must be a mistake. But here is the problem. A few of my cousins on my mom’s side come back as a genetic match with me. So it’s not a mistake. My dad isn’t my bio dad.

I have always had a strained relationship with my dad. He and my mom divorced when I was 2 and she moved me to another state. They fought all the time. Things were very messy. I was in court a lot. Since then I’ve had two step dads and my dad remarried and adopted two children as well. There are a lot of reasons why my dad and I have a strained relationship and none of them involve this NPE news.

Things went further south with our relationship after my daughter was born. He hasn’t met my son. We have been extremely low contact. However I was getting ready to see if we could arrange a visit and patch things up when we discovered this. He told me that nothing changes for him and no matter what, I’m still his son. Which I think is objectively the right answer. However now I feel like he’s placing conditions on our reconciling, and using this NPE as leverage he didn’t have before.

Moving to bio dad.

My mom never told me why she left my dad originally. There are a lot of things about my past I don’t know and will probably never know. But she talks to my wife. My wife got her to speak with me and my mom has identified the man that she believes is my bio dad. She told me she thought my dad was my dad, because we look alike and etc. but there was an affair. Potential bio dad was married and with kids. Apparently he actually held me when I was a baby and even asked my mom if I was his. She said no unequivocally.

I’m not mad at my mom. Maybe I should be. But I know she loves me. I feel bad for my dad because he always told me I was his son. The only one with his blood who could pass on his name. Now that’s not true. I was actually proud of that because somehow it justified all the crap with the divorce/stepfamily and adopted siblings.

I want to meet my bio dad and my three sisters. ( I think they are at least) but I don’t want to blow up their life with information that I was conceived while he was married to their mother. I have all these memories of my family and now when I see pictures with my cousins, I know we aren’t related. Nothing can take away those memories or love but it’s all different now too.

I just feel lost. Turns out I was actually named after my bio dad. Mom denies it. But my middle name is his first name and she has only called me by my middle name. Named after another man, while carrying a last name that I don’t even think belongs to me.

I have my own family. Loving beautiful wife. 4 wonderful children. I don’t want anything from anyone. I don’t want to hurt anyone. But I want to know my family. I want everything to just be ok and I’m not sure what to do next.

I’m not sure what I’m looking for from any reader. Maybe acknowledgement? Commiseration? Advice?

TLDR: already complicated and messy family relationships got even more so with news that Dad isn’t bio dad.

I’m about a month into discovering I’m an NPE. I worked with a search angel to find bio dad. I confronted mom. It was a drunken one night stand. Presumably bcf doesn’t know. She says she never told him. They divorced 38 years ago. Bcf told me about a year ago that he thought mom cheated on him but he didn’t have any proof. So I assume that he still doesn’t know for sure that I’m not his.

Bcf is in his early 80’s. He’s in great health so I expect him to live at least 15 more years or longer based on his family history. But I still worry about telling him. I know it would be devastating.

Here’s the problem, he had three children he thought were biological (I’m the youngest of those three) and he had three step children. He has always had this weird thing where his biological kids seemed just a tad more important to him. Two of the step kids never lived with him full time so they might as well have been the neighbor’s kids. He raised one of the step kids from the age of 3ish. He calls him his son and my step bro calls bcf, “dad”. Even so, bcf clearly prefers the kids he thought were his biological children. My older brother who I thought was my full brother died about 30 years ago when he was 20ish. It was super devastating. Dead bro was the favorite of all the children. I love him completely and have nothing but fond memories of him, but he was still the favorite. That leaves older half sister, who I thought was half sister on bcf’s side but, after dna results we are not related by blood at all. She was diagnosed with a severe health problem and likely only has 4-5 years left to live. Bcf will most likely outlive her. Then I’ll be his only presumed bio kid left. But I’m not his bio kid.

I don’t want him to die knowing all his offspring are dead. I’m the only one left with his last name. I’m proud of the name. I’m the only one who had children who also carry his family name. But it kinda feels like a lie now. I honestly don’t know how I would react to find out my kids are not my own, so I don’t know how he would feel. Part of me would want to live the rest of my life oblivious, but part of me would want to know. I would still treat them as my own because I raised them and I love them and it would not have been their fault. But I don’t know if bcf would do the same for me. He probably wouldn’t cut me out of his life completely but I would be moved down several pegs in his view of importance. Having already been second or third in that line of the pecking order, I don’t feel great about moving down any further. Not that it would matter that much. I love him but our relationship has never been great.

Because I have no basis to understand how he will react, I don’t know if I should tell him or not. I would want to tell him out of respect. He deserves to know. But it could give him an aneurysm. He may not care at all. He may already know but refuses to tell me. I have no clue. What should I do?

I am approaching two years since my non paternal event. For reference, my bio dad knew I was out there since my mother was pregnant with me. I found out about him when his adult son reached out after just having found out about my existence. Both of his kids did not know about me and only found out because their mother told them I existed.

I have felt myself pulling away and wanting a lot more distance. I worry that during the first year I immediately jumped in. I spent the holidays with his family that year. I attended and hung out with them anytime they offered.

I am now realizing I have a lot of resentment and anger that I don’t believe I acknowledged. I was raised by a mother who was emotional and sometimes physical abusive. The role I played growing up included taking care of the adults in the household and trying to keep the peace. This has made it to where I will disassociate or detach if I feel that I need to put others needs above my own.

Within the last few months, I have felt a shift in myself. An anger that when my bio dad and his family for the first few months seemed to want to constantly be involved in my life. Texts and invitations to hangout. Then within a few months it changed into infrequent check ins from his family. He remained in contact but with less follow through and now going weeks at a time without trying to see or hear from me.

I have resentment towards having to see how well his two other kids were raised by him. He has supported them financially. My little sister he had bought horses for and continues to offer for her to do things like take his horse trailer to college. I am happy to see that my younger siblings are taken care of. But, I also struggle with the immense pain of feeling less than and resentment that he won’t do the same for me. I have always had 1-3 jobs at a time to support myself through undergrad and law school. I have never had a parent who offered to support me and instead I was expected to support my mom even financially when I was in undergrad.

There was one point where I was in a limbo period of moving from one place to another within the last year and a half. My bio dad offered that I could stay with him but only if I paid him $700 a month for the spare bedroom that no one was using. For reference, he has a 3 bedroom house and only he lives in the house. He said he needed to charge me because it wouldn’t be fair to my siblings. This was confusing to me considering that he supported my siblings for 18 years of their lives and now onwards. I don’t expect him to financially support me or anything and I have been able to make a successful life for myself. But, it’s hurtful in the sense that I have expressed an interest in engaging in those same hobbies with him and his other kids and feel like there is no desire to try and consider me in things.

All of this to say that I find myself becoming more annoyed, resentful, and angry over things I did not initially have a problem with him about. I don’t know if it’s normal to almost have these feelings be delayed. I feel ridiculous for pulling away and becoming more emotional over the situation when I am approaching the two year mark. It’s emotionally exhausting and I feel myself just becoming more and more of a shell in the situation. It feels like it has reinforced beliefs I worked really hard through therapy to get over as a young adult before I learned about my bio dad and my family’s secret.

Please give me advice on how not to feel the anger and resentment and to be able to continue to move forward without feeling this need to withdraw.