BestofRedditorUpdates

Based on the tone she Is not happy about any of his antics. Feels like it's going to blow up.

Update #4: July 30, 2024 (1.5 months later)

Since everyone got mad at me for posting a recap of my situation in my previous posts, I won’t even go there. If you’re interested in the backstory, you can read my previous posts.

All I will say is that I have a 3 year old son who was conceived with an affair I had with a married man. After initially making me promise to not contact him, to not name him as the father, and to not request child support, my child’s father has been pursuing involvement in our sons’s life over the last several months. He lives states away and most recently he showed up at my house to try to convince me to work things out directly with him.

Since the last time I posted, we’ve recently had a mediation session and he’s met our son twice. At this time, he will have supervised visitation, with me present. Because he lives states away, he is required to come here to see our son. It will not be on a weekly basis due to the travel. He will see him during 2 weeks of the month, 2 times each week, for a total of 4 visits a month +2 video calls a month This will last for 6 months. The next step will be for him to continue that schedule, but to have unsupervised visitation during which he cannot remove him from the area, for another 6 months. After a year, we agree to have another mediation session to determine next steps, with the goal (his goal) of being able to have my son at his home for short overnights. I’m not even ready to discuss that! He’s already suggesting I can come for the first few times. I don’t like the sound of it at all. We also have the option to request another mediation before 1 year and something tells me he’s going to pull that.

I also have an order for child support. While he is in agreement with paying child support, it will have to work through the court system before becoming official and for me to start getting the regular payment. He wrote me a large check in the meantime. I was hesitant to accept it. Not that I don’t think my son deserves it, but now I’m just always worried I’ll say or do the wrong thing legally, completely unknowingly, and shoot myself in the foot. Like, am I obligated myself and my son to anything by accepting this check? Can he somehow spin this against me?

Of course he was not in favor of the 6 month/6 month plan and while he does understand that my son should not just go off with a stranger upon first meeting him, he wishes we could speed it along a little more, but 6 months was what we were able to agree on. He wanted to fly us both to where he lived so he could spend a week or 2 getting to know our son but I don’t feel that’s appropriate at this time. Perhaps in a few months, or around the holidays, depending on how things are going. It would be too much too soon.

The initial two meetings went pretty much just as I thought they would. My son is extremely shy. He wanted to hide behind me most of the time. Then when he would venture out from behind me, as soon as his dad would say anything to him, he would scurry back behind me and just stare at his dad blankly without saying anything. He came out of his shell a little bit however he has still not said a single word to his dad. He just pretends like his dad isn’t there and only talks to me. I will say that his dad is being patient and understanding as far as that goes. If he’s frustrated, he’s not showing it. He did suggest that maybe our son needs to get out more, go to daycare more of even preschool instead of spending so much time with me and my parents. He’s very delighted with how much our son looks like him and how much he favors him over me.

The one thing that did bother me is that I already told him I wanted to be very careful and mindful of how we informed our son, this little barely 3 year old boy, that this man/complete stranger is his dad. He said “sure, yeah.” Then at the first meeting he introduced himself as dad. Since then I’ve been trying to help my son understand. Like, you know how your grandpa is my daddy, this guy is your daddy. It’s so surreal to me that any of this is happening. I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’m waiting for something to blow up in my face.

Now, it’s just working on accepting our new reality. All of this change is hard and confusing for my son and it’s hard for me. Unless he really fucks up, I’m looking at eventually shared times with my son spending school breaks and holidays at his dad’s house, hours and hours away in another state. It won’t happen tomorrow, but it will happen in the most likely reality. I just hope he stays committed. If he can be a good dad to my child then my child deserves that, no matter how sad sharing him makes me. If he breaks my son’s heart, that’ll be another story and I won’t accept that so readily.

Update #5: August 20, 2024 (one month later)

It’s been 3 weeks since I last posted, and just over a month since our new visitation arrangement started.

I’ve seen plenty of people here talking about how dumb I am. I don’t really understand. What am I doing that’s so dumb? I know it was dumb to have an ongoing, year long affair with a married man. It was stupid to put myself in a position where I could likely end up pregnant.

That was in the past. What am I doing now that’s so stupid? I have a lawyer. Yes, I agreed to talk to his wife one time. How was I to know she was just doing his bidding? Who would have thought that was the case? It’s not even like I went to meet her in person somewhere. It was just a video call. I figured I at least owed that to her. Just one time, and a chance to tell her I was sorry for what I did.

But ultimately it felt off and I protected my son by telling her I didn’t think it was appropriate at this time for me and my 2 years old to travel to another state to meet her teenage kids.

It’s not as if talking to her opened the door for him to reach out to me. I was careful with what info I shared with her. It’s not as if I told her my address. He didn’t need her to gather that info from me. Me talking to her isn’t what prompted him to contact me directly and establish paternity.

When he reached out to me directly about wanting to be involved with our son, I didn’t reach out to him and decide to discuss things directly with him. I got a lawyer.

When he showed up at my house, I didn’t let him inside. I put my son in his room, so he didn’t eventually see our son or have access to him.

I’m listening to my lawyer. I met with him in a mediation and I am trying to make careful decisions for my son. There is nothing I can do to prevent him from having access to our son. The court will grant him access if I fight it. At least this way I have a say in the arrangement.

We are supposed to be using a parenting app.

Since the last time I posted, he’s reached out to me outside of the app. Now, he keeps talking about us coming there to visit him. I have told him no. It’s not appropriate. It’s too much too soon. He’s also already started talking about changing my son’s last name to his, but you know “maybe imma year or so.” He tries to have personal conversations with me, not always about our son. I have shut those down and referred him back to the parenting app. He thinks using the app is stupid and is only for people who can’t get along. He thinks it’d be better for our son if we got along and “got to know each other again.” He “cares” about me and what’s going on in my life, or so he says.

I also didn’t cash the check he gave me. I returned it. If he wants to help financially beyond the child support he’s ordered to pay, he can purchase items that our son needs out of his own free will, but he isn’t to give me cash or checks. My lawyer actually told me that there was nothing wrong with accepting and cashing the check. It wouldn’t affect anything related to child support. But knowing him, he could be using this check as something he can bring up later in court and I just didn’t feel comfortable about it. Sure I would have loved to have kept it. There are quite a few useful things I could have used that money for. Of course he was upset when I returned the check, via certified mail. His plan was foiled. I know he’s trying to butter me up for something. I don’t know precisely what, but I’m not that stupid that I don’t see through him now.

So now it’s like was everything she said just a lie and he somehow got her to reach out to me on his behalf? And she actually did it? It felt almost like a relief talking to her initially, but then it’s like was any of that true or you were just trying to be his messenger? I don’t even know if that part is true now. Why wouldn’t he just contact me himself?

I’m just feeling so uneasy about the whole thing now.

Update #2: April 30, 2024 (two months later)

I posted about this few months ago.

To summarize very quickly, when I was fresh out of college I had an affair with a married man and father. I became pregnant. He wanted me to get an abortion. He had arranged to “take me away” in a “vacation” to get an abortion. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do but I agreed to go along with what we wanted. At the last minute, when he was on his way to come pick me up, I told him I couldn’t go through with the abortion. I just really didn’t feel comfortable about his plan and how he was orchestrating everything. It scared me. I realized at that time how deep I had gone with this mistake, how screwed up the whole relationship was.

He was really mad. He threatened me, said a lot of nasty things to me. I told him if he just left me alone and let me have my baby then I’d leave him alone and wouldn’t name him as the father or seek child support. I moved back home (I was living in a different state when I met him). I kept my word and I did t it name him as the father or seek to establish paternity. I have never sought child support. My child is 2 now.

A few months ago his wife contacted me via social media. At first she made it seem like she wanted my child to have the opportunity to know his siblings. It was sort of weird since the siblings are teenagers. She said she had divorced him 6 months prior.

I agreed to talk to her virtually, not in person. I felt that I owed it to her to apologize for what I had done. I do feel bad about it. But at the end of the conversation I told her that I didn’t feel it was the appropriate time to connect my son with her kids. He’s a toddler and their teens, plus I had promised her husband to stay out of his life. That’s when she told me that he was recently in a bad accident and she had been helping to take care of him. Supposedly he was going to be fine and was fairly recovered at that point, but she said he had expressed interest to meet our child. So she was basically his messenger.

I have not been in contact with her since then. I deleted my social media. I don’t know why, but the whole thing just really made me uncomfortable.

Since I last posted here….

Then, I received a handwritten letter from him. In it, he expressed how he wanted to get to know our son, he wants to be a father to our son, he wants to provide financially for him, he’d like us to come visit him. He asked me to sign a paternity affidavit. I refused to do so. I know he is my son’s father but I’m not going to make this that easy for him. After the things he said to me and threatened me with, he at least has to work for this.

At that point, my parents felt that we needed to meet with a lawyer. All communication from me has gone through a lawyer. I have never responded to him personally/directly.

Now, I have a court order for paternity. I have to present my son to have a specimen taken tomorrow. I already know what it’s going to say.

It’s not that I don’t want my son to have a dad in his life. It’s just…the whole situation is a mess. And he lives a few states away from me. I don’t know what to do. I can’t really do anything. He’s doing things legally. Next, I’m sure he’ll petition for some form of custody or visitation. He’s not married anymore, supposedly, but he’s a lot more established than I am. He has considerably more financial resources. I also know he has all sorts of connections where he lives. Luckily they don’t hold as much weight here in my state but it’s still so scary to me.

I’m a bad mom. I brought my son into this world knowing it was a messy situation. I just got so comfortable with it just being the 2 of us and now I don’t want to give that up.

Update #3: June 15, 2024 (two months later)

I won’t rehash the whole thing here. My previous posts are on my profile. I got pregnant from an affair with a married guy. He wanted me to have an abortion. I decided I didn’t want one. He turned mean, I promised to not name him as the father, legally, or to pursue any sort of child support. I moved away from where he and his family were located. I’m about 12 hours away from him now, back where my family is from. I haven’t reached out to him in the now over 3 years since.

His ex-wife reached out to me out of the blue via social media, initially claiming she wanted to connect with me so that our kids could know each other. When I politely declined for the time being, as her kids are teenagers and my son is a toddler and we live states apart, she revealed she was really reaching out in behalf of her ex-husband who had supposedly had a change of heart about being involved in our child’s life after nearly dying in an accident. I did not engage with her any further after that. It all made me feel very uncomfortable.

Later, I received a letter from him in the mail. He asked to be involved with our son, to provide for him, etc. It still felt weird. I mean he turned really mean and didn’t want anything to do with me or our baby and hadn’t made any attempt to contact me in years (and I was not hiding - his wife was obviously able to find me on social media and you can find my address online).

I felt like if he was serious, he’d take the steps to establish paternity legally. And that’s what he did. Around 1.5 months ago we were ordered to submit DNA samples for a paternity test. It took around 5 weeks to find out what I already knew it’d say. But now things are stalled for another several weeks for the next step in the court process.

I haven’t talked to him at all during this whole thing. I didn’t respond directly to his letter. I do have a lawyer and everything is basically going through him now.

Then without any warning, he just showed up at my home last weekend. Just knocked on the door like it was nothing. Basically, this is his son and he doesn’t want to wait another 6 weeks for the court to inevitably order us into some sort of custody mediation anyway…his words. Why can’t I just talk to him? I told him he made me uncomfortable and him just showing up at my house really made me uncomfortable. Honestly, I don’t know what made me so uncomfortable. The fact that he showed up unannounced like that or the fact that I instantly felt the same attraction to him that I had when I was with him and I didn’t want to feel that at all. In some weird way part of me felt happy to see him and then another part of me was disgusted that I was happy.

He said he doesn’t understand why we can’t just talk about this. He’s not trying to take my son away from me; he just wants to be involved in his life and to help provide for him like he should have been all along. He’s sorry he wasn’t there when he was born. He’s sorry he reacted the way that he did when I didn’t go along with his plans to take me on an abortion vacation. Why can’t I believe that he just wants to be a dad to his kid?

I guess I agree with him. Why can’t I just accept that he has had a change of heart? I can’t trust myself. I can’t trust my own judgment. I feel like if I easily let him into my son’s life I’m going to end up regretting it and be made a fool of somehow. I’ve already made so many mistakes when it comes to him.

He says it’s stupid of me to not try to work it out amongst ourselves first. I’m giving so much control to the court. I don’t know whether to believe that or to think it’s just his way of convincing me to do what he wants.

I know he will get some sort of visitation and eventual custody. Maybe it would be better if we try to come to an agreement, but he had the ability to sway me so easily. I’m so stupid when it comes to him. Nobody else has ever made me feel so foolish in my life.

I want my son to have a dad. I admit it’s probably selfish of me to want to keep him away. I just keep imagining having to spend weeks or months apart from my child while he’s living with his dad 12 hours away and I can’t stand the thought of it.

I’m just feeling sad, stupid, and defeated.

I think OOP is giving into this guy a little too much but she is 100% correct that every nice thing he does is preparation for extortion down the line.

Send dad, communicate only through the app, block him everywhere else.