Man gets a paternity test on son because he doesn’t look enough like him OR how to ruin your marriage in 2 days or less + NEW Update
I AM NOT OOP!
The original post was made to r/relationship_advice by u/DontWantADivorce 9 month ago.
7 month ago user u/TeenyTelly (also NOT the OOP) posted this with the first update and a slightly different title, I will include the first Post down below but here is a link:
I also flaired this as "New Update". English is not my first language and I tried my best to correct any necessary formatting issues.
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I (37M) got a paternity test done and now my wife might divorce me over it, Help!
My wife (35F) and I (37M) have been married for 12 years. We have three kids and I always had this nagging feeling that our middle child wasn’t mine. Our oldest and youngest look just like me, but my middle child doesn’t. My wife has shown me a picture of her grandfather and he does look a lot like him, but he just doesn’t have any of my family features, he looks so different than anyone else in the family. I decided I wanted a paternity test to put my mind at ease. My wife got pretty upset when I brought it up because cheating has always been a dealbreaker for her, but I just saw that as all the more reason to get one done. I told her that if she had nothing to hide she should have no problem with getting one done. I tested my son and it turns out he’s mine.
I thought everything was fine, and I had my peace of mind. Except she told me she was going to take the kids and go to her parents for a while. When I asked why she exploded and told me that she was seriously considering divorcing me over this stunt. That she was furious with me for doubting her loyalty to me knowing how she felt about cheating and that she would never forgive me for what I put our son through, making him question his place in the family.
I tried to get her to see my side, that I just wanted to be sure, and that surely she could see why I'd question it when he looks nothing like me. She told me she would never forgive me for this, and that I hoped my foolish pride was worth the cost of my family.
She hasn't spoken to me since. I need advice on how to get her to talk to me and get her to see my side of the story and that it wasn't some attack on her character like she seems to think it was. I don't want a divorce!
TLDR: I got a paternity test on my middle child because he doesn't look like me, and my wife wants to divorce me over it
Update-Got a paternity test and now my wife might divorce me over it
So, it’s been a couple months now and I thought I’d update.
My wife finally agreed to a sit down with me a couple weeks after I posted, and as some of you said, she doesn‘t want to stay with me. We talked and basically it boiled down to she wants a divorce because I don’t trust her and think so poorly of her character that I thought she’d pass another mans child off as mine. She then said she’ll never forgive me for treating my son so abhorrently he asked why I hated him. I didn’t realize I treated him so differently, but apparently it was obvious.
I tried to defend myself, but she asked what I meant then, because no matter how I tried to dress it up, I accused her of cheating and treated our son like trash because he wasn’t my spitting image. She then brought up she wondered if I was projecting because only one of us ever had infidelity in their background and it wasn’t her. That stung, because while yes, I had cheated in two past relationships, I’ve never cheated on her. I said that but she said she’d never cheated at all, but that didn’t stop me from accusing her of it did it?
So now my kids won’t talk to me and my wife wants to divorce me. All over a paternity test.
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Wife won’t come with kids for Christmas, help!
My wife is divorcing me, if you need all the details, you can check my profile I guess, but the short of it is, it’s over me getting a paternity test. I want to spend Christmas together, but my wife won’t spend it with me. She said she’d split the day so I could see two of my kids, but I want her and the third child to come too. She refuses to do this. I asked my son if he wanted to come see me and he said no, he’d stay with my wife.
I said that I shouldn’t continuously be punished for getting a paternity test and that the kids deserve to spend time with a full family unit. She said our son deserves to be around someone who doesn’t act in a way that makes him feel like I hate him. I tried to argue being a full family unit again would be good for everyone and maybe we could even try to reconcile since I still don’t want a divorce, and think she should give me another chance. She said no, offered to split the day again, and that was it.
How can I convince her to come spend the day with me?
The top comment basically describes what most people think:
How? You don’t. You can’t.
You don’t seem to understand that what you did was absolutely an assault on your wife’s character, a monumental one. And A pretty significant rejection of your middle son, even though test came out that he was in fact yours. The thought was in your head, as if you didn’t want to “claim” him without absolute proof…proof you didn’t require for your other two for some reason.
I don’t blame her for never forgiving you for it. You had zero evidence of cheating, you were just so ignorant of genetics you felt that not having a matching trio of mini-me’s meant that one might not be yours.
She wants you to suffer for this. And that’s what you’re going to do. You can have Christmas with the two kids you never doubted, and without the wife and son that you did.
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Another (final) Update 5 month ago: (recovered via rareddit)
I need advice on how to get my wife to talk to me, help please!
My wife and I are divorcing against my will over me getting a paternity test. She wouldn’t spend Christmas with me, or make our middle child see me, though she did offer to send our other two, and she refused to have dinner with me on my birthday, despite me asking her several times to do so. I finally got frustrated when she refused to see me this weekend and told her she needed to start working with me so we can work this out and she needs to stop coddling our child and make him see me too.
My wife refuses to work with me at all, and refuses to send my son who I, in her words, “treated like shit” to see me against his will. I really think if I could just get her to see me I could convince her to talk this out with me. I don’t want to be the first person in my family to end up divorced!
My mom says to give her space because she thinks I messed up by doing what I did, and any chance of reconciliation needs to be on her terms not mine, but my dad is actually mad at me because he thinks I acted like a piece of crap (in less polite words) and ruined my relationship and he has taken my wife and child’s side completely.
I don’t want to let this keep festering, so I actually need good advice to get her to agree to talk things out with me.
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3 month ago OOP posted again on r/relationship_advice, this time asking for advice on how to deal with his co-workers, its not really an update to this ongoing situation but in my opinion it is interesting to read this after everything that happened.
Last Post made 3 month ago:
My coworkers are being cold to me, how can I smooth things over?
I (38M) work with a young woman (23F) who I will call Emma. Her daughter turned 4 last week, and the next day another coworker who I’ll call Ken (30s M) was asking what they did. She said she got her a stuffed animal, got a 2-pack of cupcakes, and took her to a restaurant. I realized she spent maybe all of twenty dollars for her kids birthday. The stuffed animal was only five dollars, the cupcakes she’s talking about are a dollar ten at the grocery store, and the restaurant they went to, kids eat free.
I said she was lucky her kid was young enough to not realize what a cheapskate her mom was. Emma gave me a really nasty look and said not everyone was materialistic or required expensive things. I thought that was really rude and told her not to get snotty with me because she got called out for being cheap,and that kids deserve better than what she did. She told me considering my current family situation maybe I wasn’t the best person to be doling out parenting advice, then left.
I felt like she slapped me in the face. I expected Ken to agree she acted like a bitch, but he said she was right, and the guy whose kid won’t talk to him shouldn’t be telling anyone else about what they should be doing as a parent. I got really upset, and considered going to HR over it, but decided against it.
I found out later that Emma is really struggling and that cheap birthday was all she could afford. I feel a little bad about that, but still feel like she really overreacted especially by bringing my family situation into it. She hasn’t spoken to me since that happened and several other coworkers are being pretty frosty to me as well.
I told Emma I was sorry what I said offended her, but nothing has improved. What advice do you have so I can smooth things out with my coworkers?
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REMINDER: I am not OOP neither is the author of the first Update here on BoRu u/TeenyTelly!!
Edit to add a disclaimer.