[Original post](https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/1bs9lc0/i_m42_want_nothing_to_do_with_my_son_m15_my_wife/) was removed for some reason, so in summary of OP before the update:
Many years ago I was in an abusive relationship. We were married for three years, which culminated in an assault by her that left me with a traumatic brain injury. I have extensive memory loss including virtually all of my childhood, most of my teenage years and around 8 months following the incident. During that 8 month period I got divorced and emigrated from the UK to Canada, but I only know this due to having the paperwork to prove it. I have no memory of any of it.
That all happened 15 years ago. In that time I’ve had no contact with anyone from my old life, not my parents, friends, extended family or anyone. I have however remarried and I now have two young children.
My life the last decade or so has been great, I’ve been able to adapt to the new reality of living with my TBI and I’m loving life with my wife and family.
That was until two weeks ago when out of the blue I got an email claiming to be from my 15 year old son by my abusive ex-wife. From his date of birth it’s plausible that I’m his father and he also looks just like me so I’m not going to argue that he’s not my son…I just really wasn’t in favour of having anything to do with anyone connected with my ex. My wife (and commenters on the post) thought this stance was too harsh and a bit unethical as a father.
——
Onto the update.
First off I want to thank everyone who commented on the first post telling me that regardless of my feelings I do bear responsibility for this child and telling me think about how he could be in a horrible living situation and needing help. I’ve had a week to reflect on things and I have come to agree to an extent. My immediate refusal came from a place of pain but I really should have considered that other people also may be hurting.
I came to the conclusion that I should probably at least make sure he’s safe and being looked after. But you lovely commenters also had a couple of other bits of salient advice I definitely needed to consider first.
1. Lawyer. As he’s still a minor there was a question over backdated child support. I tried to contact the solicitor that handled the divorce originally but the firm no longer exists by the looks, so instead I contacted a friend of mine. He handles a lot of legal issues for British expats in the area so I thought he might be able to help. We went over all the documentation I had from my divorce and there’s no record of any court mandated child maintenance at all, so I’ve not skipped out on any payments to backdate. He said that without that it’s very difficult but not impossible to get backdated payments in the UK. So “proceed but with caution” basically.
2. Therapist. This was the big one. My regular therapist was on vacation over Easter but I had a session with her last Wednesday. The first thing she had to do was calm me the hell down. I’ve been stressing about this ever since it happened. When we got down to it though, her recommendation was to not immediately establish contact with my son. It’s bound to be a stressful and emotional event, which could get even worse if my ex were to get involved. We went over several possible scenarios to ease us into contact without pulling the band-aid off in one go, but each one is dependent on the situation. Not knowing his living situation is a real pain, but also not wanting to contact him directly and risk a confrontation with that woman is a big concern.
So what was suggested is something that’s only slightly less scary.
My therapist wanted me to reach out to my mum as an indirect third party source of information. After 15 years of no contact that I don’t know the reason for. Also the last and only really clear surviving memory I have of my mum is her and dad refusing to help and threatening to disown me when I asked for support getting away from my ex. So I’m really not in favour of reconnecting with her either.
But I agreed to do it, then spent days trying to work up the courage to actually make it happen. To complicate things I don’t have phone numbers for anyone in my old life. I got a new phone when I emigrated and lost all the stored numbers in the old SIM. However I was able to find my mum on Facebook. I finally got up the courage to reach out yesterday. I didn’t get a response for a while, which may be down to time difference, but eventually she responds asking me if this is a prank. I mean fair enough, it’s an account with my real name on it so maybe it could be someone from the family playing around, but I’ve got a recent-ish face pic, she should be able to see it’s me but 15 years older right?
I tried to confirm to her that it’s really me but she still didn’t believe me. She tried to ask me a question about a detail of an event from my childhood, but obviously that’s not going to work so I had to explain to her that since \[ex wife’s name\] attacked me I have no childhood memories left. That did the trick, she sent me a flurry of messages asking me how and where I was and loads of love hearts and other emojis. It was honestly a bit much. I started typing out a long reply but then she just sends across her phone number and asks me to ring her.
That’s scary. At this point I prefer text communication as it allows me to think before I put the words out there. But she’s pretty insistent, so I bit the bullet and rang her. She was already in floods of tears by the time she picked up the call. I’d planned on being as calm and detached as possible here but I’m not completely without feeling so she set me off ugly crying as well. It was a solid five minutes of us both crying our eyes out before we managed to regain some composure. Pretty awkward all round.
Eventually though we did get talking. I let her know I’ve been living in Canada for 15 years and I’m remarried, but I haven’t mentioned the kids yet. The last thing I want is her getting pushy about seeing “her grandkids” since I’m still not sure if she can be trusted. I also find out a couple of big pieces of information from her, exactly what I was looking for.
– Kai (my son) has been living with my parents since he was 6 months old. My ex basically dumped him on their doorstep and bailed so she could move in with her new boyfriend, who didn’t want children apparently. Firstly I think that’s some sort of illegal in the UK (not sure though), but secondly it’s a massive relief. My parents have their faults but they aren’t complete hellspawn like my ex, so at least he’s had a safe and semi-normal upbringing.
– My ex is in prison. Not for what she did to me, not even for what she did to the man she latched onto after me. Yeah she did the same heinous shit to him too. Apparently she’s locked up for drug offences and even with good behaviour she won’t be out for at least four more years. Nice. This also means Kai will be legally an adult by the time she’s out.
Those were the biggest bits of news and the best I could have asked for under the circumstances. It cleared the biggest stress factors out of the way for me. Just knowing he’s safe and looked after and his evil mother isn’t in the picture are a massive weight off my shoulders. I think I might now be able to see a pathway to building a relationship with the lad. It’ll take time of course, but it’s not as scary as it felt this time last week.
After that we had a bit of a catch up. She was quite upset to find out that I’m brain damaged and lacking almost all my old memories before my 20s. I managed to get a story from her perspective about what happened in the months after my ex hit me. Bear in mind I have my suspicions about some of this, I tend to be very suspicious about things people tell me when they know I have gaps in my memory, and given what I do recall of my parents this goes extra for them. Past betrayal will do that. But here’s a summary according to her:
– I was hospitalised with a fractured skull and ended up being placed into a medically induced coma for a time.
– My ex spun them a story about how I was the aggressor and she was defending herself. This was enough for my folks to go through with their previous threat and disown me, also removing me from their will. They informed me of this via text apparently. Going by the timeline she gives I would probably still have been comatose when that happened, but I don’t remember either way so whatever.
– My parents also helped put my ex in contact with a solicitor to get the ball rolling on divorcing me. That was a surprise to me. For some reason I always had it in the back of my mind that I was the one who finally discovered some backbone and divorced her. But apparently not. From the sounds of it the initial divorce application would have been signed by me not long after they brought me out of the coma. Not sure that’s entirely legal either, me most likely being badly concussed I probably wasn’t in any fit state to be signing legal paperwork.
– Shortly after I was discharged from the hospital I apparently just vanished. I’d moved out of the marital home (because the hellspawn got literally everything other than my car in the divorce, funnily enough) and into a studio apartment not far from my work. My brother came round to visit me one day, found my car gone and my front door wide open with me nowhere to be seen.
– A few days later they found my car parked on a local beach with the keys inside. They found my jacket and one of my shoes washed up on the high tide line. Mum claims there was a big search by the police and coast guard but I was never found.
Note here: This is the thing that makes me doubt her whole account. If I was reported missing enough for the police and coast guard to be called out, I should be on the UK National Crime Agency’s missing persons database, but I checked and I’m not. Also if they actually investigated they would have found me in minutes. My initial Canadian visa is in my real name, I bought a plane ticket using a debit card in my own name, I would have gone through an airport full of CCTV and used my old UK passport which is also in my own name. That’s not stealthy in the slightest.
But apparently that counts as vanishing without trace these days.
The thing is I don’t know why she would make this bit of the story up. If she wanted to present herself in a good light she wouldn’t have admitted to disowning me via text when I was in a coma. Trying to pretend she cared enough to get the police involved doesn’t make sense when she could just have said “Yeah we washed our hands of you when we disowned you. We didn’t care a bit when you disappeared.”. Really confusing.
So the main reason they didn’t try contacting me for a decade and a half is because I was apparently missing presumed dead. Ironically I’ve been on Facebook under my real name and my real face since about 2013, I also have the same Hotmail account I’ve had since the 90s. They could easily have reached out if they wanted.
Oh yeah that reminds me, my parents recently sat Kai down and gave him “the talk”, letting him know they’re his grandparents, not his parents, and that his real parents are a criminal psychopath and a missing person (my words, not theirs obviously). That has to have hit the poor kid extremely hard. Mum says she doesn’t know how he found my email address, but whatever, he managed it somehow.
In that context, a child reaching out into the void looking for a parent they think is dead is genuinely heartbreaking. I can’t imagine the turmoil he must have been feeling at that point. Poor lad. I plan to reach out to him soon, once I work out how to do it without stressing us both out. I’ll bring it up with my therapist this week.
I’m still not sure I want a relationship with my parents though. I mean I’m grateful they raised my son for me but after everything else I’m still not sure how I could start trusting them again. I’m thinking maybe being low contact with them until Kai turns 18 and then we’ll see if they’ve done anything shady in that time and using that to make a decision.
My wife is all excited and getting ahead of things as usual. She’s talking about maybe flying Kai over for Thanksgiving. I think that’s premature but we’ll see how we go.
So that’s basically it. Thanks for reading my essay if you got this far.
TL;DR – I contacted my mother for the first time in 15 years to get answers on WTF is going on with my estranged son and family. Turns out quite a lot has happened and now I have some sort of answers for what went on during the void in my memory.
28 comments
I hope your reconnection with your son goes well. I agree with you that the story of you missing and a massive search being conducted is suspicious- I’d take everything said with a massive grain of salt. Most suspicious to me is your son just stumbling upon your email and getting up the gumption to email you, yet nowhere in that time did your parents feel the same compulsion? Nor your brother? It’s all very odd.
Good luck. You seem to be moving forward in a logical way. Slow and steady is the way.
Thanks for the updates! And seriously, good for you!
You did a whole lot of really hard, shitty work all for a stranger you never met who just happens to be your son. That’s really admirable and you should be really proud of yourself. I hope you keep going slow (especially now that you know he’s basically safe and cared for).
Your mother’s story does seem a bit off, but also, far from impossible. Espically if at the time you went missing she still believed your ex that you were the aggressor. In that situation, I can see your family not pulling out all the stops, which is a bit different than not caring at all. And time has a way of shifting emotional memories. You’ll probably never feel anything she says about that time rings 100% true, but most people are trying to tell us the truth as they understand it.
Good luck. Keep at it. Keeping doing the work and keeping your eyes open. I think you’re really managing an almost impossible situation really well.
When did they come to realize your ex lied?
That’s certainly a lot for you all to go through. My thoughts simply are: Be compassionate, but be logical. You seem to be doing that. Wish you all the best. Keep us updated if you can.
Why not ask your brother?
Whatever happens, write a book about this because you’ll be set for life $. Turn your pain into the greatest book ever. You have lived more than most of us dare
Reading this, I feel like you’re very self-aware and processing a lot of things at once. But I’d encourage you to built a relationship with your son from a place where you’re both certain what you want/need from a relationship so you avoid emotional pitfalls. Not saying that won’t happen, but I just say be prepared for them.
Instead of flying him over, you may want to consider going there to see him, so if things become more than you can handle, you can retreat to your hotel as opposed to him being in a strange land. It would be helpful if you went there with some support and took it slow. Also depends on how comfortable you will be visiting a place with so much trauma.
I know you said your parents raised him but I’d still get a paternity test done…
If there was a search, wouldn’t you find some articles about it?
The 2 most important parts here are that you calmed down and realized he is purely a victim. No different than you in that sense. This gives you a point to connect. It also means you have something to build on. Even if you don’t take him in anytime soon. Maybe you are just a distant father. You are still there. He gets to answer so many questions to his life.
Second, is that your wife is excited. Scared might be a more reasonable response, but excited works. It means you can slowly reconnect this new part of your life to what you have now with support. Support that means you won’t be risking your current life to do this. You have done what you never could before all this. You found someone who truly loves you for you and wants to support you.
It’s a shame it took all that to get here, but your in a good place to do a lot of good things.
Definitely agree with your assessment on how your parents are fabricating the story in their favour. Something definitely feels off about it, so proceed with caution.
If it’s true that when you woke from the coma and was shortly given the papers to sign you may also have a legal case of not being sound in mind (if you want to proceed that way).
I wish you luck OP and please tread carefully.
If you were reported missing by your family, it’s feasible that you were cognizant enough to tell police that you weren’t missing, but then if authorities made contact with you, your family would at least know you’re alive, because authorities would tell them that they spoke with you but you don’t want contact with them.
Something’s fishy and I dunno what. Be careful.
Sell Netflix the rights to tell this story, pay for child support, everybody wins.
Best of luck man, I hope you can figure out a good relationship with your son!
Take it slow and easy with yourself, it sounds like just writing this out was incredibly stressing for you.
So very weird that your parents would take your ex’s side in all this, and keep from you that you had a son. Has this been clarified from their end?
If you havent already, insist on DNA testing before agreeing to anything with the child. The last thing you want is an emotional or financial attachment to a kid that may or may not be yours.
Seeing that your parents did side with your ex, they must have been convinced that you were in the wrong. Why would they now feel your ex was wrong and you can be trusted with your son?
Why are they not more apologetic about freezing you out following your hospitalization?
How is it you remember abused from your ex and who got what in the divorce, but bothing before that?
Im having a hard time following this whole story.
I haven’t read all other comments yet so this may have been asked further down. But if there was a huge manhunt and search for you, typically those things are in the news AND often on Facebook. I assume you’ve Googled yourself and found nothing in that regard?
I’m guessing she made those parts up to try and save face. I think you’re right to distrust what she has said. They messed up royally, and never expected to have to come clean. Either they’re frantically covering for what they did or they have grown to believe their own lies, which sometimes happens.
I’m glad you’ve survived so well, it sounds like your current life is a good one with a wonderful partner and I’m really happy for you. I hope you can get things sorted out with your son, in a way that is safe and supportive for the both of you. There’s some awesome advice here on this thread, and I’m glad you’re working with a therapist. Just remember: you don’t have to allow your parents back into your life, especially if they don’t come clean with the truth of their part in the story.
Such roller coaster of emotions and events, wow
I’d Google your own name and the town you were from and check for any local news stories about you being reported missing.
Good luck on whatever you decide to do OP
r/legaladvice can probably help you out more.
When it comes to international child support, the UK, (or Canada? Wherever your alleged offspring resides), would need to have an agreement with the individual US state where you reside in order for your ex to pursue it.
I’m not sure if paternity request cases are handled the same way, but it stands to reason it could be.
Verifying that your parents actually reported you missing could be easy. The UK has a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Contact the police department in that area and request records involving yourself. If they made a report it would be on file. In Scotland it;s called the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act (FOISA). If the Coastguard was involved in a search they should have records too.
Are you sure he’s even your son? Your ex sounds demonic.
I wish you the best in all of this.
I hope every goes well between your old and new family. I think your 15 kid will have plenty of stories to tell about how he was raised. Perhaps you can find in his memories some of yours that could trigger your memory. But brain damage is complicated.
What matters most here is whether you want to have a relationship with your son. I think it would be good for him to at least know what happened to you. I agree that it’s good he was put into a much better environment than your ex could offer him. I’m so sorry your parents didn’t get your side of things. I mean you’re their son! How would they not know if you were the violent type? To not even consider your innocence and immediately believe your ex seems extreme! That’s quite a betrayal to forgive.
With the high likelihood your mom is still lying about what they did when they realized you were missing, I’d tread very lightly moving forward. Low communication at best. You do not need to introduce your kids at this time or at all. Once you bring Kai in, just set boundaries with your parents on if, when, and how they meet your kids and your wife. I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could throw her (I’m not that strong) due to lack of evidence they even tried to look for you. They abandoned you. You now have a new life. Focus on that. Talk to Kai. Maybe he can fill in some gaps as well. He’d have less reason to lie to you.
Holy shit.
> “Yeah we washed our hands of you when we disowned you. We didn’t care a bit when you disappeared.”. Really confusing.
Not really. She wants to feel good about herself, and “disowned son while comatose, helped his wife get a divorce, he then disappears and his clothes are found at a shore” basically translates to yeah he probably killed himself.
Also, in the following decades they found out what an awful person the wife actually is, which is going to raise all sorts of suspicion and make them feel bad about themselves.
There might have been a search for a body, but nobody reached out beyond or told your mum they were doing it. Or the cops just said to her “yeah we searched all over but in that area generally nothing is found” and in her head over the decades it all translated to “we did nothing wrong, and we tried to do everything we could”
Also about 12-15 months from that they got a 6-month-old dropped on them which, while them being old-ish already meant no sleep for 2 years, which messes your memory up and tricks it to only remembering the good bits (my theory is this is a reason why people get a 2nd kid to “improve their relationship” since they remember only the good bits about the 1st baby time) so it’s not very surprising their memory is hazy about evil things they did and would feel guilty about.
Anyway, sounds like you have things in hand, so good luck and good health to you. You can do this. I believe in you.
If there was a massive police search, there should be a case file about you, right? You might be able to contact the UK police to find out more info. Or have a lawyer do it for you.
I hope connecting with your son goes well, but in my opinion, you are definitely better off without your parents. They just aren’t good for you, and your mom seems like a liar.