I’m not a girl but nevertheless I don’t agree with this. I grew up without a dad.
By the time I was 13 it was too late for me to have accepted a full-time daddy. I’d have rebelled. But the years between 13 and 18-years-old are so important and I’d have loved knowing I had a dad who actually gave a shit. Even just being able to commiserate with all my friends who did have dads would have made a huge difference. "Oh yeah, I know what you mean. My dad is such a loser! :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: "
We also found out eventually that most of what mom told us about dad was utter bullshit. Part of the reason he didn’t try very hard to find his kids when mom grabbed us and moved across country was because he was kinda relieved not to have to put up with a woman who was a bit bat-shit crazy.
Turns out he was also apparently justified in disowning me before I was even born. I’m mostly likely not his and I’ll never know who my real dad was/is. My mom stole from me the possibility of ever knowing any dad, as well as denying a man out there somewhere the knowledge he even has another kid.
I think if the OP can at least try to establish contact, he should. Legally, of course.
I can not disagree more with this statement. I am 28 years old and while my father and I are great friends, there are still times that I need him to be my father.
I second the advice to put money away for her education. If her education is taken care of, it can be money to help her in her first apartment or a little something for her to squirrel away. Do you have anything from your parents? A watch from her grandpa, a small jewelry box from her grandma… those things might mean alot to her some day.
Keep a journal, write letters, let her know you’d thought about her over the years. Those will mean so much to her, even if she never outwardly shows it.
I feel like your heart is in the right place, but try to understand that she won’t need your friendship. She’ll probably have plenty of friends and a full schedule at 18. You can’t offer her much as a friend, but I promise that you can offer a whole hell of a lot as a father.
I’m not suggesting you get her a pony and make sure everyone knows she’s your little princess, but understand that coming back into her life means being there to answer her questions and offer her guidance if she needs it. It means being there to help her pack up her stuff and move from apartment to apartment and it means letting her crash on your couch sometimes when her roommates are driving her mad. Being a father means finding a way to promise her that she’s not going out into this big world all alone and that is a really big responsibility that should never be taken lightly.
We have two very important pieces of information now - that Jay’s daughter doesn’t even know that he is her father, and that Jay is legally not allowed to contact the mother or the daughter. Advising him to contact her out of the blue, even after his daughter is 18, or advising him to contact her mother is not based on these realities, in my opinion.
Yes, that is true. My daughter thinks my ex’s ex-husband is her father. Physically, my daughter must stick out like a sore thumb since I have a slim build and my ex and her ex were heavyset. Contacting my ex-wife would certainly lead to legal woes. I wonder about the rightness/wrongness of contacting my daughter once she is an adult. Surely it can be seen as only for my benefit. If she grew up thinking her stepfather was her dad, it would shatter her whole world view. But sometimes, like now, it is all I can think about. Probably because her birthday is so near. She was born premature, 2 lbs 7 oz - I could hold her in my hand.
I cannot agree with malkavia more. Everything s/he says is sound, but I especially agree with the fact that the time for being a father never ends. Some of the things you do as a father do change over time, and it is too late to do some of those things, but there are plenty of things left to do, I assure you.
I just imagine myself in the place of your daughter, and I know that if I found out at 13 that the man I thought was my father wasn’t my father and someone else was, yes, there would be turmoil. Yes, it would be difficult… but it would be a difficulty I would deal with. I would feel better knowing about it than finding out years later and being upset that you never told me before because you thought I’d be better off. I would never stop loving the dad I thought was my dad before, but as long as you didn’t try to compete with him or disparage him, I would try to have a relationship with you too.
I don’t know… this is a really tough situation, and there are a million ways you could deal with it and none of them are necessarily wrong or right. I do think you should talk to a lawyer, not about seeing if you can get your rights back, but about seeing if you can at least correspond in writing, supervised, notarized if you have to (for your own protection, so your ex couldn’t claim something came from you that didn’t).
Regardless of what you do, please don’t be discouraged from trying on the basis of thinking it’s too late for you to mean anything to her as a father. If my world turned topsy-turvy right now at 24 and I found out my dad wasn’t my dad but this other guy was and genuinely wanted to be a part of my life, I’d damn well give him a chance.