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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
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Weird. Cause the same story line playing out on an Australian soapy at the moment.
Do not ever ever say anything to your man about this. Handle your hurt, with your girlfriends, your mother, therapist- whoever. Just never with him.
And help him make sure his access to his little girl is guaranteed. Be on his team, as he loves his child.
And you getting some experience in what is involved with rearing children. You'll be better prepared, when you have your own pregnancy and so will he.
Whatever hopes, dreams, visions you had for your life are seriously hindered and maybe scrapped, if not at least subject to review and potential veto from whatever parenting plan develops from the other 2 adults. Wanted to go move to Spain for a year and do that artist thing? Bob wants to take that promotion in New York? Not so fast.
You're only 29 and there is plenty of time to start over with a new man. At least consider these other options - you don't have to be a martyr on this unless you really really want it.
Whether she should be told to break up or not is trickier; she could be the type to reject breakup advice out of hand.
Well done by Mr Savage about the feelings.
I'll just be in my corner (not) holding my breath...
Also--the condom broke AND Plan B failed? I'm sure it happens but it still seems odd.
Maybe this is a stupid nitpick, but the point is that being embarrassed wouldn't be a good reason. Right?
I think the advice was pretty much pitch perfect. I do think the LW ought to be slightly skeptical since Sally suddenly appeared: maybe she's coming to "fix it all for jesus" by snagging dad. I'm always very suspicious of "deeply christian" (defined as sexually repressed) when the behavior (a threesome?!?) is so far from the repressed values (yes, of course, I realize this cognitive dissonance is a standard feature among fundamentalists).
And yeah it's ok for her heart to break, as long as she picks herself up and makes the best decisions for herself afterward. As long as she can meet the challenge. If they can meet it together they might make good parents. It doesn't sound like a secure relationship to me though, I'd tell her to take some time away to think about what she wants and what she can offer.
To me, the LW seems immature. She is young, much younger than Bob and Sally, and her feelings are understandable. But if she can't reconcile her feelings to her situation, and develop some maturity and perspective, then she had best better go, IMHO. We all have dreams, and she has a right to hers, but she needed to reconcile that loss two years ago. Basically, until now she was simply pretending the baby didn't happen - "LALALALALALA - I'm not listening!" Probably not a good long-term strategy.
And I think proofreading is a good thing.
While the window to assert parental rights might expire, and that expiration may vary from state to state, let me assure you that responsibilities - at least in the form of child support - do not. A mother cannot surrender, on the child's behalf, child support. She can choose not to bring it to the state's attention, perhaps by having enough money to raise the child alone and never asking the courts to intervene, but rest assured that if she does in any way bring it to the state's attention (say, by filing for benefits), the state will come looking to recoup the child support from the father. This broad policy change was brought to you by the Contract On America Gingerich GOP Congress as part of the "Welfare Reform" wave of the early 90s. Suddenly all sorts of guys who never had any idea they were fathers were getting ominous letters from their State AGs offices notifying them.
Moreover, the child themselves, who are the "injured party" and the person harmed by lack of child support, may at a later time, regardless of what the mother says, sue a father for child support.
This is a common misconception, often perpetuated by women seeking "private" known donors rather than going through ART clinics and licensed sperm banks (generally for cost reasons - a turkey baster from the dollar store or one night stand is a lot cheaper than ART and you can pick the donor if you want). Most states have legislation exempting licensed ART clinics and sperm banks (since they'd never get a donation ever otherwise), and the case law is thin, but this Kansas Case should be looked at by anyone talking about "signing away rights and responsibilities". Any father can most assuredly and quickly sign away rights, but not the responsibilities (which to my mind, go hand in hand, and therefore you should never sign away your rights). IANAL, but I would strongly recommend that anyone in this kind of situation sit down with a family lawyer (since family law does vary from state to state) before doing anything.
You would think that's the point but often it's not. You would hope that the person you chose for a spouse would look forward to meeting challenges with you and growing as a person over the span of your lives. You would hope that they would love the things and the people that you do, or in the cases where they just can't, that at least they treat your feelings with respect when those things are mentioned.
Unfortunately there are lots of people who have their lives all planned out ahead of time and your role is just that --a role in the movie of their life that they have written and are now directing. And we all know that romance movies end on the wedding day. There is no concept of growth or change or challenges met together ever after. And there is certainly no room for the creative input of co-authors or editors of any kind.
But, you know, there's no need for a men's rights movement. Misandry isn't a thing.
"But, you know, there's no need for a men's rights movement."
No, there isn't a need.
I noticed you slipped this in: "If he doesn't..." Yeah, there's your problem.
BTW my divorce will be final this year. I'm getting the house and she's going to being paying me an alimony that would shock the conscience of the average American.
It's a travesty! Will somebody please think of the men?
But that said, she simply isn't going to have the life she wanted. She is going to have to spend the rest of her life with this other woman's child as a part of her life. She is going to have less money available for her own children.
If they were already married and she was pregnant then I would say deal with it because that is the least harmful path. But if I read this right they aren't married yet, and clearly they don't have kids together. If the realities of life with this guy are now too far from what she wanted then she still has the option to leave and try to find that life with someone else.
She may try and fail, and that is the risk we take anytime we walk away from a relationship in hopes of finding one more to our liking. But it is definitly an option and I don't think a necessarily wrong choice. It all depends on what she really wants in the end.
@37 - I'm quite sympathetic to the LW - in fact, I think she really ought to be on her toes. I'd bet that the sudden reappearance of the mother - who was in the picture before LW as an "old friend" - and child doesn't bode well. Even if her fiance has no desire to be involved in the child's life, I'll bet he winds up financially involved. Given that he wants to be involved, I can see his love for his child being used as a lever to pry him free of LW.
It is possible that the resentment stems from the jealousy of who he ejaculated for, and really... I don't blame her at all.
If LW is able to work through this resentment and be a step-mom every other week (I'm assuming visitation will be mostly split 50/50) then LW is pretty incredible.
I'd leave. I would've left after the first positive pregnancy test.
But I'm not incredible.
If this lady came to the couple and hoped both her former lovers would like a place in raising this child, maybe SO wouldn't be so incredulous of her intentions. They say it takes a village.
Side note, if ever involved in 3-way, males practice withdrawl...
Plan B stops ovulation. If you have ovulated that morning, or possibly up to 2 days before, Plan B is not going to help you. The egg is already in the tube, waiting to be fertilized. Because sperm can live in the female reproductive tract for a few days, its preventing ovulation after unprotected sex that Plan B helps with.
So, a hundred women have sex with no birth control, 17 get pregnant. Those hundred women take plan b, .85 women get pregnant. Be warned, I'm accepting your 17% figure with no verification. But that's how the math works, whatever the unprotected conception rate is.
I'd agree with Ms Fan if we had three basically good people, but that's a huge ask in better cases than this.
@5 +1, sometimes they get pretty boring or mundane. This one is a doozy. Good lesson for any M having sex with a F, 2-way 3-way n-way: find out her feelings on abortion first (and figure out your feelings on fatherhood), because every known contraceptive can fail.
@8 @12 +1, paternity test every time, especially if she's Christian. The more xian they are, the less likely likely to own up to sleeping around. And ya never know, the holy spirit may have paid a visit. (or was it the holy ghost who knocked up the Virgin Mary?)
Under baby moses laws (which are in all 50 states). You can physically hand over your baby and surrender your rights (and the rights of the other parent) for the first month or two after birth. If fathers couldn't do it, it would be horribly bigoted but I don't know all state details.. I'd rather have a system that would enable each parent to sign away individual rights, instead of having to give away the baby, I find this a little barbaric.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe-haven_…
Once uncontested, voluntarily surrendering parental responsibilities doesn't seem possible everywhere, and it mostly seems to happen in order to facilitate another person adopting those rights so the kid isn't robbed of support:
http://family-law.freeadvice.com/family-…
Baby Moses laws do not allow a party to relinquish parental rights. They decriminalize dropping off newborns at specific sites to prevent unwanted babies being dropped in dumpsters and such. The state may then move to terminate parental rights due to neglect, but both parents are entitled to notice and an opportunity to object (admittedly, only if they have some way of figuring out who the parents are).
Please, if you have a baby while unmarried, go see a lawyer in your state. Even if you're getting along.
I'm not sure if I believe this is ever the case actually. My point was only that if no one declared paternity, there would be no child support responsibilities, which sounds like the case here.
And you're right, if nobody knows who dad is or ever files an action to enforce his rights or responsibilities, then they will not be enforced. But that doesn't mean they don't exist.
It's kind of like, if I steal a candy bar and no one ever catches me or realizes that it's gone, it doesn't mean I've legalized theft. It just means I got away with avoiding the law.
He missed the first two years of his child's life because of this shitstain. She's little better than a kidnapper; she should lose custody and face prosecution.
And yes, if a father whose paternity had been established were to withhold the child from the mother, then she would probably have to go to court to establish/enforce custody and parenting time orders. It's not an ideal way to deal with these things, but really the least-worst option when families get so screwed up. That's why it's important to be careful about picking someone to reproduce with.
Either way, even if if LW is sure the situation wasn't orchestrated in some way by mom, LW needs to look at what the main source of her discomfort is. I imagine it's not just that she wanted to be first. If she's worried that fiancé and mom are forming their own little family pod without her she needs to talk with him about it NOW. Her feelings --whether based on fiancés actions or not-- are understandable and they need to have an open discussion about how to help her feel more secure. If dude is going ahead and making decisions without LW etc he needs to know that's unacceptable and they need to have a clear understanding about how things will go down with child visitation, etc going forwards. Would definitely recommend meeting the kid too if she hasn't already. It wasn't dude's fault, but he has to recognise & work with the uncomfortable situation she is in. If they can genuinely work through that stuff, then maybe it can work out great for everyone. If not, if the decisions are dragging on, etc, she may need to cut her losses.
You've done it right, though -- if you can't handle the fact that the orgasm might come (sometimes they can be quite sudden) at a time when he is penetrating the other woman, you shouldn't have a threesome. Ever. I hope your friend's boyfriend pressed charges.
Thanks. I liked the thought to retain an attorney in the event of unwed pregnancy a lot.
So to be clear, here's the scenario: man and woman have baby, his name is on birth certificate. He picks the baby up one day, doesn't bring it home, denies mother all contact. She is forced to scrape together money for a lawyer; she acts as soon as she can, but between getting money together, hiring lawyer, and getting heard in busy court system, time passes, during which she is completely deprived of contact with her newborn.
When she finally gets the court to order her access to the baby, she is also ordered to pay child support to the father for the time during which he was keeping the baby from her. Now, are you telling me that in this scenario, what the father did was totally cool, the legal system handled it appropriately, and there should be no repercussions for his actions?
But, you know, there's no need for a men's rights movement. Misandry isn't a thing."
Always said by the same people who don't take proper precautions to prevent birth and/or have sex with pro-lifers. You plan ahead or you plan for the baby's best interests.
I fail to see what failing to take proper precautions to prevent birth has to do with someone essentially kidnapping your baby for two years. Two wrongs don't make a right. Women need to stop thinking of children as their property, with which they can do as they please, regardless of the father's wishes. Don't want another human being to have shared parental rights to your child? Plan ahead--go to a sperm bank.
Go ahead and switch the genders. If a father took his daughter away from the mother and refused access and the most she did was whine about it for two years, people would be coming down on her head with torches and pitchforks.
I'm talking about denying a parent access to his or her baby being a shitty thing to do. That's not even a gendered or men's rights position--though I do think we, and the law, are more tolerant of it when it's the mother denying the father access than vice versa.
@80 Access to your child should be a given, not something you don't get unless you go to court for it. Yes, in this case apparently the father did not take action--perhaps because he could not afford it. I'll make this as simple as I can. If I get a girl pregnant and, when she delivers, I take the baby and refuse her any access *to her newborn baby*, unless and until she hires a lawyer and gets a court order--whether that takes 1 month, 3 months, or she doesn't act on it for 2 years--whatever the length of time, your position is, Fine, until she gets a court order it's ok to deny her access to the child. And she should pay child support for the time when I had the baby exclusively. Yes or no? Because I call the person, male or female, who does that a shitstain.
The reason it's a men's rights issue is because there's a double standard. I believe as a society we overlook shitty behavior like this from mothers, but not from fathers. This bitch, this pustule of a woman denied the father of her baby access to the child for the first two years of the child's life. Neither the father nor the child can ever, ever get that time back. And not a single person in these comments but me pointed out what a foul person she is. If it were the father that did it, you hypocrites would be livid. That's misandry.
I can't answer about child support, because I personally had a deadbeat dad, so yeah, you could say that I'm a bit biased. And yes, my mother fought in court for as long and as hard as she could because raising two children on your own with absolutely no support is a fucking difficult thing to do, especially in CA. Maybe if more men voluntarily stood up and took responsibility for their actions, there would be more rights for them as well. I find it amusing as hell that whenever these 'men's rights' come up, it's usually some ambiguous claim about evil women trying to keep their precious children from them. In my experience, it's the fathers that are doing all they can to wipe their hands of their progeny. I'm sure there are great dads out there, but I've yet to meet one in my forty years on this earth.
So you're sticking up for a guy who DIDN'T TRY to take action and was perfectly okay with the scenario up until he finally decided to.
His issue is that he bred with a pro-lifer religious nut who decided that because the baby was conceived in sin, she was ashamed to reveal the father's name.
People think MRAs are creeps because you call her a "bitch", "foul", and "pustule", while ignoring that the father didn't pursue at all, you blame her for being a woman. Your own hatred comes out whether you care or not. It sabotages your points. At least pretend to not be a misogynist.
Hahahahaha of course he hasn't provided that or financial support.
You are trying to blame the victim here (one of the victims--the child is the other). Maybe Bob could not afford a lawyer. Maybe he decided going to war against an intransigent Sally wasn't worth it; might have caused her to leave the state or otherwise made a voluntary reconciliation even more difficult. We do know that now that she allows it he is an enthusiastic and involved father.
We don't know why Bob failed to pursue legal options before. But we do know that what this mother did was cruel and unforgivable. That's why I call her a bitch, foul, a pustule. Not because she's a woman, but because of what she DID. Why would I hide my hatred for an entitled, power-tripping scum like her?
Rapists don't rape because women wear short skirts. And shitstain mothers don't deprive fathers of access to their children because the fathers don't get lawyers. Rapists rape because they are rapists. Shitstain parents act like shitstains because they are shitstains. When those parents are mothers, commenters on Slog make excuses for them because said commentors are sexist.
@84, btw, I'm sorry for what your father did to you. But know that more non-custodial moms are deadbeats than non-custodial dads. And more custodial moms than custodial dads want the other parent to have no contact with the child (parental alienation). Just FYI. http://www.avoiceformen.com/men/most-dad…
And you're the guy who wants to blame all women for one indoctrinated in religious oppression, and who learned to share custody through time. Your "examples of misandry" reflect more poorly on yourself.
What matters is that unlike your story, he did come forth and support his kid and this was sanctioned by even the more zealot-y partner.
The man is the one with competing priorities, and so he needs to make his priorities clear, and then the LW has to decide if those priorities work for her. If not, then she needs to break up and start over. She is 26 - she still has plenty of time.
You've done it right, though -- if you can't handle the fact that the orgasm might come (sometimes they can be quite sudden) at a time when he is penetrating the other woman, you shouldn't have a threesome. Ever. I hope your friend's boyfriend pressed charges."
So right. People who think it's okay to punch their partner in the face for having an orgasm during a threesome need to spend some time in jail.
@73: "Also, am I the only one who doesn't think 26 / 35 is a significant age difference?"
For this I'm not on board. 26/35's pretty big. More specifically, 26 is young enough to not really know what you want and to have enough time to start over, while 35 is an age where people are usually on the path they're going to stay on. It doesn't have to be significant, but it sounds like one of them is dealing with the real world, and one of them hasn't gotten over the conflict between the real world and "how things are supposed to be."
There are doubtless some 26-year-olds who are far enough into life to be compatible with the average 35-year-old, but it doesn't sound like the LW is one of them. I'm with 92: If she doesn't like how this is going, she should bail out and find something that works for her. She's got time, and this situation is a mess.
How is a child a "competing priority"? She's the one who can't figure out responsibilities from wants.
I'm not sure about the order of importance in this guy's head. Surely you are aware that not all guys consider their children to be as high a priority as might benefit the children, but ... he has a child with someone not his fiancee, and he is supposedly planning to marry someone not the mother of his child. And he has had some kind of relationship over the past 17 or so years with his "nice" friend from high school, who is the mother of his child.
If these three cogs can't interlock and roll together in some way - and based on the LW's letter I think the chances are not so good - then he is going to have to make some choices. and LW is going to have to either accept those choices as the price of admission (provided he chooses to go forward with her), or move on.
I agree with you that LW does not seem quite grounded. Why would you have a three-way at the age of 23 with your 32-year-old fiance's "friend?"