A newfound biological father shares his perspective and advice for other men
Support is almost nonexistent for men who discover through a DNA test that they unknowingly fathered a child. Jack found he was the father of a 23-year-old woman who matched with him in February 2023 through Ancestry DNA. He had taken a test five years earlier for fun.
While his wife Hannah found a Facebook support group for wives, he couldn’t find any resources for fathers.
Jack wanted to share his experience to help other men as they consider how to proceed after receiving a DNA surprise – something that is often a complicated and emotional discovery for an entire family.
He shares his story below in a Q&A format.
1.Tell us about yourself, your marriage, and your family unit
I’m in my early 40’s. I am a father to 3 children ranging from 2 to 16 years old and a husband to a wife of 15 years. We are also special needs parents to a 13-year-old child with severe medical needs. I’m a very busy parent with a very busy and demanding career, and family is extremely important to me. I’m a self-made man, and I have worked very hard to be where I am today so my family could have a life I never had.
2. How did you discover a newfound biological daughter?
We had just gotten back from out of town from our son’s brain surgery. We were exhausted – mentally and physically. On our way home from picking up our older son from school, I received a message on Facebook.
It was from someone who said her close friend took an Ancestry DNA test, and she shared 50% DNA with me. It identified me as her biological father. Her message said they didn’t want to cause any problems with my family and just wanted answers. She said they would understand if I didn’t want to answer. She asked me if I remembered her mother and gave me her name. I did know her. And my heart sank.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I found out later they had sent the same message to my brother. My thoughts were, why would they send this message to him if they already knew I was the biological father? How were they not going to cause problems with my family if they sent the message to him too?
From the get-go, we weren’t the only ones who knew about this. We couldn’t deal with this in private. I felt my family’s privacy was violated.
I was young at the time – 18 years old and not making good decisions. There was this girl that I started to be with, sort of. She wasn’t really my girlfriend. I found out after a while she was also sleeping with other people. At one point, she was with this guy she was infatuated with.
One day she just came out that she was pregnant with his baby. She quit her job and left town. I never heard from her after that. No phone calls. No emails. Nothing. For 23 years, I knew nothing.
3. What did it feel like to receive the news you had a child you didn’t know about?
I froze. My whole world stopped. Life, as I had known it, ended, and I felt it. I don’t think that there are words to accurately describe the plethora of emotions that I felt then.
It was overwhelming. I thought maybe it was a joke or a scam. Then I looked at the DNA website and there WAS a match. The weight of that was crushing. It meant the threat of me losing my family was very real.
4. After your DNA discovery, what did you do next?
At first, I didn’t know what to do. What I did know was that this was not going to go over well with my wife. At that moment, I was genuinely afraid of losing my family over this.
I knew I had to tell my wife. But when? Do I tell her now? Do I wait until tomorrow so I can think this over a bit? Do I tell her a week later, after I have had time to figure things out a bit? None of those ideas were going to work out well and I knew it.
I decided that I couldn’t keep this from my wife, who has been my partner, my closest confidant, and the love of my life. I had to tell her right away. We were headed home and my wife could tell there was something wrong. I told her I needed to talk to her when we got home.
What I wanted to do, what I wanted to happen, was to get to our room as soon as we got home so I could tell her in private. I wanted us to talk about how we were feeling. What our fears were. What we were thinking and what we wanted to do.
Then I wanted us to contact a lawyer to see if there was anything we had to worry about legally. I wanted us to come up with a plan together on how we were going to handle this, and then, when we were ready, we would make contact. Then when, and only when, we were comfortable and ready, we would tell everyone else (my son, family, etc.). That did not happen. Nothing happened the way I planned it to or would have wanted it to go.
5. How did you tell your wife Ancestry DNA matched you as the father?
We got home and went upstairs. Before I revealed anything to her, I told her that I was never more afraid of losing my family than I was now. I told her that I loved her with all my heart and that my family meant everything to me, and I didn’t want to lose all of you. But I can’t hide this from you, and I have to tell you.
Then I handed her the phone and showed her the message. She reacted in a way I could never have imagined. It was an intense reaction. I did not have the time or frame of mind to comprehend why she was reacting the way she did, but later on, through many many talks with her, she was able to articulate what was going on inside her head and in her emotions.
She was shocked. This was a nightmare scenario and now she was living it and the impact of that to her conceptualized life was massive. For her, life as she knew it had also ended. Someone had invaded the family that she always dreamed of having and held sacred for so many years. She felt angry and hurt. She was disappointed because she thought she knew who I was and she didn’t know about this part of my life. She felt like an outsider in her own family and had to stand by as an onlooker as her family and dreams were destroyed by an earthquake. She told me later that she had never felt this intensity of pain in her life. It was soul-crushing.
My attention moved away from handling the DNA discovery situation to focusing on my wife and my family. They are the most important people in my life, and seeing my wife in pain was a devastating part of the experience.
This news hit her hard. Emotionally and mentally, she was not ok and she was lashing out in a way and to a degree I had never seen before. I had no choice but to shut down my own feelings. I had to put thinking through the situation with the bio daughter aside because I had to handle what was happening in my own family before any real damage was done – if it already hadn’t been.
I was convinced my wife’s family all hated me now. I got phone calls from my family wanting to know what was going on. But I didn’t know what was going on. They were asking for answers to questions that I hadn’t even had the chance to think about.
All I knew then was that my life was on fire, and there was a very real chance I was going to lose my family. Worst three days of my life. I barely ate. I barely slept. I think I lost 20 pounds or so around that time.
The night of the third day, I got a message from my brother-in-law. He wanted to see how I was doing. He wanted me to know that they all were trying to reason with my wife and to bear with her.
He said that the situation, as it had unfolded, was out of my hands, and they all knew me and that I was a good man. I was speechless. I had not expected that. My family was supportive and most of them stood back and were waiting to see what I wanted to do. They continued to check in on me. Unfortunately, not everyone in my family refrained from getting involved.
At one point, my wife sent the bio daughter’s friend (her partner) a strongly worded message. Basically, what the hell are they doing contacting her husband. Why did they send a message to my brother if they didn’t want to interfere with our family, and what the hell do they want. I had asked her not to contact anyone, but she was furious with the people intruding on our family. She felt that if these people felt they had a right to message me and my family, then she had a right to message them back.
During these first few days, things were not good between my wife and me. I was sure she hated me. I was basically abandoned by her because, at that time, she wanted nothing to do with me or this situation. I guess I had family that wanted to know how I was doing, but I wanted my wife and partner in life. That was not going to be an option for me. I had to figure this out on my own.
She was angry, hurt and lashing out and it was unreal to me at the time. I have never seen her act like this in the 16 years we have been together. I felt so bad that this was happening. I felt so bad for what she was going through. My wife had married me thinking this whole time that I was a man without children, which is who she chose to make a life with. From what I knew up till now, that’s who I was. *This revelation challenged everything she knew about our life together and caused her to call into question whether any of it was real.
*Note: Guys, understand your wife may feel this way for a long while and it may resurface from time to time. Listen to her and let her vent, whether you feel it’s true or not. I just try to remind my wife that I lived my life without the knowledge of any of this, so I went about my life that way. I’m still the man she met and fell in love with and chose to marry. Nobody can take that away from her or from us.
During this time, I was texting with my sister and I sent her a couple of screenshots of the messages my wife was sending me. I shouldn’t have done that. I guess I did it because I was surprised, and I wanted someone I trusted to see what I was getting thrown at me. I should have just kept that to myself. I think my sharing of something private fueled her convictions about something else.
6. What happened after you shared some of the messages between you and your wife with other family members?
My sister and her wife decided to contact the bio daughter because they thought the message my wife sent was going to deter the bio daughter from wanting to pursue a relationship with me.
They also said that the rest of my family was not like my wife and that everyone would welcome her into the family with open arms.
They had excluded my wife from the family with this message. They had drawn a line in the sand and put my wife on the other side of it. They had promised a relationship with the bio daughter and we were all obligated now. Including me. I hadn’t even decided what I wanted to do about anything.
They had no right to promise her that my family would all have a relationship with her. They had no right in doing any of that. They had jumped over me and promised the world to a stranger. Then they leaped out of the mess they made with clean hands.
My mistake here was not addressing that right away. I was too involved with what was going on in my own house between my wife and me. I figured I could deal with my family later. I didn’t realize at the time what kind of impact that was going to have on my family and on the situation.
My sister and her wife had given the bio daughter the expectation that there would definitely be a relationship between myself, her, and my family. That would be a problem later.
They also undermined my wife’s position in our marriage and in our family. They made it seem like she didn’t matter and we would all just go around her. How was that not going to cause problems between my wife and me and between my wife and my family (including them)?
I addressed this later on, but I suggest stuff like this be addressed immediately and shut down before more damage is done. Things are still not ok between my sister and my wife – my sister and her wife made contact before I ever had the chance to – before I ever wanted or was ready to. At that point, I felt like I had no choice but to make contact with the bio daughter as soon as possible.
7. Was your wife able to articulate what she was feeling about this DNA surprise at that time and why?
At the time? No. She was too overwhelmed by what she was feeling and it was too much to process at the time. I can understand that. I couldn’t process anything during those first few days either.
*Note: Guys, your wife may not fully understand why she is feeling the way she does, so don’t expect her to. It’s best to talk to each other about how you’re feeling if you can. You may not be able to. Just give her time. She will talk to you, but you need to put her first through this whole process.
8. Were there any resources that helped you process and handle the discovery of a newfound biological daughter?
There were no resources. Google, for the first time ever, had failed me. YouTube was even less helpful. I looked everywhere. I tried a hundred different search queries, rewording the phrase “I am a man that just found out I have a daughter I didn’t know about” in as many different combinations as I could think of.
There was nothing. Nothing from my perspective. There were so many results from the biological child’s perspective (which rules the overwhelming majority of what you will find) and some, not much, from the wife’s perspective. But nothing for me. No guidance on how I should handle this. I was going to have to figure this out on my own with what I knew and with what I thought I should do. “Fuck me. I’m on my own”. I know that sounds rude, but it was a reality for me.
*Note: The only thing that my wife found that was any help to her that she later shared with me was the Watershed DNA website. Much later on, my wife found this book on Amazon, “An Unexpected Father-Daughter DNA Match: Guidance for a Biological Father with a Wife and Family”. This would have helped A LOT if we had this when all this was first happening. I would have waited to make contact until after reading through this book.
9. What did you end up doing?
Well, after a few days of hell at home, my wife woke up one morning and asked to talk to me. I was 100% expecting more of the same, but I got something that I did not expect. She apologized to me. She said she felt like everything was just too much for her, and it was all out of her control, but she was sorry she had reacted the way she did.
Now I really didn’t know what to think. I was surprised and confused all at once. I explained to her what I had wanted to happen. I told her that she abandoned me when I needed her the most. We were supposed to handle this together before anyone else knew. She apologized for all of it.
This was not the end of the feelings she was having, but there was a moment when she saw me again and wanted to be there for me and let me be there for her too. I ran with it, of course. I would have been mad not to. I wasn’t alone anymore. At least for now. We talked about making contact. Eventually, I did, through text.
At first, the only questions she asked were about how she came to be. I asked questions about her and her life later. I was curious as to who this person was.
What did I do wrong here? I did not share all the messages with my wife as I got them. The reason I didn’t was that things were so up and down between us that I worried one of these messages would set her off again. Still, I should have shared the messages I was sending and receiving. Needless to say, she was more than upset when I showed her messages she was not aware of. She felt like I was hiding something, and as I said earlier, I kind of was – even though I was trying to avoid conflict. Big mistake.
I will say that the texting was inconsistent. I would send a message and she would get back to me sometime later in the day or the next day. It was frustrating sometimes. I felt like this was a side hobby for her. I was going through this catastrophic event in my life and my marriage, and it seemed like she would get to me when she wasn’t busy.
My wife commented that she felt she was messing with my head. I think there was some truth to that on some level. At one point, I sent her a message that voiced my frustration with what I was going through at home with my family. She sent me a message that stated that she was going through this too, and she didn’t want to be led on into something that would not grow. And that I should tell her if that was the case. I basically said that I was not going to move faster than I should, given I had a family. After I made that clear, there was no messaging for about two weeks.
My wife and I started to deal with the situation, finally. I felt guilty. I felt like a bad person. During this time, my wife’s emotions were up and down like a roller coaster. One moment she was ok. Later, she wasn’t. I hated seeing her like that. It broke my heart. We started to do better. We talked a lot. I felt responsible, but also not.
Yes, I had played my part in this person’s creation. But I didn’t create the situation that was happening here. The bio mother had. And she was the only one not answering for what was happening. The weight of it all seemed to be only on me. She had gotten away with it, scot-free. She denied even knowing me when she was confronted by the bio daughter.
My wife eventually decided that this was not a situation she wanted to be in. She did not have the opportunity to choose to be a part of this or not. If was going to pursue a relationship with this person, she would step aside and leave. She was not willing to continue in the marriage if I chose to pursue a relationship with the bio daughter because it meant she would have to continue living with the pain she felt.
I had to look at things as they were. I could pursue a relationship with the bio daughter, but it would be at the expense of my family. And what would be the guarantee there? What if I did that and the bio daughter didn’t want to go through with it anymore or the relationship tapered off into insignificance? Even if she didn’t, what would that mean for my kids? Don’t they deserve to have their father? Don’t my kids deserve to have me in their life to guide them and protect them? Not part-time, but every day? Doesn’t my wife deserve to have her loving husband? Doesn’t she deserve to have her best friend and partner in life? What does that mean to you? Didn’t you make those vows? There was a lot to think about.
But I also thought, how could I be a good person if I didn’t try to have a relationship with this person? I have to be responsible, right? There were a lot of conflicting ideas like that. There’s what society, family, and media tell you is the right thing to do. Then there is the reality of what you are facing. Two different stories.
One day I got a phone call from my wife while I was at work. She was having a bad time and was breaking down. I jumped in the car and headed home. While I was driving, I put on one of Molly Corrigan’s podcasts. It was Anna’s story. Something about that story resonated with me.
And then everything clicked inside my head. I had made a decision. I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t put my family through this. I couldn’t put my wife through this. I made the decision to break contact with my biological daughter before things progressed any further. It was the best I could do for everyone. Even her. I felt like a weight had been lifted off my chest. I got home and told my wife what I decided. She was surprised and relieved, I think. It was around this time that the bio daughter messaged me after a couple of weeks to see how things were going.
I decided to break contact over a phone call. The first and last phone call. Everything before this had been over text. I chose to do the phone call because it was the best way to bring closure for everyone. I would tell her my decision to break contact and she could have the opportunity to ask any questions about it. I would answer them. It would take as long as necessary to help her understand.
I felt like this was an opportunity to give closure and not leave any unanswered questions and go our separate ways in peace, wishing each other the best. I prepared for it. I told her I needed to talk to her, and I scheduled a time twice, but she bailed on both.
I concluded she was avoiding the call. Maybe she had sensed that I was going to break contact and was avoiding it. Maybe it was something else. I’m not sure, but I got the sense she was avoiding the call. So, I decided to write a long text message. Not the best option, in my opinion, because it leaves too many unanswered questions, and it seems impersonal.
Communication is better over the phone. The tone is conveyed over voice, and what I can say over the phone in two minutes would take me ages to type. You’d have to wait for the other person to text you back whenever they wanted to. That just stifles communication. But that was my last option.
Right before I was to send the final message to break contact, I sent a text asking one last time for a phone call. I didn’t think she would respond, but she did right away. Then she called me. I wasn’t ready for that. But it happened and I made the best of it.
Let me add something here. My wife didn’t know I made one last attempt to ask for a call. I should have talked about it before I hit send. She was very surprised when she saw I was on the phone with her. Everything had happened so quickly that I just reacted. This was a mistake on my part. It would have been better to be open about that.
The call didn’t go the way I expected it to. At least not at first. The conversation was awkward at first. It just took a minute to get things going from a surprise start. We talked about what happened with each of us when we each found out about the other. Around this time is when my wife came to look for me and found me in the garage. I motioned to her that I was on the phone with the bio daughter. She looked very surprised and closed the door so I could continue the conversation.
Eventually, I came around to tell the bio daughter that I couldn’t have a relationship with her. She was upset (she had developed some expectations based on what my sister had promised), and I explained why. While I was talking to her I was kind to her and tried to be understanding during our conversation. I wasn’t looking to start a fight. I wanted things to end well for everyone’s benefit. The rest of the call was about talking things out with her as to why I couldn’t foster a relationship with her. I reiterated one last time that I could not have a relationship with her.
I asked her to please not contact anyone in my family or extended family, and I would make sure that no one in my family would contact her. It ended with me telling her that I would remember her. I acknowledge that she exists. But the best I could do is wish her the best in her life. I wished that she achieved everything she set out to do, that she has her own family one day, and that she lives well and has a happy life. And then I said goodbye, and so did she. That was the last time I had contact with her. It was the best thing I could have done for her. It was the best thing I could have done for my family.’
10. Are you upset that you were unable to pursue a relationship with your newfound biological daughter?
Honestly, no. Even though it took a while to come to this point, I was at peace with my decision when I made it. It was clear that my wife did not want to be in a situation where the bio daughter was part of our daily lives, and I did not want to be without my family. My family is my dream come true. I wasn’t going to lose them if I could help it. Also, from what I can tell from other people’s experiences with this, is that the relationships with the bio children tend to fizzle out. There is a lot of contact and interaction in the beginning (the honeymoon stage), but then it tapers off. There is little consistent contact after a while, if any at all. It looks like, after a while, the biological children want to return to the life they knew before and do. Meanwhile, the damage to your family is done.
At first, I didn’t understand or realize that I had a choice in this. Societal expectations tell you what the “right thing” to do is, and what you see in the media echoes it. After weeks of thinking about everything, I came to the realization that I had a choice here, just like my wife had a choice. Just like the bio daughter had a choice. *Everyone directly involved in this had a choice. I wasn’t going to abandon my wife and children like that. I just wasn’t going to do it. As more time passes, the more I understand and believe that I made the best choice for my family and for everyone.
*Note: By directly, I mean the husband, wife, their children, and bio child. No outsiders like extended family.
11. How has the DNA discovery and aftermath impacted your family and your marriage?
This has been the biggest challenge my wife and I have ever faced. We are still working through it. Make no mistake. This was not an easy thing to go through. I almost lost my family. We are looking for a good therapist, which I recommend to everyone going through this. We did realize how much we mean to each other, and we value our life together a lot more. We became closer because of this, but only because we chose to preserve our life together. We chose each other. We chose our family. We chose to protect the integrity of our family.
12. What advice would you give to other men who discover they have an adult biological child they didn’t know about?
Don’t be a Hero. You aren’t going to save anyone. You may do the exact opposite to the ones you love. To the people that trusted you to take care of them. In trying to be a hero to the bio child you will be putting your relationship with your wife and children at risk. This took a little bit to make sense to me, but actually, my wife helped me to understand this. It seems counterintuitive from a societal perspective, but it makes more sense when you think about how this going to affect your relationship with your wife and children and how they will see you from then on.
Don’t rush into having a relationship with the biological child, and don’t let that become your focus. I notice that a lot in the stories on websites. Don’t forget about your wife and children. They come first.
Listen to your wife. Hear her out and listen to what she feels about all of this. If she isn’t saying much or seems to be going along with everything fairly quietly, it isn’t because everything is fine with her. Ask her and really listen to her. Let her talk. You don’t have to like what she says, but you should hear her out. You’re supposed to be a team. Remember?
Don’t be secretive with messaging the bio child, and don’t run away with messaging them either, even if it’s only a few messages. Keep your wife in the know. Otherwise, it will seem like an affair. Trust me on this. It doesn’t sound like it at first, but the behavior you are exhibiting is very similar. Be mindful of that.
In fact, be open with her each time you message them so you are both on the same page and your wife can see what is being said. She can help prevent you from saying some things you probably shouldn’t – however innocent they may seem. They could be misread as something else because, remember, women read between the lines, even the ones that don’t exist (my wife contributed that last part).
Be realistic. You didn’t have the chance to be a part of the bio child’s life. But you have the choice to be a part of your children’s lives. Choose wisely.
Take your time. Don’t let anyone rush you to make moves or decisions you aren’t ready to make.
Think things through. Do this with your partner, and don’t bulldoze them and vice versa.
Set boundaries and keep them. This is for everyone. You have to respect your spouses’ boundaries too. The bio child has to respect your family’s boundaries. Your extended families have to respect your family’s boundaries for sure.
Honestly, I wish I would have known early on that these situations almost never work out. That’s the truth of it. You’ll have to sacrifice your marriage and family for this relationship. It doesn’t matter if you get a divorce or not. You’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise.
13. What advice would you give to the wives of men who discover they have an adult child through a DNA test?
Be there for your husband. He needs you to figure this out right. Otherwise, he’s going to make decisions on his own and make mistakes. I did just that.
Don’t be silent. He needs to know what you’re going through and what you think and feel about all this. He needs to know what you are willing and not willing to do. Tell your husband how you feel, but try not to explode either. You might end up isolating yourself and him.
Be the someone that he can go to. It’s hard for him to be open with you if you have a meltdown or breakdown when he tries to communicate with you. However, don’t be afraid to tell him he’s doing something inappropriate or something you’re uncomfortable with. Voice your boundaries. I made some mistakes here.
Know those first few days are crucial. That’s where you can have the most impact. Talk things out with him first. Help your husband make a plan of how you both are going to approach and handle this. Have each other’s backs.
14. Do you have any other advice about how to handle a surprising DNA discovery?
Be careful with social media: What I mean by this is making angry and impulsive posts on your feed. If you’re going on social media to look for support groups, that is perfectly fine. Just be careful which groups you get involved in. Otherwise, stay off of social media. It’s your and your family’s business (wife and kids only) and not anyone else’s. No one is going to give you good advice there. It’s just an echo chamber of people telling you what you want to hear. They have no real concern for you, your marriage, or your family.
Don’t self-sabotage. You are going through enough already.
There is so much more to tell that I haven’t said here. But this is the first time that I have been able to write out my experience and everything wants to come out like a flood, all at once. I hope that I can help at least one husband navigate through this because I had no one. There was no advice or direction when I desperately needed something, anything.
Thank you for taking the time to read my story and I wish you all the best in dealing with this very difficult and traumatic situation.
Have you recently discovered a newfound biological daughter or son you didn’t know about and would like information about support groups? Email dnadiscoveryhelpatfacebook@mail.com.