A question for the older men, a hypothetical scenario…

(Women can certainly answer too, but it might be a bit trickier)

Suppose you received a message from reliable sources advising you that you have a child you didn’t know about, from someone you briefly dated. The circumstances are thus:

The child is an adult, and successful. They need nothing from you.

Your child is not angry at you, he/she knows that the mother never told you about their birth.

All the person wants, if you’re agréable, is to meet you, maybe for coffee.

So, based upon this premise, three questions:

1) Would you be willing to meet this child ?

2) If you hit it off, would you be open to an ongoing relationship ?

3) Would the existence of this child, even under these circumstances, complicate your life or cause problems ?

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

DrWatson · 70-79, M

I would be open to meeting the child, but I would first check to see how comfortable my wife would be with my doing so.

As for having an ongoing relationship, one thing I would want to know is whether doing so would entangle me to some extent with the birth mother. If she has her life together, and was clearly not going to try to re-kindle anything, then I would be ok with having a relationship with the kid. (My wife and I are each friends with each other's ex's.)

The only ways in which I could foresee complications would be for the two reasons I already gave: negative reactions from my wife or a troublesome reaction from my ex. If neither of those are an issue, I don't think this would cause problems. It might be a little awkward explaining this to my adult daughter, but I think she could take it in stride.