This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/Fluffy-Meal618 on 2023-07-01 16:26:28+00:00.
My (68 M) son (44) found out a couple years ago that his wife had an affair and that their youngest (10 M) isn’t his biologically. He was 6 years old at the time. He has two other children, 17M and 13 F that are his biologically. Since then he and his ex wife have gotten a divorce, and he has partial custody over his two biological children, while his ex has full custody of the youngest.
The youngest was, needless to say, devastated when the man he knew as his father suddenly stopped showing him any kind of affection and said he wasn’t his father anymore. He still has a very anxious attachment style as far as I’ve observed, and he’s been in therapy for three years now. He has problems at school and I’m pretty sure he’s being bullied for it.
His oldest became distant with him after this. He was 13 at the time, and you can see pretty clearly that he’s less affectionate with his father than he used to be. After a while, he started asking me to help him with things that he would normally ask his father for, and he started coming over a lot more after school. Honestly I’m pretty sure he has dinner with grandma and grandpa more often than he does either of his parents.
10M still comes around to our house pretty often, too. Since the divorce I’ve noticed 13F pull away from her parents as well – a year or two after the divorce she asked my wife to take her shopping for a Christmas dress, for example.
It all came to a head in the past couple of weeks. First it was 17M’s graduation. My wife and I were invited, and he pretty much ignored his dad the whole time. Then apparently he posted a picture of me and him to the Instagram with a caption that says something like “couldn’t have done it all without the man who made me a man.” After that it was the fact that his boy scout troop does this canoeing trip over Father’s Day weekend, and he invited me to come instead of his dad.
My son complained to me that he barely has a relationship with his kids now, and he thinks I’m horning in on his role as their father. My wife reads all these psychology articles, and she says it’s because after he dropped 10M his other two didn’t trust him anymore and they “pre-abandoned” him. My daughter thinks I should probably let them sort it out amongst themselves and stop giving them another option so that they have no choice but to work things out. AITA?
They definitely pre-abandoned him, and good on them. If he’s the kind of father for whom six years of raising the child creates no core emotional attachment, he’s going to be terrible in other ways.