'My ex texted me 5 years ago to tell me she was pregnant. My wife deleted it.' UPDATED
"OP gets to know that he has a daughter and the reason he was unaware about it is because his wife deleted the message in which his ex informed him about the pregnancy."
It's been almost two weeks since I found out. We've did the tests and she's mine. My ex had sent me a message a couple weeks before giving birth telling me about everything. My then gf and present wife saw that my ex sent me a message and deleted it then blocked her, apparently without reading it. Ex took that as me not wanting to be involved and raised our daughter all alone. For five years.
My daughter is turning 5 in a month and I haven't even met her. Every time I think about how much I missed out on I lose it. I know I must focus on what I've gained instead of what I've lost but damn it's hard. It's taken me 2 hours just to write this. Don't even want to start on what my ex had to go through alone and the desperation to reach out to my mother for help when she hates her nearly more than me.
My wife says shes remorseful. That she was just very immature at the time and didn't think it could be that important, so much so she forgot about it. I've never loved anyone more than my wife. She's supported me through so much. I believe that she actually feels bad and regrets it. She's pregnant +-21 weeks pregnant with our first child together.
We're currently separated while I deal with everything but I don't know how we'll move forward after this.
Edit: To further elaborate I found out through my mother who was contacted by my ex about my daughter and how I ghosted her. I was talking to my wife about this and she confessed about deleting it and blocking it.
Here are some of the top comments and responses from OP:
"Why didn't she try to contact you again and reach out to you more than once?"
In all honesty I was a shit boyfriend to her especially towards the end so I can't blame her for not trying harder to contact me. That's on me. I do want to forgive her. As I said, I believe she was just being childish in the moment but damn that was some bad timing. I'm not entirely sure I can forget about this
"How did you find out? ('two weeks ago')"
My ex asked my mother for some cash for our daughter and then my mum chewed me out for being a deadbeat. Asked her what she was talking about about and she told me about my ex and how I blocked her. Mentioned it to my wife who admitted there was a time where she deleted a message from my ex and blocked her.
"Do you think if your wife went to your ex to explain herself and apologize in person things would get a little better? Your wife made a mistake and she needs to take responsibility and making reparations."
My wife offered to do that but my ex doesn't want to have much to do with her.
"INFO: Do you actually honest-to-God believe that your (hopefully soon to be ex) wife deleted it without reading it?"
There's obviously that little devil saying that she read it but I refuse to believe she knew about this and didn't tell me all this time.
Commenter Mangekyou- wrote:
i hate to be negative but id bet my entire paycheck your wife read the message and deleted it on purpose. Theres no way she saw a long message, saw it was from your ex, and then just deleted the entire thing and went on to block her without catching even a GLIMPSE of what the message may have contained.
She’s lying about not knowing. She knew. Maybe get some therapy, both individually and couples counseling
And Osito509 wrote:
Sorry, your only chance to get involved was one message weeks before the birth of your baby? This was a weird situation anyway.
He later shared this update on the situation:
Got some messages asking for updates and since my post got some attention I though I should publicly update. Long story short, I met with my ex last week just to properly explain myself and discuss the whole 'what nows'. It didn't end up being productive and mostly filled with awkward silence with a few miniature arguments.
Towards the end she said that she'd been talking to a lawyer and didn't want me to be involved and will be seeking full custody of our daughter with no visitation as well as suing me for back child support and getting me on child support. So that was fun. To be clear, I was always going to provide more than my fair share for any child of mine.
I really don't know how any of this works but I haven't received anything from the court or something so it could've just been a threat but she seemed serious. Regardless I decided to find myself a lawyer to help me instead of waiting around and eventually got linked with an old friend's brother whom I'm meeting tomorrow which is great.
My wife and I are trying to work things out. Due to the lawyer/court situation financially speaking, we couldn't get an actual therapist but my wife's pastor offered to provide marriage counseling for us. We only had two sessions before the family drama broke out and we temporarily put counselling on pause.
Basically the thing about my wife deleting the message leaked out to the rest of the family which has led my wife getting uncivil messages from a couple family members. My lovely older sister also decided to add to the fire by posting about this on her FB.
My wife has locked herself at home since and is taking everything quite badly since even her friends now know now and have distanced themselves from her. I'm actually quite worried about it but at least her mum is there with her and I try to check on her regularly. It's all just overwhelming. When I'm not thinking about my daughter, I'm thinking about my ex.
When I'm not thinking about my ex, I'm thinking about my family drama and when I'm not thinking about that I'm thinking about my marriage and the pregnancy. And there's still work so it's been a really terrible week. Finding it hard to maintain optimism and excitement for my daughter when all this has happened. Just a shit situation all round.
This ended up being more of a vent so sorry about that. I probably won't give another update in future unless there's good news so just thanks for the support.