When He Has A Kid He Didn’t Know About

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There is this unique terror—or perhaps gift—that men can fall victim to that women simply can’t: men can have kids that they don’t know about. Women really can’t do that, unless there is some major chapter of the biology textbook we skipped in my education. When a woman realizes she is pregnant with the child of a man with whom she is no longer involved (and perhaps with whom she doesn’t want to be involved) it’s a complicated situation. It’s not uncommon for women to just not tell the father, and decide to be single mothers. But if a woman does have a child on her own, she may still find that one day, she wants the dad back in the picture. Or, she may find that her child demands to meet his or her father. So, it’s no wonder that sometimes, men discover pretty late that they have kids they didn’t know about. Now what gets really complicated is when you’re with one of those men. It’s happened to a couple of my friends and it can go something like this.

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First, thinking he was lying

You can’t help but have that initial reaction of, “Did he know the whole time and just didn’t want to tell me? So he made up this elaborate lie of not even knowing about the kid himself, once he was ready to introduce me to him?” The whole thing is so shocking and hard to believe, that your brain goes into paranoia mode.