I was born from an extramarital affair. This is how my life has played out

I know very few details about my dad. I know his name (the one intentionally left off my birth certificate), the school he attended, and how he and my mother met. I know they were in a seven-year-long relationship, and that for as long as my mother knew him he was – and, as far as I am aware, still is – married to another woman. And I know that with this wife he shares a son who is just one week younger than me.

For my dad, keeping me a secret might be necessary to hide his betrayal. But I no longer wish to be a secret.

Two pieces of information I know about my father are the only ones he ever shared with me personally, seven years ago. The first was his brief medical history, and the second was a warning: that if I ever shared my existence with his wife or son, he would never speak to me again.

Nearly 15 years before I was given this warning, my father had abruptly and without notice stopped calling our home phone or sending my mother and me holiday and birthday cards, as he had done every year up to that point. I had just turned 18 and it was as if he had vanished into thin air or, from my mum’s perspective, died – a presumption that, at the time, I was ambivalent about.

For years I had held resentment about a man who proclaimed himself to be my dad, or at least my “pal” – the term he used when referring to himself on my birthday cards – yet whose actions showed the opposite. Intentionally pursuing him was something I’d never envisaged doing.

But in 2017, by now in my 30s and the mother of two children, the bubbling curiosity I’d always kept under the surface, and the multitude of questions I knew only my father could provide the answers to, set a fire within me I couldn’t ignore.

Perhaps it was becoming a parent myself that prompted a search I had always maintained I didn’t want, or need, to do. Perhaps I wanted to know more than the basic information about the man (I didn’t even have a photo). Perhaps it was the realisation that life is short and that if I waited much longer it might be too late.

Perhaps I wanted to know why he had chosen to have only one-sided, heavily restricted contact with us, only to then decide that he no longer owed us even that. Perhaps it was a desperate hope for an apology, for an opportunity for reconciliation.

Perhaps it was that I wanted to know my father, to meet him and understand who he was, to learn about him, hear his story, see how his facial expressions changed as he spoke, touch his skin, to feel his embrace and feel his love, affection and respect.

Like any true-crime sleuth, I began my own online investigation into what had happened to my father and whether he was still alive. But being a man with big secrets, he’d left no footprint behind, not even a White Pages entry.

My half-brother, though, was a different story. So, using an alias and an associated email address, plus a white lie regarding a man my father once went to school with, I reached out. Within days, I received a reply. It was the first contact I’d had in nearly 15 years with my father – a man my mum had presumed was dead.

What followed was a series of about 20 emails between my father and me. It began with him expressing his “shock” at hearing from me. He asked for time to “get his head around it”, along with a request not to share my existence with his wife or son.

When I requested that we meet, or talk over the phone, I was told no – it could risk his wife and son finding out.

SHONA HENDLEY

After asking questions raised by his medical history, something I’d requested for both my own and my children’s benefit, he responded with what he deemed relevant information. Then, following some pleasantries about our lives, the tone changed. He turned cold and evasive, saying that my presence, even if only via his computer, made his “blood pressure rise”.

When I requested that we meet, or talk over the phone, I was told no – it could risk his wife and son finding out. That, he said, was a reality he couldn’t fathom, something he would never be forgiven for. Finally, I was warned that if I exposed his lie, his betrayal, his secret, it would be the end of any relationship we would ever have.

Those are the last words I ever heard from him. Seven years on, and with the fake email account now deleted, in many ways I have come full circle, but with the added heartbreak of absolute rejection.

For my dad, keeping me a secret might be necessary to hide his betrayal. But I no longer wish to be a secret. Because I never chose to be a secret in the first place. I have hated being a secret. It has adversely impacted my relationship with others, fuelled my insecurities and generated questions about everything that I am. I have been left in the dark about many aspects of my identity and feeling undeserving of anything positive in my life. This feeling of not being loved, not being good enough, has flourished.

Being born from an extramarital affair is a uniquely isolating and lonely experience, one that generates flippant, even harsh criticism and judgment from others. Often it’s my mum who receives the worst comments – something I find ironic and disgustingly unfair.

Hearing these judgments isn’t easy. But for some reason, when you’re in this position, one that you’d never willingly sign up for, you are fair game for everyone’s two cents’ worth on the topic. There is no consideration of how being born a secret, growing up one and remaining one could affect a person. How it might cause distrust and feelings of inadequacy, of being unsure of who you are.

Instead, your role, your identity, is somehow viewed as just an inevitable part of the process, something you must accept. How can that possibly be fair? How can it be okay?

Next year, I turn 40. With that age comes a lot of knowledge, experience and learning, much of which has been the result of hard work, healing and accepting the things I can’t change or control. While there is still a long way to go, I have arrived at a critical point: the point of realisation that while my father might always want me to be a secret, the truth is that I am not.

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