There are all kinds of adoptions nowadays – you can agree to never contact their new family, you can have an open adoption, or you can work out your own agreements and mix the two based on time, comfort level, and age.

That said, I would think that changing those agreements down the line could get tricky – a fact this woman is finding out several years into the future.

She got pregnant as the result of a one night stand and was set to have an abortion. He was against it, so they came to an agreement that she would carry the pregnancy and then give the child to its father.

She would not have any parental rights or responsibilities.

Long story short: in my (40f) twenties I had a one night stand with this guy “Nathan” (now 41m) and got pregnant.

I first thought of having an abortion, but Nathan had come from a conservative religious background (not Christian) and wanted the baby so we made a deal: I would give birth to the child and sign away my parental rights (my name is not even in her birth certificate, it’s a possibility in my country) and he would pay all the medical expenses plus some extra for my troubles.

That’s what we did and didn’t keep contact after his daughter was born.

Things have gone fine, but recently she saw a picture of the girl she gave birth to and reached out to her ex, wondering if she might be able to get to know her child, answer any questions she has, etc.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine who has the same religion as Nathan sent me a post from her temple’s youth group (they were asking for donations for the homeless) and one of the girls from the picture looked a lot like me. I searched for her profile and found out that she had Nathan’s surname and had the right age to be the baby I gave away.

She’s 17 now and seems to be doing fine: she is involved in charity work, apparently loves music and has lots of pictures with friends and family (Nathan, his wife and half-siblings).

I never wanted nor want to be a mother but I became curious to know more about this human I put in the world, so I texted Nathan’s old phone number, which he has not changed, and asked if he would allow me to meet his daughter, since I gave birth to her and everything, and made my intentions clear: I do not want to interfere with his family, just to know her.

He got very upset with her query, and even more so when OP pointed out that their daughter would be 18 soon and able to make her own call on the matter.

The child’s father has raised her with his wife and their children all of this time and doesn’t appreciate OP trying to hop in now that the kid is nearly grown.

He then wrote a long text which comes down to the fact that I am an asshole for wanting to know his daughter now after I “abandoned” her and that this meeting would only mess up with her head.

I told him I was telling him out of courtesy because soon the girl will be an adult and be able to choose herself if she wants to meet me. He then blocked me.

Is she wrong to want to get to know her a little? Should she have gone about it in a different way?

Am I being the a$$hole here? I don’t think there is any harm in meeting my “daughter”; she already has a great family and it would only be beneficial to her to know about her own history. But maybe I am not seeing the full picture.

Also sorry for any mistakes or weird phrases, English is not my first language.

Let’s hear what Reddit has to say!

The top comment says that they think OP is being selfish, and any attempt to connect should be the child’s choice.

And the follow-up concerned reminding OP they had no right to any opinions on anything that has happened in the child’s life so far.

They say to be super careful about dropping giant bombs on a vulnerable teenager.

This person says OP isn’t wrong for asking, but that she should have been prepared for a ‘no.’

Lots of people, like this commenter, had a few follow-up questions.

She updated us later with the info that she reached out to his wife and they worked out some miscommunications. OP decided to leave her contact info and allow the child to decide if and when she would like to get in touch.

So after reading your comments, I came to a better understanding of what my role is in this situation and decided to reach out to his wife through social media to try to make amends.

She was very understanding and explained to me that Nathan had a couple of tough years being a single dad before meeting her and me coming back like that made it seem (like some of you pointed out) that I wanted to skip the hard parts and become a parent out of nowhere, which was never my intention.

They told their daughter that her birth mother had to go back to her home country and couldn’t take care of her, which was kind. The wife is going to talk to Nathan to leave the door open if their daughter wants to meet me when she’s older and I gave her all my contact information for when and if the time comes.

I’ll admit I was being a bit selfish here, so that is the best ending I could hope for. Thank you again.

I suppose all’s well that ends well!