Adopted My Friend's Baby & Raised Her. Then She Asked Her Bio Dad to Walk Her Down the Aisle & I...

I adopted my friend's baby and raised her. Then she asked her biodad to walk her down the aisle, and I found out my wife was having an affair with him. My daughter knew about it.

Hi guys, so recently I found out that my wife had been cheating on me, and my adoptive daughter had known about it for the past couple of years. Both of them had betrayed me. My soon-to-be ex-wife, Taylor (57F), and I (58M) have been together for almost 30 years and married for 25, after having met in our college days.

We also adopted a daughter together a few years after our marriage, Emily (22F). Taylor and I had been trying to get pregnant for quite some time but were struggling with fertility issues. So when one of our common friends approached us to ask if we would be willing to adopt his kid, we agreed.

This friend, Jackson (58M), was someone we had met when we were in college, and back then, he was your typical trust fund frat boy. After graduation, we didn't exactly stay in touch, but we would occasionally meet on the birthdays of our other friends. Then one year, he reached out to us out of the blue and told us that he had heard from a couple of people that we had been struggling with infertility.

He said it was none of his business, but he thought he had the perfect solution to both our problems. He told me that he had accidentally gotten one of his girlfriends pregnant, and neither of them wanted to keep the baby. So naturally, they had thought about putting the baby up for adoption.

But after hearing about my wife and I wanting to have a baby of our own, he decided to reach out to us because that way, he wouldn't have to go through the trouble of contacting any agency and waiting and stuff at all. By then it had been slightly over a year that Taylor and I had been trying to get pregnant and hadn't had any luck. After discussing it with her, we decided to go ahead with the adoption because it was the best option for all of us.

Even before Emily was born, we had all the legal paperwork done, and after she was born, her biological parents would only remain in touch with us for a couple of months before starting to fade out of her life. It was an open adoption, and we had to reassure them that they were free to visit or contact Emily if they wanted to, but they only bothered to visit her for a couple of months after she was born and then they broke up. So they stopped coming over, and we were fine with it.

Emily's biological mother moved away and never reached out to us again, and we went back to having minimal contact with Jackson until Emily turned 3 years old. After that, even Jackson had no contact with us anymore. To be fair, after that, he didn't have any contact with anybody, and it was like he totally disappeared.

From what I had heard, his father had suffered some serious losses in business and had to sell their company, and a lot more, so even they had to relocate because they couldn't start afresh. For almost 13 years, we did not hear from Jackson, but he reached out to us a couple of weeks before Emily's 16th birthday—that was 6 years back. I remembered he had sent us an email telling us that he was finally back in town and was starting a new restaurant of his own and that he wanted to meet us and Emily.

I was a bit skeptical about it because, honestly, this guy had not been in touch with us for the past 13 years and now, all of a sudden, he wanted to reconnect with us and our daughter. It was a bit too sudden. He hadn't even told us what he had been up to in the past decade, just that he was back and wanted to meet us.

So I was unsure of whether we should give him a chance or not, but after speaking to Taylor, we decided to meet him without Emily first. When we met for the first time after all those years, he finally told us what he had been up to, and it was actually quite sad. Before his dad's company started failing, he had been a total brat, and I suppose most of you guys are aware of how stereotypical rich trust fund kids usually behave.

While the rest of us had started working after graduating from college, he was still not really serious about life and was living in easy mode, partying every weekend and hooking up with every other girl. He did have a position in his dad's company, but it was only a nominal one, and it was not like he actually had to do any work for it, so things were pretty simple for him. However, after they moved away, he had to start fresh and actually start taking things seriously, so he had to start applying for jobs.

Unfortunately, since neither his grades were any good nor did he have any experience in the real world, it was very difficult for him to find anything that he wanted to do. His parents were also struggling to cope with the loss of everything that they had known and would constantly be fighting with each other at home. It was with great difficulty that his family had managed to get one of their relatives to help them out and let them stay with him.

His father had started working under his uncle, continuing the legacy of their family business, which he had left earlier. His dad didn't like it. One bit, since he didn't like taking orders from anyone, which is why he hadn't joined the family business in the first place.

But he had to be thankful to his brother for allowing him a place in their home and business. So all the bitterness and frustration inside him, he would take it out on his wife and his son. Within a year, it became absolutely impossible for him to continue living with his family, and he decided to take a low-paying clerical job so he would have some money of his own and would be able to move out.

Unfortunately, moving out was not the upgrade that he thought it was because, with the money that he had, he could only afford to live in a tiny little apartment with a bunch of roommates. He just kept thinking about his life and how humiliating it was for him to be living like this right now, and that pushed him into depression. He tried to keep in touch with his family, but he was so bitter about everything that eventually he decided to go no contact with them.

Things just kept getting worse for him mentally, and after a few years, he started developing alcoholism, and eventually that led to drugs. During that time, he kept getting fired and jumped from one job to another, but made sure that he had enough money to pay for his addictions. At one point, he decided to skip paying rent and was evicted, so he ended up homeless.

But he still made sure that he had enough money for his other priorities. Thankfully, he was found by one of his uncle's neighbors, and they brought him back to his family, who helped him clean up his act. They had him sent to rehab and stuff, and he had been clean for 2 years by the time he finally came back here.

His uncle had put him in touch with a few investors, and he had some savings of his own as well, so he came back here with an intention to be better this time around. He wanted to start by setting things right with us because he thought that he had kind of abandoned us, even though he had put Emily up for adoption. He had promised that he would try to be part of her life, and now he wanted to at least be able to give himself a chance to live up to that promise that he'd made.

That's why he wanted us to let Emily meet him, and then that was another discussion altogether because I remember that Taylor was all for it, but I was still not on board with it because it would be too much of a shock for Emily. She knew that she was adopted, but I didn't want to push her into a weird situation by introducing her biological father into her life after she hadn't known him even in the slightest for all those years that he had been missing. So my wife and I decided that we were going to ask her, and only then would we go ahead with reintroducing Jackson into her life again.

When we spoke to Emily, I tried to keep things neutral, but Taylor decided to take a different approach and made it sound like Jackson had been through a lot of stuff and that now having him in her life would make it better. I thought it was a bit manipulative, but Taylor told me that she was only being honest with Emily and that she deserved to know everything about why her biological father had not been in her life for the past 13 years so she could make an informed decision. Anyway, eventually, Emily decided to meet him, and I still regret allowing that to happen because they did get along well.

For a couple of years, initially, things were going great, but then unfortunately, the pandemic happened, and he had to shut his restaurant down. It was incredibly sad because that restaurant was supposed to be his dad's way to get back on top since they had been throwing around the idea of running the restaurant together as partners, and with his father's business expertise, they would be able to get back to their former life once again and wouldn't have to rely on his uncle anymore. Even after the pandemic, he wasn't exactly able to get things back on track with his restaurant, and that's when he started hitting the bottles around 3 years ago.

Personally, I feel like he just stopped putting in effort because he had been quite depressed during the pandemic and had been struggling with money but refused to take any help from us. After the restrictions were lifted, it was like he had lost the will to do anything at all and just kept drinking all day. Whatever little money he made from the restaurant was enough to just keep him going and pay for his living expenses, but that was about it.

We tried to help him through it, but I don't think he was interested in getting any help; he just wanted to keep drinking. I started to think of him as a very deadbeat kind of person because even though he had friends willing to help him and the support of his family, it was like he had given up on himself. You can't do anything with people like that.

On top of that, it was even more annoying for me that Taylor and Emily constantly kept pitying him as if he was not someone who had given up. Anyway, I couldn't exactly say anything about it because Jackson was already going through so much, and I didn't want to be cruel. Taylor and Emily kept in touch with him, and occasionally Taylor would even help him out with money since in recent years it had.

. . It became very apparent that he was struggling, as he had to move to a really small apartment.

Emily also took care of him, and we visited him occasionally since he was never in a condition to come visit us. I thought we could do without these visits as well, since it was all quite stressing, but they thought that it would be quite heartless of us to do so. So, it was obvious that we had wildly differing opinions on the entire situation.

This was how it had been for the past couple of years. Then, recently, earlier this year, Emily got engaged to her high school sweetheart, and it brought all of us together. We were all equally excited for it, but things kind of went sour for me when, at the engagement party, Emily decided to publicly ask my wife and her biological father to walk her down the aisle.

Obviously, Taylor and Jackson were overjoyed, but most people just noticed me being completely thrown off by this decision, since I had been totally blindsided. I knew that she had a soft spot for Jackson because he had been through a lot in his life, but ultimately, I was her father. I was the person who had actually raised her, and I had assumed that I would be the one to walk her down the aisle.

It had always been a dream of mine, so when she did not ask me, I was quite shocked. Later on, she explained to me that the only reason she had asked Jackson and not me was because she felt like it would do a lot of good for him and probably keep him off the drinks. Around that time, I was not happy with this decision at all, but it was her wedding and her choice, so I had to accept it without a fuss.

She also told me that no matter who she asked to walk her down the aisle, my real father was always going to be me, so it didn't matter. But the thing is, it did matter, and it kept eating away at me for the past couple of months because I just kept trying to figure out what I had done wrong. Then, I coincidentally found out about it a couple of days ago when I had come back home early from a business trip to surprise Taylor.

I was supposed to be gone for three days, but I came back home on the evening of the second day and made sure that I was as silent as possible with the house keys and stuff. I tiptoed to Taylor's room to surprise her, but then I heard Emily's voice in the room, and they were talking about me. So, I couldn't help but eavesdrop on them, and I'm very glad that I did because otherwise, I don't think I would have ever been able to figure out what exactly had been going on, and by the time that I did, it would have been too late.

They were talking about the wedding, obviously, and Taylor was telling Emily that she was glad that she had made the right choice by choosing her real family to walk her down the aisle and was congratulating her. I was very confused as to what that comment meant, but then I figured it out soon enough since the rest of the conversation was just Emily telling her mother that she wasn't happy about lying to me for the past three years, but they had put her in a very difficult position, and that's why she had to do this. I eavesdropped on their conversation for about ten minutes and was able to figure out that Taylor had been cheating on me with Jackson for the past four years, and for the past three years, Emily had known about it after she had caught them together at some point.

But the two of them had teamed up, and in order to prevent Emily from telling me, they had been bribing her with the promise of funding her business, no questions asked. I had always promised Emily that I would pay for her college education and her wedding, but after that, she was on her own, since her mother and I also needed to save for our retirement. We would definitely invest at some point, but she had to get her business started on her own; that was the deal.

Taylor knew about it and was on board with it, so the plan was that Emily would work for other companies to gain experience, and once she had enough capital and a business model, she would start approaching investors and get started with her business. She had always wanted to do something related to fashion, so that was the way she was going. In the past couple of months, she had mentioned several times that she planned on starting her business after her honeymoon.

I was kind of worried about where she was going to get that kind of money from because she had only been working for one year, and I didn't think it was long enough to have either experience or money. But after overhearing the conversation, I figured that it was probably Taylor who was going to help her out in the future. From what I know, after the honeymoon, Taylor is going to invest in the business that Emily is starting off on, and that's what they had been discussing for the most part.

I still have no idea what part Jackson has to play in all of this because, from what I know, he's a deadbeat guy and does not have any money of his own. I guess the fact that he is like that is pathetic enough for Emily to keep their secret. But after I overheard the conversation, I was devastated, and I just.

. . I tiptoed back out of the house and into my car so I could drive away.

I was a mess after that because I had no idea how to deal with this or even process any of it. I just kept driving for a while until I got to a hotel. Once I was there, I did something very impulsive: I started calling up all the wedding vendors whom I was supposed to pay.

The wedding is three months away, and I had to start securing the deposits for the decor, florists, and a couple of other vendors. The groom's family and I were splitting the cost of the venue and catering, and according to the contract, we couldn't get that money back. But before I made any other payments, I decided to cancel their deals altogether because I was pulling out all the finances from the wedding.

It was quite obvious that Taylor had been promising to fund Emily's dreams; she could fund this one as well. After speaking to the vendors and telling them that they need not contact me for the money because I was out, I decided to put up a post because I felt like this was something that everybody needed to know. I typed out a really long post with the details of everything that I had just found out and spoke about how betrayed I had been feeling—not just by my wife and my daughter, but also by Jackson, who I had thought of as a friend.

All three of them had broken my heart, especially Taylor and, most of all, Emily. Now, I didn't want anything to do with them anymore because it was very obvious to me that this was never my family. The real family was Taylor, Jackson, and Emily.

It didn't matter that I had raised her; her loyalties were elsewhere. I ended up breaking down while posting it, and because I knew that the post would create quite a stir on social media, I decided to immediately put my phone on silent and try to just go to sleep so I wouldn't have to think about any of this. Unfortunately, when I woke up in the middle of the night, it wasn't like waking up from a nightmare because it was all still very much real and was actually happening to me.

When I checked my phone after I woke up—almost three hours after I posted—I saw that several people from the family had commented on the post and told me to be strong, and I really appreciated that. I also noticed that Taylor and Emily had been calling me non-stop after the post, messaging me to call them back, and that they were really sorry that I had to find out this way. They wanted me to just come back to them and speak to them so they would be able to explain themselves because they felt like they owed it to me.

And they did, but I was in no mood to speak to them or interact with them in any way whatsoever, so they could keep blowing up my phone; I wasn't going to respond. After I had checked my phone, I realized that I hadn't received any word from Jackson—probably because he had nothing to say, and that was fair enough because we were just friends. He didn't owe me anything as much as my family did.

But then things got worse the next day when I woke up around noon and noticed that Taylor had stopped calling me, but Emily was still trying to get in touch with me. She wasn't apologizing or telling me to come back home in her messages anymore; she was telling me that I had ruined everything for her. I didn't understand what that meant until she sent me a message saying that her fiancé had decided to call off the wedding after confronting her about the post since he had read it and realized that Emily had been covering up for her mother's affair for the past three years just so she could fund her business in the future.

He thought that it was greedy and unethical, and he was disgusted by her, which I don't really blame him for. On top of that, it had been made worse by the fact that she had even chosen Jackson and her mother to walk her down the aisle on the day of her wedding, and now he finally understood why since she wanted her mother and couldn't care less about me. Even though Jackson hadn't been the one to raise her, I had.

I had mentioned it earlier; her fiancé was her high school sweetheart and had known our family for a really long time, so he had also known me for a really long time. He was perhaps one of the only people who genuinely knew how hurt I was when Emily picked Jackson to walk her down the aisle instead of me and had actually comforted me. It wasn't surprising that he had taken such a strong stand for my sake and called off the wedding altogether, and I was actually quite grateful for it.

I thought that it was karma. She could keep blowing up my phone, but it was not going to change what had happened, so I decided to ignore it. Since that day, my phone has been flooded with messages from everyone that I know.

Most people have sent supportive messages, and some of them have told me that there was no need for me to talk about all of this on a public platform because it's still my wife and daughter that I'm talking about, and they're going to be at the receiving end of all the heat. These people were mostly from my in-law's family. I had made that post almost three days ago, and.

. . Emily stopped texting me and trying to reach out to me on the second day.

I had been feeling quite good about what I had done until a couple of hours ago when I received a message from Emily saying that she was really sorry about everything, but most of all she was sorry about the fact that she had a screwed-up family like this because we had ruined everything for her. Her fiancé had apparently left home after confronting her about the post and blocked her everywhere, so now there was no wedding happening, and she was completely on her own. I felt kind of bad for her because I knew that she really loved her fiancé.

They had been together for a very long time, and now it was all gone. I guess she understood what I was feeling right now, and I know it can't be good. So, Iddid for posting about how my wife had been having an affair and my daughter had been covering it up.

Update 1: Hey, thank you so much for the support. Yes, I have spoken to a lawyer, and he is in the process of filing for divorce on my behalf right now. It has been a really tough six days since I discovered what had been happening in my family, and I'm still trying to process all of it.

I'm staying in the hotel; I haven't even gone back to get any extra clothes. It's just not worth it. My parents are also now aware of what had been happening in the family behind my back, and they have also completely cut off Taylor and Emily, even though it was particularly hard for them to cut Emily off since she's their granddaughter, but it had to be done, and it's done now.

Also, a lot of you have been asking why exactly I had refused to fund Emily's business in the future, but Taylor agreed, and well, I had refused because I thought that Emily needed to learn to be independent. Also, I believe that Taylor and I needed to keep money aside for our retirement as well. But I guess she was desperate to keep the secret of her affair, which is why she had offered to fund the business, and she probably knew that she would be taken care of after she retired either by me, since we had a similar kind of income and I was pretty good at saving money, or by whatever her parents left her.

Worst-case scenario, she would just spend the rest of her life with Jackson. Either way, whatever her reasons were, it was enough for Emily to betray me for some money, and that's what really matters. After she sent that message, I haven't replied to her, and I don't plan on responding to any of them either.

They haven't earned it, and I think it's for the best if I stay away from them right now—for them and for me as well. Soon enough, Taylor will be served with the divorce papers, and hopefully, we will be able to put an end to this because all I really want to do right now is just move on from this nightmare. Update 2: I finally heard back from Taylor after almost ten days since I discovered the affair and made that post.

A couple of days ago, she was served with the divorce papers, and today she reached out to me. I had blocked my entire family, so she had to create a new email account and send me an email apologizing for everything. She told me that after hearing about how much Jackson had been through, she had developed a bit of a soft spot for him, and before she even knew it, she had started to catch feelings for him.

Apparently, she had wanted to tell me about it, but she didn't know how to go about it, and then Emily found out, so she had to bribe her to keep quiet, and things just kept getting messier. She told me that she was really sorry that she had created such a mess, and so was Jackson. The only thing that she could do for me at this point was make sure that the divorce was a smooth process, so whatever my terms were, she was not going to contest it and would just accept whatever I decided.

I guess that's good enough for me because fighting with her is not going to fix our marriage. I'm still really angry about all of this, but I can't do anything anymore except just accept whatever is happening and try to make the best of the situation. I haven't heard back from Emily yet, but from what I know, she and her fiancé have officially broken up because they put out an official statement on social media saying that the wedding had been called off and they had decided to separate.

They didn't state any reasons, but anyone with two brain cells will be able to put it together. It's really sad, but it cannot be helped. Now, all that's left to do is finalize my divorce, and I'll be done with this family for good.

Update 3: Hi, so it's been six months since I filed for divorce, and three weeks ago it came through. I got to keep the house and both our cars, and honestly, those were my only two demands: no alimony and no settlement for Taylor. The only money she received was whatever she had been contributing to our joint savings, and that was it.

We shut down that account and ended our marriage. There has been very minimal interaction ever since we filed for divorce, mostly through our lawyers, and now even that has come to an end. I'm actually relieved since now I can finally try and move on in a real way.

I've heard. . .

From a couple of people, I’ve heard that she has moved in with Jackson, and they have sold the restaurant, so I guess they're planning on going back to Jackson's family. Good for them! I think it'll be for the best if they leave.

Emily and I have also not been in touch for the past couple of months, ever since her wedding got canceled. She did reach out to send me an apology through email two months ago, telling me that she was going to try and be better. Surprisingly, Taylor actually lived up to the promise she made to finance Emily's business.

Now that she has money, she is going to start working on a business model and told me that I did not have to forgive her, but nevertheless, she was still going to try and be a better person. I wish her all the best; I really do.