In love with a married man...

is what it feels like with my relationship with my birth father. I have to hide it from family and friends, when I do mention it, I am met with shock or preachy sermons of "If I were in your place, I wouldnt do it". Really! With everything that is going on in this world, with earthquakes shattering the lives of thousands and kids killing other kids and what not, does a daughter reaching out to her birth father still figure on the top ten list of awful things to happen?

My parents were supportive initially and then freaked out big time with the prospect of my birth mother exploding when she finds out about this. I am frankly tired of having to be careful and think about her feelings. Her divorce was 34 years ago, when will she stop carrying that baggage around!

The whole situation is just a complex mess. My mother loves me and thinks of me as her daughter but the sister in her wants to protect and appease, so she pushes me in the direction of my birth mother and expects me to share the same "mother daughter" relationship with her. My birth mother is forever wronged and all her life everyone have only thought of ways to hurt her, of course, I am also included. So she looks at me with extreme sorrow on how sad it is that her first born wont bond with her. And me? I am rapidly approaching the point of massive irritation. I hope to God that in my next life, I am born to parents who love each other and who will stay with each other and I have a boring normal childhood.

And my birth father, I get along amazingly well with this man. We share an amazing rapport and he has been so frank with his answers without worrying about whether I will misunderstand and stop loving him. We agreed that I should call him Dad and he tells me he loves me in every email. I got way more than what I had expected when I first reached out to him.

Now once again I am at crossroads, because my parents were so worried, I asked Dad if he had also talked to his family and that I wanted to make sure that we were on the same page in terms of emotional investment and expectations from each other. Bottom line is that he says that lets not hurt our families who have stood with us for so many years, lets give them time to come around, lets be patient and wait and watch and one day we can go beyond our emails and meet and talk.

I cried when I read his email, however it is reality and I have to accept it, just wish it weren't so hard. So now I just need to trust his love and hope that he doesnt lose interest in me and keeps in touch and we can strenghten our bond over the years. I really have no hope for his family coming around, they have no incentive to do so, it would be so easy to shrug and go on with their lives. Why would they go out of their way to accomodate and accept me in their lives?

Well I tried and I have one less regret in my life - I reached out to my Dad and we got an opportunity to get closer - albeit on emails. I can keep in touch with him and lets see what the future holds for us. And maybe one day I can actually meet him in person and hug him.

In the meanwhile, I need to figure out how to make my heart feel light again...I smile outwardly and inwardly its weighed down with sad thoughts :(