Fertile boyfriend tries to elude DNA proof

Dear Amy: I have been with my live-in boyfriend, “Gene,” for over three years.

He has two children, and I have three.

The issue I’m wrestling with is that he recently found out that he has a 5-year-old child.

When we met, he told me he had already established that the child wasn’t his, via his mom taking a DNA test, which showed that this baby had no DNA connection to his family.

Well, surprise ... the child IS his.

Now I feel betrayed and duped.

I wouldn’t have been with him had I known about this third child (by three different women).

I am in love with him, and the best way I can describe this emotion is to say that to me, it’s the equivalent to being cheated on.

He doesn’t understand why I have such strong feelings about this situation.

He said I am supposed to support him.

I’m not sure how I can do that when I feel secondrate to three women who have his children, and yet I don’t have a child with him. He has told me he has no desire for marriage.

So I am supposed to be his girlfriend for the rest of my life, while these women have a solidified place in his life and a bigger connection to him than I am going to have?

I don’t want to end things with him, but how can I help these feelings I have and find a way to accept this and move on?

— So Many Feelings

Dear So Many Feelings: I urge you to re-examine your choices — and for now to only do so from the vantage point of what would benefit you and your children.

In the short term, your reaction to this situation is to want what these other women have: A baby with “Gene.”

From my perspective, if you did have a baby with him, you’d be joining a fairly crowded club of various women who give birth to Gene’s babies.

I hope you double up on birth control, because this man is extremely fertile and also someone who has to be dragged into fatherhood.

He either outright lied to you when you first met, or is too dim to understand that DNA does not lie.

Furthermore, he responds to your shock about this third child by insisting that your role is to support him.

Well, his role is to support you, too (and, by the way, all of his children).

People are somewhat predictable. Gene has established a pattern of overall selfishness.

Well-matched partners grasp hands and ride life’s roller coaster together. If you don’t feel that you two are able to do that, then you should carefully reconsider staying with him, long term.

You say you want to stay with him. If you do stay, you should accept that you might be riding this roller coaster alone.

Contact Amy Dickinson via email, askamy@ amydickinson.com.