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On The Outside Looking In Adoption Search - Page 3

Part 3: Eve's Story

by Eve Tregaskes
Reprinted with permission


Photo is the personal property of Eve Tregaskes, used with permission

More of this Feature • Part 1: Forgotten • Part 2: How to Participate • Part 3: Eve's Story

Related Resources • Adoption Research • Hearts on the Line • Post-Adoption Counseling • Search & Reunion

Elsewhere on the Web • Adoption Search (UK) • Birth Grandparents Mail List • BmomHusbands Mail List • The Forgotten People at MSN

So what are my feelings and thoughts being married to an adoptee?

Nic and I have known each other for nearly 30 years now and I knew very early that he was adopted. It was something he had grown up knowing - his adoptive parents had told him as early as they thought necessary, and it made no difference to me.

We have enjoyed a normal family life, but Nic was always talking about his adoption. He never made any attempt to find his bFamily, saying he didn't want to upset his aMum and Dad. He knew he had older brothers and sisters and that he was his bMum's seventh child.

As a family unit we were quite independent, as I only had one sister and she was unmarried, so I never knew brothers or sisters-in-law, and our two sons never knew they had cousins and Aunts and Uncles. This was our pattern of life which we grew to accept and build our ways around it. We were a family in our own right as far as I was concerned. Besides, I knew families weren't all a 'bed of roses' and many difficulties could develop.

So, about six years ago and just after Nic's aMum died, he decided to look for his bFamily and gradually, over about two years, he researched and found them. About this time his aDad became ill and Nic was able to access his adoption papers. I was totally pleased for him and involved in all he was doing. It was like finding gold dust to see what had gone on and trying to read between the lines. Then we reached the stage of being able to contact his eldest brother (which was done through NORCAP) and they received an immediate response -'Yes he is my brother, here is our phone number' - Wonderful. Lots of phone calls took place between them, and Nic and I were over the moon. When they arranged to meet, I decided not to go. I felt I had had a family life of my own and he should have that first contact without me - a time together. Right or wrong this is how I felt.

Eventually we met all the families. It was so difficult to remember every word and totally overwhelming to try and catch up with over 50 years of family life, but we managed it!! We were so delighted to meet them all and there was an instant bond between us. I felt good that I could say 'my brother-in-law' or 'my sister-in-law'. We had many get-togethers and they made a big fuss of us all. Nic was over the moon - always talking to one or the other on the phone - saddened a little at the time by my being very ill with breast cancer, but the contact with them all went on and I was delighted for Nic, but still kept trying to say family life wasn't like that all the time. I don't think he really understood. He slowly came the realisation that all of them were slipping back into their own 'family units', most of the time having no contact with one another - let alone a long lost brother. The exceptions were, and still are, a younger brother - who idolises Nic - someone good to look up to, and luckily our two families get on famously. We are in regular contact with them and an older sister who is still helping with the search for Nic's bdad.

My feelings are of helplessness. He was not able to meet his bMum as she had died 7 years earlier, and now his new found family were not keeping in touch anymore. I cannot take this pain away from him. I just wish our two sons and I would be enough, but have to accept that he will always have a gap in his life and that makes me sad.

I knew, after the initial stages of contact, that it would all settle down but Nic still gets very upset that he does not hear from most of them now. At first we would tell each other what we had discussed with each of them to keep building up this lost 50 years, but after a while he wouldn't tell me a lot and I began to feel like an outsider. It became hard to talk to him without my feeling he wasn't interested, and noticed also he very rarely had a conversation with our two sons. Because of this perhaps my attitude changed around this time, not wanting to meet up with them anymore because it seemed to have changed our family life. Also Nic stopped getting in touch with most of them and they never got in touch with him. For whatever reasons - it hurt - both of us.

We have only discussed all this recently and I have tried to be his family, kept things to myself - not wanting to add to his problems, but we have to discuss all these feelings, get them out in the open. We are the forgotten people who stand by our adopted partners, supporting them, not wanting to add to their distress in any way but with our own feelings and anxieties and no-one to support us.

Eve

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