My bio father... I had zero contact with him growing up. He did not send letters to the agency and I never sent anything for him. I knew his first name, that he has blue eyes, and that he's not very tall. I asked my bio mother about him once we met, and she told me that he's married and has 2 kids. She kept in touch with his parents, and rarely saw or spoke to him. They grew up in a really, really small town. She went to college and never looked back; he stayed, got married to a local girl and is still there. Apparently his wife refused to acknowledge my existence, so he never pursued any contact with me. A few weeks after I meet my bio mother, I'm spending the weekend with her and we have a really in-depth discussion about him. She calls his parents and I get to speak with them. They seemed nice and we had a brief chat. They ask for my phone number and email address, which I give. Fast forward a few weeks. Bio father calls my bio mother and asks about me. His parents had told him they talked to me and passed along my info. He told bio mother that he wanted to call me, and planned to soon. OK, cool. A couple of weeks go by. I go to Disney with bio mother's family. She gets a phone call one morning, which she later tells me was from him. His wife has forbidden him from having any contact with either her or me. She wanted to forbid his parents from speaking with me, but they told her that their relationship with their granddaughter was none of her business. He tells her that he still wants to call me sometime. MONTHS go by. Summer ends. I go off to college. Never hear a peep from him. Not a call. Not an email. My mom and bio mother come to visit me for parents' weekend about a month into school (which happened to be my birthday), then I go home for the first time the following weekend. I tell my mom that I'm tired of waiting to hear from him, and that I am done. He had 19 years (I had turned 19 the previous weekend) to establish any kind of contact with me, and it was rude of him to get my hopes up by saying he would call, then never calling. So I was DONE. My mom and I go to the movies with one of my high school friends and her mom that night, so my cell phone is turned off. I don't turn it right back on because I was driving. I get home, turn it on, and throw it down on my bed while go get some food in the kitchen. My brother walks in a few minutes later with my open cell phone (yes, it was a flip phone) and says I have a phone call. With my mouth full of pizza, I answer. There's a pause and then "Hi, this is [bio father]." My response "ummmmmm, can you hold on?" I run to my bedroom and we have a very awkward conversation. My mom comes in (she's curious and nosy) to listen. I tell him that I'm home with my family and that I'll be driving back to college the next day. We agree that he will call back the next evening when I'm back at school so I have some time to think of questions and stuff. We decide not to tell my dad because he's an old grump and won't want to know that I've had any contact with bio father.

I go back to school and bio father calls like we had discussed. Because I got crap service in my dorm, I end up spending the hour or two that we spoke pacing back and forth across the parking lot. We had a nice conversation. He explains that his wife does not like to think about his life before her. So to her, it's like I don't exist. He says that he wants to get to know me, but that his wife can't find out. It's weird, but I want to get to know him, so I agree. We start talking and emailing back and forth. I never call him, he always calls me. We have really wonderful conversations. A few months later, my college football team is playing a team near where he lives, so bio mother and I decide to go to the game and stay with her mother, and also to meet bio father's parents while we're in town. He and I make arrangements to meet secretly in the middle of the night while I'm there. He works in law enforcement and worked a late shift. We go to the game, drive the extra hour to their hometown, meet the paternal grandparents, then bio mother takes me to meet him. We end up meeting at his office because there's pretty much no one still in the building in the middle of the night. We get along really well. He's much more sensitive and emotional than my bio mother. Whereas I get my unemotional nature from her, I get my overthinking from him. We talked for hours. So long that my bio mother called, told me she was going to sleep, and that the front door would be unlocked for me to let myself in. We drive around for a while and talk. He finally drops me off and I go to bed. The next day, he calls and says he wants to meet before I have to catch my flight back to school. My bio mother and I go to meet him, take some pictures, and then head to the airport. He and I keep in touch for the next several months. He even stops and sees me a few times on work trips that take him through my town. All of this time, he has not told his wife that he has any contact with me.

Then, apparently, one day, she found an email he had sent me and lost her shit. I get a call from his secretary telling me that he will be sending me an email soon and I need to be very careful how I respond. Ok. He finally calls me about 3 days later and told me that she basically kicked him out for a few days until he promised to never contact me again. She told him that it was their kids or me. Obviously, he chose their children. They were really young at that point. He tells me that he has to send an email that she has written and that I should respond as though we don't know each other. A few days later, I get the email, and it was awful. It wasn't so much what it said, but how it was said. I spend hours in my friend's dorm room crying my eyes out. My friends and I sat around and discussed the situation for hours and decided I shouldn't respond for at least a week. Let the wife stew for a while and see how it feels when her orders weren't obeyed immediately. I finally go down to visit bio mother and she helps me craft my reply. I can't remember all of the details now, I remember that we were very pleased with the reply. It was painfully polite. I was very clear that I had an extremely awesome life and wasn't looking to join her family as another child. Bio father called (secretly) a few days later and said that she was not pleased with my email reply. First, she had expected an immediate response and was pissed that I took over a week to reply. I can't remember all of the other reasons she was mad, but I think it had mostly to do with me existing. As far as she was concerned, he had provided me with pertinent medical information and I should kindly go the hell away.

He disobeyed her and kept in touch with me for about 2 more years. He even background checked my boyfriend at one point. He so badly wanted to be a part of my life, and I really wanted him to be in it. We got along so well. I'm not close to my dad (I love him, but we're just not close), and it was so nice to have a father figure in my life. We had so many personality traits in common. We could talk for hours and hours and never run out of things to say. He even met my mom once when he was attending a conference near my hometown. She thought he was so sweet, and he really loved her. Then, the summer before my senior year of college, he disappeared. Our contact hadn't been regular, but he completely stopped contacting me. I have no idea what happened. He was just gone from my life and I have never heard from him again. His parents even pretty much cut off contact with me after his wife threatened to stop letting them see their grandchildren. His mother passed away my first semester of grad school, and bio mother came over to tell me (we lived in the same city for a few years while I got my masters). She asked if I wanted to go to the funeral, and I knew I wasn't welcome. The funeral was about his mother, and if I had been there, it would have been about me. So I sent a card and flowers. Never heard anything from anyone and don't even know if they were received.

That was about 10 years ago. Haven't heard a thing from him. I did randomly see him about 4 years ago. I was driving back from a ski trip with my bio mother and we were in their little hometown to pick up her mother and take her to visit other family. I was driving her car around town randomly while we waited for my grandmother to get home from the store. We drove by him sitting in his patrol car. I turned into the parking lot and rolled down the window. Kind of awkwardly waved. He waved back, then drove off. His sister added me as a Facebook friend a few years ago and I accepted. I've never met her, but she seems nice enough. I see things with him pop up in her photos every once in a while. But no contact from him. His kids are older now, one is in college, the other in high school. No idea if they know about me. They know several of my cousins on my bio mother's side, so I figure someone will eventually tell them. I've even met some of the cousins on his side, so I'm not a secret to anyone other than his children. I've worked through a lot of my feelings about this over the years. I'm actually a therapist, so I think I've spent more time working through my own feelings than I would have if I had chosen another educational path. I'm mostly at peace with things now, but I do still miss the relationship that I think we could have had. I have great parents who love me very much, so I don't need him in my life. But I want him in my life, and I thought he wanted me in his. I think his failure to stand up for me is what hurts the most. From what I can tell, he's a very good father for his children, and I'm really happy for that. They deserve to have a great father, and I truly hope he is that for them.

TL;DR about bio father: We met, his wife threatened to take their children from him if he ever contacted me, we don't talk anymore.