TLDR: wife a narcissist, 18 yo, son with whom I have a great relationship doesn’t resemble me but a colleague of wife, DNA test or not.

I’m going down a bit of a rabbit hole right now, and I’d really appreciate some perspective.

I’m in the middle of a very acrimonious divorce. My wife has turned truly horrible, cold, contemptuous, and discarding me without a shred of decency after years of marriage. She’s also making false allegations of domestic violence. That’s the backdrop.

We have three children. From the day my son was born, something sat uneasily with me. He didn’t have the features of my other two children. Different colouring. Different shape of forehead. Different shaped eyes. I also remember that my wife oddly decided to take him to a different doctor day one, not our usual family doctor who had looked after our other child at the time. I suspect she felt he might compare blood groups or something. She was also suspicious of how her best friend’s husband reacted when they visited her in hospital to see the newborn. I think she was worried about whether her bestie had told her husband. All subtle red flags in isolation but paint a picture.

Anyway I pushed that thought down because I loved him, and I raised him as my own. He’s now 18. We’re very close. He’s a great young man, he’s super company, an extrovert, my sister and parents love him dearly and oddly he’s seemed to align himself to me in this divorce recognising his mother’s odd ways.

But that nagging doubt has never fully gone away.

Recently, with everything happening in the divorce, those thoughts came roaring back. My wife has worked with a certain man for 30 years,he’s a charmer, a ladies’ man, as a friend told me he’d screw anything and doesn’t discriminate, young or old.

My wife and him travelled together for work (she’s cabin crew, he’s a pilot) and their paths crossed a lot. He’s also a handsome man. She’s also attractive, even looks like this man’s wife. I remember my MIL and my wife talking about this guy in front of me and I could see the glint in my MIL eye. A bizarre moment.

I went onto his Facebook and compared headshots: his, mine, and my son’s. Using an AI tool, the resemblance between him and my son came up far stronger than with me. Honestly, I can see the similarities myself, the chin, lips, eye shape, nose and hairline totally check out.

I’ve even gone as far as collecting some of my son’s toenail clippings. They’ve sat in an envelope in my office now for 3 months.

I’m at a crossroads now. Part of me wants to know. Part of me feels sick at the thought of blowing up everything with my son. And part of me, if I’m being brutally honest, feels my wife deserves a fall for how she’s treated me.

So I’m stuck. Do I test and finally know the truth? Or do I protect the bond I’ve built with my son for 18 years and let it lie?

Note. I won’t have to pay child support for my son because he’s planning to work full time when he leaves school.

Has anyone else here gone through this kind of situation? What did you do, and what happened next?