'AITA for publicly revealing who my bio parents are on their church's Facebook account?' UPDATED
"AITA for publicly revealing who my biological parents are on Facebook and kind of messing things up for them?"
I was given up for adoption when I was a baby by my parents who were 19 years old. Due to reasons, I was taken from my adoptive parents and put in foster care when I was 11 and remained in the system until I went to college.
When I turned 18, I was given my mother's contact information by someone. I found out she was married to my biological father. They had public profiles on Facebook and Instagram. I ended up messaging my mother who never responded.
I then tried to message my father who basically replied saying that he's sorry but they would rather not have me in their lives. That it took them a while to grieve over giving me up and that they don't want to go through all that pain again. Well at this point I got pretty pissed because I think it's kind of sh!tty they think they can prevent me from knowing the rest of my family.
I ended up messaging my grandmother (my mother's mom) who was actually happy to know me. I met her in person and we really bonded. I also have two younger siblings but I didn't contact them after what my father said. Well four months ago, I saw my father post of a picture of them at some Church event and say "my beautiful wife and our two amazing kids".
This was on their church Facebook page. This was probably wrong but I replied with a comment saying "Don't you mean three kids?" I didn't really expect the amount of people responding to that as I did. There were a bunch of people my parents knew that started asking questions. I freaked out and deleted my comment.
Then I started getting dms from people, including people I was related to. Later that day, my grandmother made a post confirming I was a child given up for adoption. So now, I started making connections with some extended family and have been to a few family parties. My parents have been told they aren't invited unless they accept me which they haven't.
The whole drama has kind of messed with their lives and business. My parents are now apparently separated. I don't really accept that as my fault. AITA for doing what I did?
What do you think? AITA? This is what top commenters had to say:
abstractnerddreams said:
Yes. YTA. You intentionally disrespected their wishes. I get it, it sucks. I was put up for adoption myself and even went through a failed adoption too.
But that doesn’t mean you get a pass on shitting on their wishes like that. That was pretty much the worst way you could have gone about things. You could have quietly started reaching out to people who seemed related to them through private messages.
It isn’t your fault that they seem to have separated. But it is a total asshole move what you did. YTA because of how you went about things not because you wanted to know your family.
TooManyAnts said:
NTA. This sub is normally all about giving people the information they need to make informed choices, and now here you are being judged the asshole for daring to exist publicly against the wishes of people who wish you didn't.
"Forcing yourself to meet your bio family after being told to keep your distance?" Who do they think they are to demand that? "You can't force anyone else to like you?" Well it seems like the rest of the family actually wants to meet you and include you in the family! They're not props, they're also people who want OP in their lives!
My advice for you OP is to discard what Internet Strangers have to say, and look at what the actual people in your life have to say. Your grandmother stands behind you. Your now-larger family who are including you and happy to meet you, they matter.
They believe your bio parents are the assholes, not you, and you should care a lot more about what they think than Redditors who lambast you for straying from your lane.
Am_0116 said:
YTA. I can’t imagine how difficult this is for you but at the same time, they don’t want you in their lives and if you do want them to recognise you, disrupting their lives is the worse way to do it. You have no right to disrupt their lives for what you want. They made an extremely difficult decision years ago and you need to patient.
And PerkyLurkey said:
NTA Just because these so called adults wished to continue to lie to their immediate family and church by “forgetting” you existed, doesn’t give them clearance to control you, nor your ability to be recognized as a person.
They adopted out a baby presumably because they couldn’t care for you adequately, and that’s great, however, after growing up, and having additional children, and after realizing you were in fact an orphan, the moral and Christian thing to do would be to offer you a home and family. After all, you are their child. And they can certainly take care of you now.
To publicly disown you is wrong, and even though they aren’t legally responsible for you through the magic of adoption, they now are in a different place. They should have done what is right and admitted what they had done all those years ago. You deserve a family, your family, and if one of them is to self absorbed and selfish, it’s not your responsibility to protect them. NTA big time.
OP later shared this update:
I logged back into this account and saw messages asking for updates. I also figured I'd clarify some stuff too. My grandmother was pretty upset that I was kept a secret but my parents apparently hid it from everyone while they were in college.
Honestly, the more I hear about it the more angry I get because my grandmother herself was a single mother, and my dad's brother, my uncle, isn't even married to his girlfriend and they have kids. I'm not sure why even after I turned 18 I had to be kept a secret. So I stopped asking for anymore details. It does look like my parents are getting divorced.
My biological father ended up reaching out to me through my grandmother. He said that he always wanted a relationship with me and asked to have a WhatsApp video call with him. I told him I don't think I'll be doing that anytime soon. I also will not be contacting my siblings unless they reach out to me first.
I refuse to be rejected anymore than I already have. This was the same man who told me to not contact any of his family even though we were all adults. I think it's why I made the stupid decision to comment publicly. But I was pretty angry about the whole thing. My biological mother made all sorts of threats to my grandmother and my uncle and isn't letting them see my siblings. But they're standing up for me.
I have zero desire to meet my biological parents anymore. At the end of the day, I'm a real human being who doesn't deserve to be a secret. And I should be allowed to have relationships with other adult family members. I shouldn't have to be happy for scraps and have a secret relationship with just my grandmother. I shouldn't have to apologize for my existence.
What I did was crappy. But at least now I can live my life and have relationships with family in the open. And my grandmother, uncle, aunts and cousins are really great and I'm really happy about my life in a very long time. I accept the @$$hole judgement.