'AITA for refusing to contact my bio family again after they reported me for finding them?'
"AITA for kicking my ILs out and telling them to stay in their lane and mind their business?"
NewEstablishment9914 writes:
My wife (26f) was out of state last weekend with two of her friends. On Saturday, while I (26m) was home playing video games, my wife’s parents showed up to talk about something. They wanted to discuss my biological father.
I grew up not knowing anything about my biological father. My mom said he didn’t want to know me. I believed my mom met my “stepfather” when I was 2. As I found out years later, he was actually my mom’s husband when she got pregnant with me, and my biological father was also married.
My mom’s husband left because he didn’t want to raise her affair child, but he missed her, and they got back together when I was 2. However, he always hated and resented me. I did not have a happy childhood, and I did not have an extended family to make up for it.
When I was 18, I did Ancestry and found my biological father. That’s when I learned the truth. I was rejected by him and his family at the time, and I was told there was no place for me in their family or in their lives.
When this happened, I made the mistake of telling people, and the responses I got were mostly along the lines of “reach out to individual members like siblings or cousins because surely someone will want to know.”
This became annoying because people couldn’t grasp that it wasn’t just him who didn’t want to know me. They also couldn’t understand my unwillingness to take the risk of tracking down other family members. I stopped telling people after that.
My wife always knew the full truth. She told me her parents might get a little Hallmark-y and want me to do the whole “track down individuals” thing, so I never gave them the full story. I just said I could never find him.
So, my in-laws showed up at the house while my wife was gone and said they heard my wife and me discussing the rejection from my biological father's side. They said they understood me lying but were there to convince me to take the leap I refused to make in the past and find more family members to reach out to.
I told them I was not interested and had already been rejected by enough people in my life who were supposed to care about me in some way, and I wasn’t willing to go through that again. I told them it wasn’t worth it to me and asked them to respect that.
They wouldn’t let it go. They told me I wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t right either, and that I should think about the happiness it could bring me. They also said, “You never know if one person related by blood might like to know their relatives.”
They told me I shouldn’t let fear make decisions for me, and that “as the parental figures now in my life,” I should listen to them. I told them to stop, or I would ask them to leave. They said I should accept that multiple people giving me the same advice must mean it’s right.
They told me to stop denying myself. I told them to stop telling me what to do, mind their own business, and stay in their lane instead of trying to bulldoze what they think is best. Then, I made them leave. They were so angry, but my wife was on my side and told them they should have accepted my decision.
OP responded to some of the top comments of the post:
Nester1953 says:
Telling them to leave if they refused to stay in their own lane and stop pressuring you showed remarkable restraint in dealing with such an emotional minefield of a topic. They were waaaaaaay out of line, presumptuous and over-bearing.
And even if you'd screamed and sworn up a storm after a mere 10 minutes of their carrying on, I'd still say NTA! Whatever feels best to you is the way to deal with the issue. Any decision you make to benefit yourself and that feels right to you is the correct one.
OP responded:
Yes, I agree. Even with good intentions you have to remember people's boundaries should still be respected even if you think they're wrong. Bringing it up one time is fine but refusing to accept it is a whole other thing. They also spoke to me like a kid which I didn't like.
lilianteener says:
NTA. You made a perfectly reasonable decision not to pursue more contact wit your bio family, especialy after the pain you’ve already endured. Your in-laws were out of line for disregarding your boundaries nd insisting they know what’s best for you.
It’s great that your wife backed you up on this it shows she respects your choices and understands the emotional weight of the situation. Stand firm on your boundaries; no one has the right to force you into reliving your trauma.
OP responded:
Thank you. I also forgot to mention in my post but they even reported my account on Ancestry for reaching out to them. That's how much they were willing to reject me. Doing more could result in the whole account being removed if they just spam it. Nothing happened last time because the site saw I didn't do anything wrong but it's crazy.