Dad Wants to DNA Test His Kids Without Telling His Wife
By Robin ZlotnickUpdated Dec. 5 2019, 11:47 a.m. ET
Well, it's official. DNA tests ruin families. If you're about to swab your cheek and send it in to 23andMe or one of those other consumer genetic testing companies, you might want to reconsider. In addition to the risk of your privacy being compromised, you might find out information that you would have rather never known. And that is the subject of today's "Am I the A-hole?" post on Reddit.
A man decided he wanted to secretly DNA test his kids without his wife's knowledge after his boss did a similar thing and discovered one of his children wasn't genetically his. We'll let him tell this part of the story.
"My boss just did one of those 23andMe tests and he bought one for all four of his kids too," he wrote. "Well as it turns out his oldest daughter isn't his daughter and this is how he found out. The man is devastated. He's still going to be this girl's dad obviously as he always has been but now he's going to get a divorce and the woman he thought loved him for 30 some years gets half of all his stuff even though she's been deceiving him for almost 26 years."
Now, I admit that is a devastating story. It totally and completely sucks to have your world rocked like that. Did the daughter also find out that her dad wasn't her dad? As I said, this is the kind of thing that tears families apart. And I don't fault the boss for reacting the way he did. What's weird is how the guy telling this story, who is also a father, reacted.
One day at work, his boss mentioned that, if he could go back in time, he would have tested his kids "on the sly" and then maybe this all would have been avoided. An irrational thing to think (he seemed to have no reason at the time to mistrust his wife!), but then again, this is a grieving man, and we all say things that make no sense in times of great stress.
But our guy took this notion to heart. "I have three kids with my wife and they're all under five," he wrote. "This whole situation has made me a little paranoid, not going to lie. I don't know if its' because I'm directly seeing this man's life unravel in front of me every work day or what but I've been debating on DNA testing my kids."
Then he goes on to ask, "Would DNA testing my kids without telling my wife make me an a-hole? I don't distrust my wife at all but this guy's wife was also like a Betty Crocker wife... My wife and I have been married for 10 years and I know if I told her I was going to do this she would be pissed."
Uh, yeah dude. I understand that seeing this story happen up close is a shock to the system, but take a step back and think about how insane you sound, suggesting that you should secretly DNA test your kids even though you don't have so much as a sneaking suspicion that something might be wrong.
Luckily, commenters tried to make him come to his senses. "You have no reason not to trust your wife," one person wrote. "You're allowing your boss's situation to create situations for you... Don't bring [other peoples'] drama into your marriage. It isn't fair to your wife or kids."
"You should also think long and hard on what made you so paranoid and discuss it with your wife. There might be something deep inside you that needs to be communicated to your wife," another person wrote. This is so true. If this story about a totally different family made him paranoid enough to consider sneaking around his wife, he should just... talk to her. If he's feeling insecure in their marriage, maybe there's a different reason for it.
If he's truly basing all of his worry off of his boss's story though, he needs to calm down. Just because it happened to his boss doesn't mean it's going to happen to him. I mean, truly what are the odds of the same infidelity story happening to two dudes in the same office, anyway? But that's beside the point.
He entered the comments once more with an update and seemed to understand what people were getting at. "I think I need to distance myself from this situation..." he wrote. "I've been trying to be there for the guy but I can see how that his depression and unhappiness is sneaking its own paranoia into my marriage which isn't fair to my wife at all." Folks, I think he learned something. Holy moly. Wow. It's a Christmas miracle.
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