When my sister was in uni she dated a married man who told her he’d leave his wife for her. When she got pregnant by him, possibly deliberately in an attempt to speed up his leaving his wife, he ended the affair and went MIA.
She was completely devastated and humiliated. She’s made it clear we’re not to tell her daughter about the affair, she said she’d tell her when she was old enough.
My niece is now 15 and it turns out my sister has been heavily discouraging her from asking questions about her biological father by saying she’s too traumatized to talk about it, implying it’s a way darker story than it is. My poor niece has just been assuming she’s the biological daughter of some monster. And worse, when she’s in trouble my sister has gotten into the habit of telling her she’s just like her father.
So, when my niece started tearfully confiding in me about how she has some anger issues so she’s afraid she’s going to turn out to be a monster like her biological father, I told her the truth. This has caused a huge rift between my sister and her daughter, and my sister is furious with me for telling a story it wasn’t my place to tell.
She claims she was going to tell her the truth when she was ready, but I don’t really believe her and I think she was doing a lot of damage to her daughter by withholding the truth and implying her biological father was a monster and comparing her to him.
Here is what netizen thinks:
- “When she was ready” would have been when her daughter found out, or her remarks of “You’re just like him” were finally unable to keep a grip on her.
- My great-grandmother told stories like this about my great-grandfather being a raging alcoholic. My cousin is doing a genealogy and turns out there’s a lot of evidence that he was nothing like her stories. Which is fun because we have loads of generational trauma from my grandfather on down that comes directly from her “you’re going to be just like him” comments.
- Hnm.. the sister manipulated the guy by getting pregnant on purpose and is now taking it out on her daughter. I smell a personality disorder.