A Redditor shared how she unearthed a family secret from the past.
I, a 25-year-old female, gave birth to my daughter 2 months ago and despite my husband (28) telling me he knows I’d never cheat on him, I wanted to give our daughter a paternity test. The reason? She has green eyes and my husband and I both don’t have green eyes, my parents don’t either, and neither do my in-laws — no one in my family has them. My husband said it was probably some weird genetic thing, but I wanted the test for his peace of mind.
He kept refusing because he trusts me, but his mother keeps commenting on our daughter’s eyes, as do the rest of his family members who keep making comments about me possibly cheating — even my family finds it odd that our daughter has green eyes. My husband says to ignore them because he knows I’d never cheat, but I finally had enough of his family’s comments and told him I wanted the test.
He only agreed to get me to calm down and, well, our daughter is his, but my FIL isn’t my husband’s father. My in-laws have been married for decades, so the idea that my MIL cheated on my FIL never crossed either of our minds. My husband wants to confront his mother, but I’m telling him to wait, that yes, she’s a liar and a hypocrite, but we need to think this through.
Yes, I agree my FIL should know, but we’re both tired from taking care of a newborn, we’ve found out something shocking, and we’re not thinking rationally. He wants to tell his father and so do I, but the fall-out will be apocalyptic. I just wanted to give him peace of mind, and instead I started the end of his parents’ marriage and possibly blew up his family.
We did 2 tests, a paternity and an ancestry test. I wanted to see if maybe there was a relative we just didn’t know about that could have caused my daughter’s eye color.
Netizens were just as suprised by the turn of events.
- “What gets me is the fact that she PUSHED for OP and husband to do the ONE thing that would expose her secret. All she had to do was keep quiet, and no one would’ve been the wiser.” Heavy_Sand5228 / Reddit
“One of my friends did an ancestry test with her sisters, she already knew that her father was a different person than her sisters’. There’s a big age gap, her mom and her sisters’ fathers were not together, she looks exactly like her dad. - One thing that surprised them was that supposedly her 2 older sisters had different fathers as well. Well… turns out not so much. They were full sisters, not half-sisters as they thought, so at some point, her mother had had an affair.
I don’t know enough to say if she cheated on the first guy with the second and had his kid, then got together with him and had another, or if she had the first guy have a kid, broke up, then she cheated on the new guy with her old ex. Either way, surprise full siblings and someone, at least one of them, always thought they had a different dad.” scarletnightingale / Reddit - “There is a small chance the husband isn’t related to MIL either, though. As in, switched at birth or secretly adopted.” Gaosnl / Reddit
- “Another possibility is that the MIL and FIL did in-vitro with a sperm donor and never told their son. The son should have a DNA test as well. This will clear up any of the scenarios, i.e. MIL had an affair, son was switched at birth, sperm donor, etc.” shbrinnnn / Reddit
- “Turns out you were right…she did inherit from an unknown relative, and I’m sure they are beautiful. What a wild story, I’m sorry that you were made to feel uncomfortable enough to have the testing done.
For some reason people feel that they can say or do anything, no matter how rude to pregnant, or new moms, I’ve never understood it. Shame on the people who made you feel like you had to prove your fidelity, especially your MIL, she should have known better, but it sounds like she was projecting her lie onto you and now has to deal with the consequences of her actions.” Ontic13 / Reddit - “However, this isn’t a confrontation. It’s a conversation — and not one you should be a part of. It should be a private conversation between your husband and his mother. They could have used a sperm donor and never told anyone. She could have had an affair.
I want to be clear this isn’t your business, and you don’t need to be a part of this conversation. It also isn’t your job to tell your FIL. Once your husband calmly talks to his mother, they get to decide what to do. His father is his father regardless of paternity. Don’t blow up someone’s life.” BlueBelle2019 / Reddit - “You didn’t cheat nor your husband… this is called ramifications of your MIL’s actions back then (cheating) and projecting it onto you now, so much that you sought a way to shut her up. Now she is going to pay the piper for both. If she had kept her mouth shut now, she wouldn’t have been caught.” TakeTheCanolli / Reddit
“I don’t understand why you all are so worked up about the eye color in a 2-month-old. My son had green to hazel eyes until he was almost 2. They finished at about a hazel-leaning brown. Both my husband and I have brown eyes. We never thought anything of it. - Like, if you wanted to do a test just to find your genetic lines or whatever, that might be interesting. But focusing on your husband, cheating and this eye color is just beyond bizarre to me. Anyone who insinuated I might have cheated would get shut down immediately. Maybe your focus should be on laying down clear boundaries with both your families, instead of worrying about jumping through ridiculous hoops to appease them.” KickIt77 / Reddit
Discovering a long-buried secret about someone we love can often have life-changing consequences.
Preview photo credit freepik / Freepik, ThrowRAFamiltsopa / Reddit
