Something that’s hit home for me in recent years is that your parents are the people who raise you – not the ones who happened to share your genetics.

Bonds are far more significant than biology, which is why a story like this one seems so terribly mishandled.

It involves a mother, her teenage son, and the man the son thought was his father.

Let’s read all the details.

AITA for being angry at my mother for blaming me for not knowing who my father is?

At 17 & only a few months before my parents divorce, my mother took me aside and told me that my father isn’t my father.

It was hard to hear, I felt lied to, kinda betrayed, and foolish because during those childhood chats about family, my brothers & I always felt that I looked like my father (aside from eye colour).

But my mother & older family members always said I look like my mother

Here’s what really happened.

It wasn’t an affair or anything.

It transpires that my mother had me before they ever met.

So, my parents met, my mother got pregnant, they married & my brother was born just 3 years younger than me.

However, I remember none of that as I was so young.

But here was the real trouble:

Here’s the bit that hurts:

She told me that its my fault for feeling so sad about the revelation, because I should have remembered a time before my father was in my life.

She said my forgetting put her through years of dreading telling me, she said she used to cry about knowing she’d have to upset me, and that i caused her this dread & upset by assuming my brothers father was my father too.

She stressed that she never lied, she just never told me the truth.

She forbade me from telling my brothers – for telling anyone.

The timing. Because 2 months later she initiated divorce.

Things seem reversed here:

I had to comfort her and tell her it was all okay.

My fathers part in all this was to ask if I still love him & if I don’t, he understands, and still loves me as he sees me as his son.

AITAH for being secretly angry at my mother for how she handled it?

I can see both sides of this, but his mother really should’ve told him sooner.

Let’s get some input from Reddit.

For starters, it’s patently absurd to expect someone to remember, let alone comprehend, their infant/toddler years:

A lie by omission is still a deceit:

Seems like a lot of misdirected guilt at best:

You’ve got the right to be mad:

You don’t have to keep it a secret.

I have no doubt this was tough for mom.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.