Advertisements
Advertisements
My husband is an adoptee and we have been married 11 years. Here's a little background: he stumbled across his adoption papers when he was around 9 or 10 and confronted his parents about them and that's when he found out. They have never been forthcoming with any information regarding his adoption or bio family. In fact, they gave him many different stories over the years: teenage mother who didn't want her baby, college sweethearts not ready to have a baby, found in a dumpster, etc. When we got pregnant with our first child he tried to get information from them so he could look into his medical history for the sake of our daughter and any future children. They still wouldn't give any info. This was almost 10 years ago. Fast forward to a few months ago. He did a 23 and Me DNA test to find out where in the world his ancestors came from. It also showed other people who had registered their DNA that had a relation to him. The closest match was a 2nd/3rd cousin. About a month ago, with his permission, I signed on to his 23 and Me account and saw there was a message from this 2nd/3rd cousin saying that she thinks they share the same great-great-grandparents. She shared a link to her family tree, and also suggested a couple other websites to upload his DNA to to see other family trees. Being curious (because I had been researching my own family tree), I registered on one of the sites and uploaded his DNA. A couple days later it showed there was someone else registered on the site that matched him as a relative: a 1st cousin/uncle/nephew. I told my husband about this and he said, "Cool." The next day I was checking my email and saw a message from this relative. It turns out it was his bio mother's half-brother, and he gave a lot of information regarding my husband's bio mother and her side of the family. I told my husband right away about receiving the email (but did not disclose any of the information provided). Ever since then, he has been extremely upset with me, saying that I went behind his back to do this and that I should never have done it because he never wanted any information and wants nothing to do with "those people". The way he has been acting towards me since has me feeling so hurt and confused. He'll go from acting angry towards me, to keeping his distance, to acting like nothing ever happened and that I should pretend to do the same. I'm just having trouble understanding how he went from wanting to know stuff to acting like he never wanted to know anything in the first place. He acts like it's only affecting him and that my feelings don't and shouldn't matter. He tried to tell me that he had been in a good place (emotionally) regarding his adoption and that he had been at peace with it (he hadn't) and that I messed everything up and am forcing him to deal with it again. Has anyone else been in a similar situation? What should I do?