to have told a young woman she's actually my sister

[Irons]

16 years ago I was given the name of a little girl (9 years younger than me) who is apparently my half-sister. Apparently my father had an affair with her mother but because it was an affair she grew up thinking her mother's husband was her father. He however passed away many years ago.

I waited until she was an adult and she is now 21 and I found her on Facebook and introduced myself, telling her what I know. I've since had a phone call from my angry father who had had a phone call from her mother "asking me to back-off" because they don't want her to know the truth.

It's really bugging me now. Do I let it go or push on in finding out the truth at the risking of upsetting everyone including my father? Ultimately the truth can only be resolved by DNA testing which is very expensive.

Was IBU to contact her?

Of course you are! Not your secret to spill. Good grief, poor girl, you've just torn her world apart. And on the basis of 'apparently'...

Mind your own business in future and let other people mind theirs.

NBU to want contact but via facebook???

Imagine switching it on and reading a message from someone claiming to be your dad? Bit of a shock for someone.

Wouldn't you say it is my business as she is my sister too?

Yes, very unreasonable. Why would you do that?

I think that contacting her via facebook was unwise in the extreme.

I don't think it's unreasonable that you want to contact her, but using facebook to do it is really not the way to do it as far as I'm concerned.

Did you talk to your dad about it first, and if not, why not?

YABU! It is not up to you to tell her.

Why did you do it? What did you hope to accomplish?

Number - it was the only way I could do it as I have no other contact info for her and she lives in another country.

Of course YABU. YABVVU indeed. It is none of your business. At the very least you should have discussed this with your father first.

Why didn't you speak to your dad? It sounds like he has contact details and may have had a view on whether or not you should contact her.

I did speak to my father and he wouldn't help me.

As for using Facebook - please tell me how else I was suppose to make contact if I have no address, telephone number and we live in different countries?

Doesn't she have a right to know the truth?

So if all of you found out you had a sister, you would just ignore it and get on with your life?

yanbu

if noone else was going to tell her you did the right thing.

But why tell her?

Do you want a relationship with her? Or are you doing it out of spite?

She is not your sister. She is a person biologically related to you, but that doesn't mean you have any rights over her. Because you want to force her to acknowledge a tenuous relationship you destroy her peace of mind, not to mention that of your dad and her mother?!

Spite? No - I want a relationship!

Ok I am going totally against the grain here, but I do not thinkt that you were being unreasonable. I know what it is like to want to know things about family that don't know you.

I am sorry to hear that it went badly and I hope that things somehow manage to work themselves out.

No, I wouldn't have ignored it, but I wouldn't have just ridden roughshod over her right to privacy. I would have waited for her to contact me if she wanted to. Her mother clearly has contact details which would have allowed her to find her father if she'd wanted to. The fact that she hadn't contacted you (or him) should have given you a very clear indication of the way you should have behaved.

If your father didn't want you to contact her, then there must have been good reasons for this and you should have respected them.

I'm not surprised he is furious with you.

YABVU to have done so against your father's wishes and by facebook? Bloody Hell, you wait until you can contact her in an appropriate manner, at the very least a telephone call.

She must be freaking right the fuck out.

I can see why you would want contact. She is your half-sister.

Perhaps you should have respected your father's wishes. Perhaps he and her mother were at peace with their decisions. Perhaps he grieved every day for 20y and had finally ccome to terms with it. Perhaps you are opening up old wounds. There wd have to be more reason to justify what you did than mere curiousity or a feeling that you have the right to know.

It is inevitable that curiosity and being able to see her on the internet would mean you can't forget her. I'd say the families involved should have imagined and prepared for this in some way.

You might want a relationship, but you have no right at all to demand that she has a relationship with you. You've never even met the woman. Foisting yourself on her like this is appalling. Poor woman. 'Ta-dah! Your Dad's not your Dad, isn't that fab, fancy a holiday?!' How on earth did you think that was going to turn out?

Littlefish, her mother won't tell her the truth and still denies it. She would never have made contact with me because she would never have known.

The only "good" reason my father had was hiding their affair. Is that good enough reason?

shdad and ticktockclock - thank you - I was starting to think I'm a dreadful person for what I've done!

Do you understand what you've done to her, her life, her memory of her father (or the man she believed to be her father), her relationship with her mother?

She'll be in bits - the poor thing.

I do not believe it is right to hide the truth about a persons biological family or genetics.

Facebook has opened the world up for people and I can understand why you did it this way, especially if she was in a different country.