Photo: Motortion Films / Shutterstock.com
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on May 29, 2022
A 38-year-old father of three children, an 18-year-old son, a 16-year-old son, and a 13-year-old daughter, found out a few years ago that the middle child of the three was not his biological son.
As a result, he divorced his wife and moved out of the home they shared with their children and moved to a totally different city.
His relationship with his biological children strained slightly, but his relationship with Alexander, his middle child, suffered the most, causing the father to threaten him into visiting him.
The father threatened to cut off his son’s college fund if he didn’t come to visit him and his new wife.
After his son reacted rather negatively by telling him to “f--k off” and then hanging up, the father realized that he might’ve made a mistake and wanted to know if he was in the wrong.
He took to the popular subreddit “r/AmItheA--hole” (AITA) to ask complete strangers whether or not he did the right thing (or the wrong thing).
Redditors are usually the biggest jokesters when it comes to social media comments and posts, but whenever children get involved, they become stern critiques.
The father revealed that while he wasn’t physically involved in his children’s lives while he took some time away to “heal,” he called them every single day and paid child support for all three of them.
The problem is that he showed a very obvious preference for his biological children over Alexander.
“When I called my kids, I only called Sophia and Raphael (13F, 18M) because I felt uncomfortable talking to Alexander,” the father revealed in his AITA post. “One day he was angry and grabbed the phone crying and said: ‘Don’t you love me, dad, why are they more important to you?’”
“I politely replied and said ‘Honey, look I love you but I need some time to heal, I’m still your father and I’ll be back soon’ (He knows I’m not his biological father),” he wrote.
For a while, he only spoke to his son via text message because FaceTime was too uncomfortable, and after eventually moving back to his city a year ago, Alexander refused to come visit him.
Sophia and Raphael would come to visit, but not their brother, and upon going to their mother’s house and confronting him, he continued to refuse the invitation to his father’s home but hung out with him outside of that.
“When he found out my wife (he refused to come to my wedding) was pregnant he told me not to visit him again,” he wrote.
He originally believed that Alexander was doing this because he wanted a relationship with his biological dad after the father found out his ex-wife had been seeing him, but Alexander rejected him as well.
“Look dude, no hard feelings but don’t try to force a fatherly role on me because you are not my dad and I already have one,” he told his biological father, but still refused his father’s invitations.
“My daughter was born 6 days ago and he hasn’t come to see his half-sister so I called him and said that if he doesn’t come to see me I’ll be cutting his college fund,” he explains.
The people of Reddit banded together, but not to reassure him, to tell him that he was being selfish and was, indeed, the “A--hole.”
“Your poor poor son,” read one comment. Someone else brought up how he doesn’t seem to care about how his son feels about the whole situation.
It’s common practice for people on Reddit to hate those who resent children that came about from affairs (yes, it happens that often), and this time is no different.
Hopefully, the father tries harder to reconnect with his son in a way that doesn't involve ruining his future after reading all of the Reddit responses roasting him.
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Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Follow him on Twitter here.