DNA kits are the Pandora’s Box of the modern age. You spit in a tube hoping to find out why you crave cilantro, and three weeks later you are unearthing family secrets that were buried for a reason. Most people understand that genetic information is deeply personal property. But one man on Reddit decided that his fiancée’s trauma was actually just a problem for him to “fix” behind her back, and the betrayal is honestly staggering.
Our narrator is a 35-year-old man who, along with his fiancée and their parents, took 23andMe tests three years ago. For him, it was a great experience. He grew up with older brothers who tormented him about being adopted because of his red hair, so getting proof that he belonged gave him closure. That is a lovely outcome for him. The problem is that he assumed his experience should be the universal standard for everyone else.
His fiancée’s results were much more complicated. She found a whole network of relatives connected to her biological father. Her father was adopted and never knew his bio-family. This sounds like the setup for a heartwarming reunion movie, right? Wrong. The fiancée has not spoken to her father in over ten years. He was an absent parent who barely remembered to call on her birthday. She looked at the information, looked at her history with this man, and made the adult decision to keep that door closed.
This is where a good partner supports their significant other’s boundaries. But our narrator didn’t do that. He decided that her reasons for protecting her peace “didn’t sit well” with him. Because he had a happy ending with his DNA test, he felt entitled to force one on her. He went into her contacts list, stole her estranged father’s email address, and sent him the list of relatives she had found. He gave away her private genetic research to a man she actively chose to cut out of her life.
He then “completely forgot” about his little interference project until the consequences arrived. The fiancée’s mom saw a social media post about the dad finding his biological family. When the fiancée heard the news, she was emotional. She was even happy for him from a distance, but she specifically noted that at least “we didn’t have anything to do with it.” She found comfort in the fact that she hadn’t broken her own boundary.
That is when he confessed. He told her that actually, they had everything to do with it. He admitted to snooping in her contacts and contacting the man who neglected her. He effectively told her that he respects his own “gut feeling” more than he respects her lived experience with her deadbeat dad.
Now she is furious, and he is on the internet asking if he is the ahole. It is fascinating how he frames this as a charitable act. He thinks he did a good deed for an adopted man. He completely fails to see that he betrayed the woman he is supposed to marry. He took her agency, her privacy, and her complicated family history and made it all about what he thought was right.
This wasn’t his secret to tell. It wasn’t his family to reunite. He projected his own desire for family connection onto a situation he had no business touching. He proved that he is the kind of partner who will go behind your back the second he disagrees with you.
So is he the ahole? Yes. A massive one. He didn’t heal a wound; he reopened one of hers just to pat himself on the back. You don’t get to play God with other people’s families, especially when you have to steal an email address to do it.