Should I contact my biological father?

September 20, 2014 11:25 PM

We've been completely out of touch since I was about twelve. I have a kick-ass step dad, so no old resentments or difficult questions in regard to my biological father, I'm mostly just curious about his life. He has recently turned 70 and I feel like if I decide to get back in touch, I should do it sooner rather than later. But should I? And if yes, how to best approach this? More details inside.

The background story: My mum fell madly in love with my biological father when she was quite young and really wanted a baby. From what she has told me, my father made it fairly clear from the beginning that he was not interested in raising a child and would not stick around. He was 38 at the time and had a child from a previous relationship. He did indeed leave at some point, although he visited more or less regularly when I was a baby. I'm not entirely clear on the timeline, but there are pictures of us in my photo album etc. In any case, when I was three my mother married my step dad (i.e., my dad), who has fully treated me as his own child and who I am very close to. He's a wonderful, caring and generous person and there is no question that he has been a far better dad to me than my biological father could ever have been. I share more of my interests and perspective on life with my dad than I do with my mum, in fact. After my mum and dad married, my bio father visited a few times (we were living in different cities). The last time was when I was about twelve years old, which I mostly remember as a mildly awkward encounter (but then most things were pretty awkward at that age...). I had contact with my older half-sister as a child and teenager, but broke off contact with her in my early twenties over her confusing, negative feelings towards my bio father and my younger half-sister (from my mum and dad's marriage), which I couldn't handle at the time. My older half-sister was not in touch with our father back then and I expect she still isn't.

Fast-forward to now: I currently live abroad, but I'm very close to my parents and my younger half-sister. Over the past years, the idea of contacting my father has been on my mind for several reasons.

First, I recognize many of my own character traits in my older half-sister and, I suppose, after making a significant effort in my twenties to understand how my family has influenced who I am and how I behave, not knowing my biological father much at all feels like a "gap". Getting to know him myself from an adult perspective might help fill in the picture. In addition, from what little I know, my father chose to live a rather unconventional life and I wonder if there is something I can learn from him about how to live well (as opposed to comfortably).

Second, as my grandparents get older, it is very noticeable that they spend much more time thinking about the past and reevaluating their personal relationships. It was actually when my grandfather directly asked me about contact with my father a few years ago (very untypical for him, to say the least!) that I first started to seriously consider the idea. It seems to me that I might regret not having gotten to know my father as an adult later in my life.

Finally, I have a (manageable) medical condition which I might have inherited from my father and, if so, it could be useful to know which medication helped him. This is not my main motive and I don't want to use it as a pretext. It would be nice to get a general idea of the family background in regard to health though.

The rough picture of my father as painted by the occasional remark from relatives is of a very charming, passionate, nature-loving artist/inventor type, who can also be very short-tempered, unreliable and egoistic.

As mentioned above, I am quite confident that I don't harbor any hidden resentment towards him. I don't have any questions in the vein of "Why did you leave us?" etc. Since he was never a psychological parent to me, I never missed him and I had a pretty great childhood without him. I was very lucky having my step dad in my life. If I contact my father, it's mostly out of pure curiosity, so I want to keep it lighthearted. More of a "Hey, if you're interested, let's chat."

If he doesn't want to be in contact, I expect to be a little disappointed at the missed opportunity, but I can't imagine that I will feel deeply rejected. Am I being naive? However, if he does want to get in touch, I'm potentially opening a Pandora's box of disillusionment, discovering hitherto-unknown half-siblings and knowledge of terrifying diseases that might run in his part of the family... On the other hand, I might get to know a very interesting person, to whom I am closely connected via my genes and who might teach me a thing or two.

I have my father's current official address (although I don't know if he actually spends time there), but no reliable phone number, so I would send a letter (or perhaps just a postcard?). My younger sister thinks I should write. (Although we both agree there is no reason to mention it to our parents for the time being.)

What would you do? Have you done this? And if I send a letter, how should I approach writing it?

posted by anonymous to Human Relations (6 answers total)

I had a similar dilemma when I was younger about contacting my birth parents. I was adopted, so it's a slightly different situation, but I felt similarly about it: I was basically just mildly curious and thought there was a chance they would be interesting people I'd like to know, plus I figured it would be useful for medical information. I didn't feel a huge longing for them, or believe that I'd be devastated if they weren't interested.

As it was, my birthmother was happy to hear from me and we now have a great relationship, including with her extended family, and her kids. My birthfather was not interested, and was scared his wife and kids would be upset if they found out about me, so we basically met once, exchanged medical information, and that was it. My expectations about my feelings were about right. I was not upset about him not wanting more than that.

One thing that I underestimated, though, is how much time and effort a whole extra family full of interesting people that you want to build relationships with can take. I'm glad I've done it, but I'm pretty terrible at keeping in touch with people at the best of times, and barely managed to keep up the expected regularity of phone calls and visits that my parents expect. To add an extra semi-parental figure, plus her parents (i.e. pseudo-grandparents), plus half siblings... it's a lot. They have been careful not to overtly ask for any time or effort on my part, but they are cool people who I want to spend time with, and they (especially the half-siblings) are so obviously overjoyed when I do things like visit at Christmas or whatever, so it becomes something extra I have to/want to fit into my life. I live overseas, so it's not like I can just drop by now and again. Instead I try to split my visits back to my home country into time with Mum, time with Dad+stepmum, time with birthmother & family, time with in-laws... and everyone ends up feeling a little short-changed, I think. And there's never time left for just relaxing or hanging with old friends.

So anyway, that's something to consider. As for writing, I think that's a good idea, and maybe just a short letter or postcard to start with, saying you'd be interested in getting in touch again and asking them to contact you if they would likewise be interested. And then wait. If you don't hear anything, I'd send at least one more, though, because lost-in-the-mail situations do happen, especially if the person concerned moves around a bit or is otherwise unconventional in their living situation.
posted by lollusc at 12:05 AM on September 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

The other thing to consider is how your parents will feel about it. Not to say you shouldn't go against their wishes if you want to, but if they will feel betrayed or otherwise have some emotional response that will make things tough for you, that's an extra consequence you might not feel like dealing with. Also practically speaking, it is really nice for me that my parents and my birthmother get on well enough that I can sometimes combine visits by getting us all in the same place at the same time. (In fact, sometimes they visit each other even when I'm not around, which gives me warm fuzzies.)
posted by lollusc at 12:12 AM on September 21, 2014

I did it. My bio father left my mother and me when I was six months old. I vaguely wondered over the years about trying to find him, sometimes checking for his name in phone books etc (pre-internet search days). A troublemaking maternal family member kept asking me if I wanted to find him but I was subtly discouraged by others.

So, aged 38, I did find him. Through a bizarre coincidence, I found someone who knew him and I was able to get a message to him with my phone number, and he called me. He cried, I cried. All went well in the beginning.

And then it became apparent that it wasn't working. Memail me if you want the gory details, but his wife caused a few issues, and I had a few issues with stuff in their lives.

I asked why he never tried to find me, and he replied that he thought he'd leave it up to me to find him.

I found that very hurtful. He was so glad I got in touch, he lavished me with expensive gifts, he promised me he would change his will so I would inherit his sizeable estate, but the fact that he never went to any trouble to find me really really hurt. Due to my upbringing, and wondering how things would have been different if he had been on the scene, even occasionally... I just couldn't get past my hurt.

I ceased contact. He attempted to contact me a couple of times, I didn't respond. His wife died earlier this year, and sometimes I wonder if I should get back in touch, and then I think, "I'll wait until he finds me. That's the way he operates, after all".

However, I don't regret it. At least I'm not still wondering what he's like and what his life has been like.
posted by malibustacey9999 at 12:17 AM on September 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I did it. I was adopted and searched for my birth family for 25 years. I now have very good relationships with my birthmother, her other children, her mother, and many cousins, as well as with my the family of my birth father (who died before I could meet him). I share lollusc's experience of not having or feeling like I'm not making enough time to see everyone as often as they'd like to see me.

The logistics of my contact: I spent considerable time googling my birthmother. She has only a cell phone, so I couldn't find that. I ended up writing her via Facebook and including photos. This had the double effect of both satisfying her curiosity about what I look like and also piquing her curiosity to want more info.

If you want to do this for any reason, you don't need anyone's blessing. Curiosity and goodwill are sufficient--even without a medical condition. Don't infantilize yourself by telling yourself you can't upset some imaginary apple cart by contacting a total stranger. Too often adoptees (or adult children of people in situations like yours) cave in to pressure to stay quiet, stay incurious, stay where you are, stay a child, essentially, prohibited from deciding on your own course of action in life.

Of course you will consider how meeting him would make your family feel, but meeting him and possibly having a relationship with him is a choice that you as an adult get to make anyway. If you want to contact him, you should. I think the suggestion of a letter followed later by one backup letter is a sound one that's respectful of his right to refuse or ignore contact.

Good luck!
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 4:23 AM on September 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think you should. This is because I read your question looking for clues and saw things like, "not knowing my biological father much at all feels like a 'gap,'" and, "It seems to me that I might regret not having gotten to know my father as an adult later in my life," and, "If he doesn't want to be in contact, I expect to be a little disappointed at the missed opportunity." I didn't see any equivalent language leaning the other direction.

I have biological family whom I wouldn't recognize if I shared a table with them at a wedding reception. It's entirely possible I stood behind them at a coffee shop yesterday and didn't know it. That doesn't bother me. I don't regret it, and I'm not inclined to change it. But that's me. You and I are different people, obviously. For instance, genetic predisposition to disease appears to be something you think about a lot more than I do. And I don't say things like, "It feels like a gap." If I felt that way and said those things, then I would write a letter.

My advice is to worry less about the consequences of what might happen. That's impossible to predict and therefore I think it's silly to try. Instead, I would suggest you think about who you are as a person. You are a person who says things like, "It feels like a gap," and, "I might regret not doing this." What else is true of you as a person, in this context? Don't ask what will happen; ask yourself whether you're the person who reaches out, or not. That's the better question. Good luck.
posted by cribcage at 9:31 AM on September 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think this is a "what's the worst that could happen?" situation. And I don't mean that in a flippant "yeah, what the hell, go for it!" way.

I mean, what if he turns out to be a dick, or says something really mean about you or your mom? Are you the kind of person who can just brush it off, or will it really bother you? What if you get along great, and then he STILL avoids contact after that. Will you stew about what the meaning of that is?

Sometimes it's better not to ask questions you don't want the answer to. But for some people, the regret of not taking the chance is worse. What that balance is for you can't really be answered by anyone else.
posted by ctmf at 9:44 AM on September 21, 2014