I need help with a big problem I am facing. My dad says I’m not his, and my mom says I am his. But a couple of my dad’s friends also witnessed she was sleeping around on him in 1987, and well, I don’t know what to do to prove my mom or dad either way.

I know there is DNA, but dad, me, and my mom can’t come up with the money. I am wondering what I should do, and how can I calm down about this situation?

Jeff

Jeff, there is a solution, but your parents haven’t made an effort to find it. Why? Because the answer doesn’t really matter. If you are your father’s biological child, your mother will feel vindicated and your father will be mad. He doesn’t want to be proven wrong, and if he is, he won’t change his opinion of your mother. If he is right, your mother won’t want to admit what happened.

Whatever the outcome of a DNA test, the family drama will continue. Your parents aren’t capable of setting aside their antagonism for the sake of the child in their midst. We often get letters from young people raised by two adversaries who stay together to give their children the disadvantages of life.

The most important question to us is, how well will you raise a family? Courtesy of your parents, you’ve had 20 years of on-the-job training in how to let a dispute fester at the center of a marriage. It is as if all of your life you have been sitting in the audience of The Jerry Springer Show.

You shouldn’t feel you don’t know who you are because your parents cannot agree on who you are. In order to marry well, you must take your parents’ marriage as an example of what you won’t settle for.

You hope your parents will have a DNA test, then kiss and make up. That won’t happen. At 20 the most important thing for you is to move on with your life without letting the tangled tale of your parents’ marriage disturb your life as an adult.

Wayne & Tamara