What Facebook has done.....

[trop8cana]

Okay at first I signed up for Facebook just because I got paid to sign up but then I realized that I started to get alot of friend request from people that I haven't heard from in years.Now don't get me wrong, it was good to hear from some people but some of those people that you never cared for before....well you know how it is.

Anyways so I decided to keep the page just so that I could stay in contact with my family all over the world......well to make a long story short...I logged in to my account the other day to see that I had a friend request from my biological father. Now I don't know my father at all. I've met him once in my life and never heard or seen him since.

Now you would think that any one should be happy to find thier father after all of these years but I'm not as enthused. The reason for me saying that is because my father use to beat on my mom. He has even beaten her into the state of shock once,knocking all of her front teeth out(top and bottom).He has almost killed my mom on several different occassions when I was just a baby.He has even beaten her around family members causing her to fear him more than anything in this world.After deciding that my mother could no longer take fearing him every day of her life, she called a 1 800 number for a shelter for abused women one day after telling my father that she was just going to the store for more formula.Little did he know that she was leaving and going into hiding.So my mom ended up moving us all the way from the west coast to the east coast. Now I'm 29 and he pops up and made a page with Facebook just to search for me.


My mom is still scared of him and says that he is psychotic and she doesn't know how well he deals with rejection if I decided to not talk to him....I'm really confused...a part of me just wanted to know what he was like and what reason he had for doing what he did to my mother and another part of me says to leave it alone...why after all these years and having other children did he decide to act as if I existed?....what could he want?.....

Do you think that I should accept his friend request?What do you think about all of this?....I really need to hear some thoughts on this...    

[snipun]

More people would read/respond if you used paragraphs.

[samiole32]

you're right it's too long you can't concentrate better if you split it to some paragraphs

[trop8cana]

I'm not concerned about the paragraphs.....I need advice

[ke101544]

aparently the other two mornons cant read.. but thats ok

my brother was adopted when he was born, my dad was 16 and the gf was 15. my dad was into drugs, he had already dropped out of school. he stole and resold cars to get by at the time, along with selling drugs in clubs in dallas. clearly couldnt handle a kid

9 years ago my brother found my dad, i was told i wasnt an only child. but my brother eric delayed seeing my dad because his mother had told him that my dad was a gangbanger, and yea 33 years ago he was but of course not now. my dad is the most straightedge person you could ever meet.

point is people change, so maybe he use to beat up chicks, maybe your mother was overexaggerating.. youll never know the real story
and of course its a personal decision, but you have to do what you think it right, disreguard your mother

if my brother wouldnt have ignored that crazy----- he wouldnt have ever been in my life, and now i dont know what i would have ever done without him these past 9 years. im 18, and hes 33 but hes my best friend, and has an amazing relationship with ALL of my family

PEOPLE CAN CHANGE, just use discretion

[trop8cana]

aparently the other two mornons cant read.. but thats ok

my brother was adopted when he was born, my dad was 16 and the gf was 15. my dad was into drugs, he had already dropped out of school. he stole and resold cars to get by at the time, along with selling drugs in clubs in dallas. clearly couldnt handle a kid

9 years ago my brother found my dad, i was told i wasnt an only child. but my brother eric delayed seeing my dad because his mother had told him that my dad was a gangbanger, and yea 33 years ago he was but of course not now. my dad is the most straightedge person you could ever meet.

point is people change, so maybe he use to beat up chicks, maybe your mother was overexaggerating.. youll never know the real story
and of course its a personal decision, but you have to do what you think it right, disreguard your mother

if my brother wouldnt have ignored that crazy----- he wouldnt have ever been in my life, and now i dont know what i would have ever done without him these past 9 years. im 18, and hes 33 but hes my best friend, and has an amazing relationship with ALL of my family


PEOPLE CAN CHANGE, just use discretion

Thanx for the advice 

[bulldogs05]

Whoa, I've had a ton of people from my past find me on Facebook, but never anything that crazy. While I can't tell you what you should do, maybe you should try to listen to your mother? If you are close with her and trust her opinion, then she is probably telling you those things in order to protect you. Then again, you're an adult, you can make the decision for yourself and if you want to know him, then you should try and know him. If you don't want him to get any main info about you like your phone number or location, you should just remove it from your Facebook profile so he can't see. I would say you're pretty safe after that. Good luck!

[LittleDebbieG]

Should you let him know that what he did to your mother still bothers you?

If you go the route of getting him to explain his actions, you may hear any number of things that would rock your world. On the other hand, if you completely ignore his past and not ask, then be prepared for an influx of questions and concerns from the family he beat your mother around (as you claimed he did).

My personal suggestion would be to start correspondence between the two of you before accepting any sort of friend request. And if you want to just not deal with it, deny his request and block him.

[cloudsoup]

i can't blame you for wanting to keep that door
closed. you were just a baby when your mom decided
to escape, right? so you've never had a relationship
with him, and have never known him on any personal
level? so at this point, you have no strings attached,
other than his blood relation to you.

i don't know what i would do in your situation, but i would
wonder why it took him THIS long to try and find you (and really,
typing someone's name into a search bar and sifting through
a few pages on a social networking site isn't that difficult) ...
it just doesn't seem like there's been any effort on his part.
what is he gonna do? be your long last dad on facebook?  
a phone call, a letter, an email wouldn't have been a little better?

BUT i can imagine how curious you would be about him.
and what kind of person he is now (because people can and do change).
and if he would be worth knowing at this point.

i think if you should weigh the pros and cons of adding him.
and how emotional/rocky that road will be for both you and your mom.
if you ignore it, you'll probably always wonder what would've happened.
if you decide to let him have a peek into your life, don't set yourself
up for disappointment. i wouldn't expect any answers right away.

there's nothing to lose - only things to be proven about him, you know?

[Cuppycake]

I have to say from the point of view of a mother that was divorced on the grounds of habitual cruel and inhumane treatment that I would not recommend having anything to do with him! My daughter got a request from her real father last year on myspace. I was not at all thrilled. She never really knew him because he is such a horrible person. I never really told her all of the awful things he did to me. She only knows bits and pieces. I told him to leave my baby alone that she is mine and will never be his! She is who she is because of what I did for her not him and that I would not have him undoing what I have done for her. Fortunately he also heard it from her to buzz off and he has.

[trujillo33]

People may give u a lot of advise but its you that needs to make the decision to communicate with your father. List all the pros and cons that will come out of communicating with your father. Yea he could be a good guy but you never know he could go back to his old ways...

[jnthnmclry]

i think you should accept his friend request and hear him out.  you never know.  people change and/or your mom could be wrong about warning you away from him.

have a sense of compassion and look at it from his point of view.

[jan8904]

I think it might be a good idea to at least communicate with him via private messages.  If you do decide to accept his friend request, keep it on a limited profile.  If he really was as bad as you say, you probably don't want him knowing enough information that he could potentially use to locate you or your mom.  But, you never know until you hear him out I guess.  But it's totally up to you.  If you would rather keep that part of your life closed, then just forget about him and block him on your facebook so that he can't contact you again.  But, as I said, if you do chose to allow his friend request, make sure your privacy settings keep your personal information private.

[kelann1027]

no..i think its best to leave it alone

[Cuppycake]

no..i think its best to leave it alone

I agree.