DEAR EMILY,

I am the love child of a secretary and her boss, for whom she worked for 20 years.  An only child, I am now 40, with a family of my own.

All these years, while my mother and I lived in a relatively middle-class area of the city, my father’s family lived in a rich enclave of Makati.  His wife learned of his affair with my mother and threw him out of their house.  Their marriage was annulled.

My father married another rich woman, but they never had any children of their own.  He supported me and my mother until I finished college, but I never got close to him.  We would talk,  but only about money. He didn’t know my friends or my favorite food,  or if I even had a boyfriend.

It was not hard to tell that he was not interested in me at all. I was an accident he had to deal with.   Before he died, he was able to pay in full for the house my mother stayed in all my life.  He didn’t leave me any other inheritance.

I see pictures of my half brothers and sisters splashed in the society pages of magazines and  newspapers, and one of them even in giant billboards,  and I feel bad that they don’t know anything about me.  I cannot even run them to help me financially or talk to them socially.  Shouldn’t there be some sort of connection between us?

—Unwanted Relative

I am not a lawyer, but considering that your only connection to them was a shared dead father, I don’t believe you have any right to shove yourself into their lives—ever.

Just realize that it was your father’s affair with your mother that broke up his original family.    Do understand the trauma and the misery that family must have gone through because of this man’s weakness, this affair with your mother—and the chutzpah of  your mother to succumb to his advances knowing that he was already married.    She could have protected herself with a condom, or else, strongly battled her way out of her situation!  There are a hundred ways of repelling unwanted advances.

Think of the psychological upheaval this family must have undergone then.  You may look at it philosophically and say their money has cushioned the hurt they underwent anyway.   But a betting person would know that not a cent of their millions will ever make up for the broken lives this besieged family experienced and make it right again. None!

You, of course, had nothing to do with it—you’re the collateral damage, so to speak.  As far as they’re concerned, you will always epitomize that very unhappy episode in their lives.

Stop yourself from looking at these half-siblings who, though you share bloodlines, are, in the general scheme of life, utterly unrelated to you.  Just live the way you want, and move on—away from them.

Thank the heavens that you are alive, albeit courtesy of a father who was never there. So, move on and deal with the cards fate has laid out for you.  And make it as joyfully worthwhile as you possibly can.

E-mail the author at [email protected] or [email protected]—subject: Lifestyle.