I am 30 years old and male. My wife, Jessica, is 22.

My wife has a seven-year-old son, Max, whom she had when she was 15 years old.

The father, who was her boyfriend in junior high school (and is the same age as Jessica), actually left the state when he and his family learned that she was pregnant.

Jessica has no idea where he is, and since her family is well-off, she didn’t really need or care for his support.

I met Jessica when she was 20, we dated for a year, and then got married when she was 21. I love Max and raise him as if he was my own son.

Last month, Max came to my workplace with Jessica in the early afternoon to surprise me with a lunch outing.

As they waited for me to finish up a meeting, the front desk secretary, Claire, chatted with Jessica.

I wasn’t there for the conversation, but Claire was stunned at how young Jessica looked, and Jessica said she was 22.

Apparently Claire did a bit of napkin math and came to the following conclusions: (1) Jessica is 22 and I am 30, (2) Max is seven, (3) that means Jessica and I had Max when she was 15 and I was 23.

Apparently, from that day on, Claire began gossiping about this.

I had no idea what was going on, but I did notice that Claire abruptly changed her attitude towards me, glaring when she thought I wasn’t looking or rolling her eyes when I talked to other people.

Well, today at work, when I was in the bathroom washing my hands, I overheard Claire gossiping with a new hire about my “underaged wife” outside the door by the water cooler.

I left the bathroom and then walked up behind Claire. She turned around and looked like a deer in the headlights at me, and so I announced (loudly), “Hi Claire.

You see, I’m not Max’s biological father. In all of your gossping to other people, you forgot to consider the most obvious possibility, which was that I am his stepfather. I will, by the way, be reporting you to HR for this.”

I headed directly to HR and explicitly told them what Claire had said, and the manager (a fellow gossip friend of Claire’s) asked if I really wanted to escalate over something so small.

I said yes. She then told me Claire is a single mother and relies on this job, and that I shouldn’t have embarrassed her in front of the office like that. I insisted on filing a report.

After calming down a bit, I feel kind of bad about what I did. Claire cried at her desk and left early. Was I an asshole to approach the issue that way?