Meeting half siblings as adult

[Flyingsquirrels]

I am a bit unsure about this so I wanted to run it by someone.
I’m in my early 30s now and I always knew that my DF was not my biological father, but he always treated me like his own. My biological father is a man who my mother had an affair with (she was single then) and he “disappeared” when she got pregnant with me. I know that she tried him to pay CS but as far as I know he never did. I only met him once when I was 14 and he suddenly made contact but he then disappeared again which was confusing.I have no real interest in him now and don’t want contact.
Something that has been bothering me is that I have 2 half brothers who I have obviously never met and I don’t even know if they know that I exist. I would really like to reach out and get to know them, but I don’t know how they will react. Has anyone else reached out to half siblings or similar as an adult? I don’t want to hurt or upset them but it would mean a lot to me. I know their names and I have found one on LinkedIn, and the second one via his workplace, but I have not sent anything yet.

do you have any contact whatsoever with any of your fathers side of the family? grandparents? aunts etc?

No contact at all. The only names I have are those of my 2 half brothers and their mother.

do they know about you?

you need to tread very carefully

how old are they?

That’s the thing. I don’t know if they know about me. One is 10 years older than me, and I believe the other one is a few years younger than his brother. They are both older than me.

i would contact the mother first to find out if they know and introduce yourself to her first

I know her name but I can’t find anything on her online so I’m not sure how to contact her. But yes this makes sense. I don’t want to cause hurt to anyone

My dad was in my life until I was 4ish.
my mum moved countries with me and he visited a handful of times before remarrying and having more children and losing contact.
When I was in my 20s I searched for him online and discovered he was now living a couple of hours drive from me .
I showed up at his doorstep 🫣
He was lovely and seemed over the moon, went to dinner with him and his wife who seemed quite off and somewhat annoyed.
When I returned home I got a very nasty msg from him basically saying I should have wrote and not arrived at his wife’s door.
He stopped replying to my msgs. I suspected it was the wife’s doing.
However a couple of years later i revived a fb msg from his now ex wife sayin she no longer felt obliged to be his secret keeper and would like to tell their children about me if I agreed.
One of my half siblings reached out and we spoke on and off for a while but never met up. Contact sort of died off.
Im an only child and would have loved a sibling relationship sadly it doesn’t always work out if you wernt brought up together. It’s effectively just trying to build a relationship with a stranger.
I would have no expectations going into this but goodluck!

What is your motivation to meet them? Remember they will not have the same motivation. Only do this if you’re prepared and resilient enough to take rejection or anger. It may go well, but do take time to think of worse case scenarios and what support you have in place for these.

@Nobu32 I’m so sorry that this didn’t work out, and I don’t know why you were ever a secret :(

I’m not sure how to describe it. I’m hoping to get to know something about that side of the family and to a degree also about myself.
Yes, I know that they will most likely not have any interest in me at all

I didn't bother. I have 4 half siblings, 3 different mothers. The youngest one I've never met but she went into foster care so might be difficult to track down anyway. The older 3 (I am the oldest) I did know as kids but lost contact when I went NC with our dad. They're not really siblings to me, I always think of myself as an only child.

It's all far too messy.

Thank you. Maybe I should just leave them alone

when you met him at 14, had he had his two sons?

in your shoes i would drop my father a message to ask if they know

i would not contact them directly out of the blue not knowing whether they know or not

Have you thought about applying to Long Lost Family on ITV? That would potentially give you help finding them, support and an intermediary to make the first contact.

I met my brother who was adopted (my dad was too young and possibly didn't know about him). It was a shock but we tried to welcome him and be positive. He ended up not wanting contact. He came to my wedding so I thought we would be okay but a couple years later he didn't want to know. My dad said the other day he still thinks about him, as do I. I hope you find peace with it.

Don't do it through TV! I am in a similar position and was tempted once - my friend who works in TV strongly advised against it. They won't have your best interests at heart.

No other advise I'm afraid. I found out about my half sister when I was a child, we've not managed to meet up yet but now that our dad has died I'm hoping the situation is simpler. We exchange civil messages via Facebook.

Didn’t your dad confirm whether or not he knew about him?

I met half siblings under different circumstances, but at a similar age to you many years ago. We all wanted to meet. It was fine / good, quite exciting, but ultimately we lived too far away from each other and had been brought up so differently it was never going to work. We did have things in common and there were many personal and genetic similarities, but it was too late, we had different values and lifestyles. I’m not sorry we met, it wasn’t disastrous, but it wasn’t the happy ending you might be hoping for. Have had practically zero contact for decades, which we are probably all fine with.

I think it will depend on how much of a relationship they still hold with their father at present. If they’ve had a similar experience to you , ie estranged then it’s less complicated and I think they will be receptive to meeting. The worst that could happen is you simply get no response but it’s quite likely one of them will be open to a meeting… from experience it’s a nerve wracking but positive experience meeting half siblings for the first time , you get family history and it’s really interesting to see family traits and genetic likeness but you’ve got to manage expectations about it simply fizzling out once the initial interest passes. Good luck OP!

I’m adopted and have met 3 half siblings. However. Contact was initiated via my birth parents rather than directly with my siblings.
I'm so pleased to have traced my birth family and am now very close to my half sister!

Thank you all. I asked my mother and she did still have their mother’s email address on file as they had been in contact when my father suddenly reached out before disappearing again. I will email their mom and see if I get a response and I won’t reach out to them otherwise. The last thing I want to is to cause hurt.

Adoptee here with half-siblings on my birth mother's side I have never been in contact with. It sounds like they know you exist (think mine don't.) If that's the case, from a 'smashing their world up' standpoint, I think you have less to worry about. I did speak to my birth father and had contact over email. It wasn't a positive situation - he didn't feel like family at all. I have never been through anything more stressful. I totally understand your curiosity thought just be aware it's impossible to predict how things will go and make sure you have support.

Hope this reaches you, my experience as a 20 year old meeting an older half-sibling whose 24 year old has gone well so far, it's not always gloomy, you'll never know till you ask, if they want to meet you the most likely cause is that they want to have a relationship with you to, they might not even know or be close to their father either. It's probably too late but send them the email or message personally, I wouldn't go with their mother especially if you don't know her (She has nothing to do with you and if their father isn't in the picture it's risky to ask her for her permission when your siblings are adults if the person she used to be with but isn't has a child who suddenly messages them it can be rocky)

I'd still message them if you can and ask directly, the worse they can say is No and then you have the answer, if they say yes then it's most likely because they to want to have some kind of relationship with you as much as you can given the circumstance.