To think they are my sibling? (DNA results)

[PeanutButterFalcon]

Hello,

I have done an heritage DNA test and have been linked to someone with a 100% chance they are a close relative (niece/nephew, grandparent, grand child, half sibling).

I have looked at my family trees and there is no link that I can see to their family. If I go back further, I would imagine, our DNA wouldn't be such a strong match. Over 25% of our DNA matches and we have the longest segment length of over 150. Although I'm not sure what the segment length means.

I cannot but help think one of my parents have had an affair and they are a sibling. I have so many questions and thoughts in my head. Are these tests reliable? How would we even go about working out if we are? I cannot ask my parents if they have and I do not think they would be honest with me anyway.

What would you do in this situation?

[quote PeanutButterFalcon]@gingerfreckles over 1700. From what I've researched a full sibling is around 2300/400 and it's below that. Part of me hopes sometimes coincidently you can get this with absolute strangers and it's not from an affair.

@greenlynx from pictures they look younger than me, maybe late teens early 20s. I haven't spoken to them to get an exact age. Definitely not old enough to be a grandparent but to old to be a niece/nephew.

[/quote]
I share 1875cM with my uncle (my mum’s full brother).

It may not be a sibling.

OP, so your younger sister who was brought up with you, who also did the DNA test, is your full sibling? Your known mum and the mystery bio dad? But you don’t know about your other siblings brought up with you?

Sorry, just being nosy. It’s interesting as an anonymous thread, but it’s your life. Good luck with everything.

Does your full sister know?

Wow op, what a “story”… I hope you’re ok through it all, must be very strange to have all these discoveries. Can’t believe your mum is not saying anything!

I think you are handling this really well OP for you. I hope you get those answers from your mum someday

OP, am I right that you and your sister are full sisters so have the same father, but he is not the man your mother was married to?
I admire your ability to remain level headed about all this. I’m sure that’s helped you make good decisions.

@DixonD it’s physically impossible for them to be aunties/uncles as well as niece/nephew or grandparent due to ages. These were the other possibilities of how they could be related.

@SusannahSophia you’re correct in your thinking. Going by how we look and act you can guess who has what Dad. But it is a guess I could by wrong and I may never know.

@FATEdestiny no I haven’t told her. I’m not sure if she would want to know. She did the test to help me and got the answer she/we wanted at the time. I’m not sure telling her this would be good for her currently.

@Schweetheart thank you. Me either there have been plenty of opportunities and she knows I don’t give up so I am sur prised.

@Itsnotallaboutyoubaby @Lovealovestory thank you x

@Ophanim thank you. Yes you’re correct. I’ve been sat on what I know for a while now trying to figure out what I do next but I can’t decide what’s best. I think about it daily so I know I have to do something.

Wow, what a revelation! You come across as a very strong and reasonable person - I truly admire you.

I second what @Ophanim said, and just wanted to add that human relationships have always been messy, it's just that the testing we have now makes it a bit more obvious. The figure of 10% quoted by pp is also what I've been told, and I know of one university lecturer who used to be quizzed regularly by his students along the lines of"you said X but you must be wrong because my parents blood groups are such and such." Even in my own family, without doing any testing I know that my paternal gf was the son of a chambermaid. When my parents wanted to marry it took them ages to get DGM to tell them who the father was and it was a traveling salesman who didn't know he'd had a child.on my mother's side, her gf was given the name of his mother's husband at the time of the birth, but she'd left him several years before and his real father was her employer. (This was all known in the family but not talked about, though there are clues there. His birth certificate for instance gives his presumed father's name, but occupation and address are actually his bio father's. She later married the bio father though, so possibly less of a stigma attached than there might otherwise have been.)

Would these kits tell me if my adult twin daughters were identical twins or not? Maybe I should get us all one for Xmas. I know my dad had lots of affairs so might find a half sibling or two as well.

do you have children op?
how do you know your dad isnt your dad if he is no longer alive?

Glad you came back to update. It's all fascinating.

I've done the match and found my much older half sibling that I didn't know existed. in the divorce, he got custody and my mother just put it all in the closet as he refused to let her see her.

The half sister had a child who she abandoned and was later adopted and she was found through the dna match too. I've talked to them a few times which was quite nice.

I found stories of relatives who were kidnapped as children from both native american and white families and raised in that family. There were a lot of massacres at that time.

It has all been quite interesting and would never have known without the DNA matching.

You mentioned having a brother. Has he taken the test?

Wishing you the best of luck moving forward with this.

Gosh, it sounds like you have uncovered a lot of information you weren’t expecting. To get this right, you initially matched with your sister enough to show she is a full sister which lead you to believe your late DF was your bio-Dad, but more full sibling matches have since come through which couldn’t be related to your DF so now you think that both you and your sister were products of your mum’s affair? Do you have any other siblings who could take the test?

I think in your shoes I would be needing to tell my mum what I’d found and get the truth from her, although I understand it must be a shock to process and can see why you might not be ready to do that yet.

Peanutbutterfalcon are you the oldest child from your mother? Is there a chance you and your sister were born from a known relationship (rather than an affair) between your bio dad and your mum and the dad that raised you married your mother after they broke up? Have you seen their marriage certificate? I ask because children can’t remember when they were young. My b’n’law married a single mum when her child was 4. His bio dad had gone to prison for hurting his mum and the judge had said no contact. This 4 year old after a while starting calling my b’n’law dad and he completely forgot about his bio dad. His mum and stepdad never corrected him so he grew up thinking his stepdad was his bio dad. I was very worried about when he became an adult and realised all this and it did affect him. Is there a chance the lie your mum is protecting you from us the lie you think your dad is your bio dad rather than she had a secret affair? It could explain the timing of your half siblings existence - your bio dad left your mum and moved to this other place where your half sibling lives.

So basically, until now, you didn’t realise that your dad wasn’t your dad?! And your mum (and dad if he knew) has been keeping a huge secret?

i dont think you should take this as gospel op. mistakes are made, particularly if you are having to pay money to a commercial dna testing lab

@BonnyandPoppy

Would these kits tell me if my adult twin daughters were identical twins or not? Maybe I should get us all one for Xmas. I know my dad had lots of affairs so might find a half sibling or two as well.

Yes. An Ancestry test (the most widely used in the UK) would show identical DNA in identical twins, sibling DNA levels in fraternal twins.

Whether you find siblings or half siblings, or close cousins depends on whether other people have tested or not and this varies hugely. I'm from a big family with lots of siblings when you go back a couple of generations, all in the Scottish borders/lowlands, Northumberland, Northern Ireland.

But nobody has tested, my "best" match is a second cousin once removed - her great grandmother Anne was the sister of my grandfather James. 177 cM match between us. And just because you message someone doesn't mean they'll reply... I have thousands of matches at a much lower 4-6 cousin level and haven't managed to fit many of them in. Other people, especially in North America / Aus / NZ test to find their ethnicity breakdown and have no interest in matching with distant relatives, so never build a family tree and aren't interested in working out where you fit in.

DNA doesn't lie but doesn't always explain itself either. Everyone automatically assumes there's been an affair, and that's usually the case. Certainly appears to have been infidelity by the mother in the OP's case. But there could be other things going on too and that's why it's SO important to approach things delicately and with sensitivity. Non-consensual sex is another possibility, we all know now that women can't/don't report rape and things were a lot worse in the past. Before the late 1960s there wasn't the option to terminate an unwanted pregnancy easily either. Many people felt a huge degree of shame over infertility, especially when it was a male "problem". There's a really good podcast on this called the Immaculate Deception which is about the many offspring of a rogue fertility doctor tracking each other down.

So my advice to clients (i'm a genealogist) is always to proceed with caution. As the OP has, to tread gently and give it TIME to sink in rather than rushing off to email everyone, especially when it's very close. To think about counselling to process any unexpected information which comes up. And to respect people's choice not to talk to you about their past or their parents' pasts.

Hello.‘I’ve tried to read through the whole thread. I’m sure you’ve considered this but if there are multiple half siblings and people
Being raised by men who aren’t their biological fathers then there seems a strong possibility of sperm donation (people raised by men who is the biological father could be sperm donors family). I wanted to send you a DM with some links to getting further information about half sibling tracing but I’m finding it hard to work out the message system! If you DM me I’ll send you the info.

I’ve name changed for this but I am a long term poster. And yes I understand this story is un believable but it is in fact true.

Op, the same thing happened to me and before contacting the person I looked her up on the internet and one picture I found was like looking at myself in a mirror. I knew then the person was related to me even though my birth father tried to say perhaps his cousin was her dad as they had been together in the same part of the country at the same time. He’s a twat.

When I replied to the person I said well I know your not my granny and I suspect we are half sisters and she obviously had the same thoughts because our emails to each other suggesting the same crossed.

To be honest it wasn’t a shock to me as over the last 10 years I’d been traced by another 3 half siblings all born to my father with different mums whilst married to my mum.

One thing I’ll say is that I actually had an inkling of something regarding a half sibling after overhearing a discussion when family thought they had lowered their voices in order not to be overheard. I learned from that When in my 50’s that as adults we don’t always speak as quietly as we think we are.

After a decade of surprises I’ve had relationships with all of my siblings but human nature being what it is a couple of them have not stood the test of time. We are very different people. But I am very close to two of them as are my children and other family members. It’s very much a case of the more the merrier.

As for my birth father who I’ve only seen twice in almost 5 decades well it’s very much been a case of, no wonder I never really took to you and the day mum finally left you was a happy day.

It’s why I trust my instincts about people - they were spot on from a very young age. And strangely enough 😜 our birth father wants nothing to do with his ‘new’ children who’ve are undoubtedly better off without him.

Two people I do feel for though are my half siblings from my fathers second marriage who have only ever known their father as the man who (quite significantly) erased the first part of his very unsavory life when reinventing himself thousands of miles away from where all of this happened. Sadly they’ve had to face a lot and as my sister said to me, things that have happened in my lifetime and that we dismissed as no, dad wouldn’t do that, have also had some truth in them and it’s been a real eye opener as well as a big shock in because we thought we had a great childhood.

I also feel for one of my siblings who had grown up thinking her dad was the man who brought her up. It was a great shock to her to find out after he died that she wasn’t his birth daughter despite being his daughter in every other way.

On the plus side though my darling mum did have the last laugh all the way from heaven because my birth father thought he’d gotten away with all of this and I now know all of the names he called her and his claims that she was a mad woman.

I guess he just never thought that one day there would be such a thing as dna testing and the internet and even at 80 years old your past can very easily catch up with you. And yes, it was me who told him via my step mum each time one of his children made contact with me.

Gosh this is fascinating.

I wouldn't assume anyone has had an affair tbh. You mentioned your nan had trouble conceiving. It is possible she had fertility treatment and just not told anyone. She might have received donor eggs. She might have donated her own. She might have used a sperm donor. Your grandfather or father might have been sperm donors. Not everyone talks about these things.

Did you or can you get your brother to do a DNA test? His will give more information (e.g paternal haplogroup). Especially if he turns out to be your full brother.

@VanGoghsDog

My actual half sister only shows up as "possible cousin" on our DNA tests.

Mine too.

I think it’s a delicate way of putting things so to speak - we’ll introduce this to them gently all things considered.

@BloggersBlog

I don't think she's coming across as selfish. The other person must've put their dna on the site too so that a match could be had, surely? So it won't be a total shock I'm sure

Yes. And the other person would also have been told there was a dna match just as the Op was.