Sibling I never knew in touch

[Highfivemum]

Keep this brief and will change slight details to keep it discreet .
I have been contacted by a someone who states that they have the same mum as me.
backstory is I was in care as was my younger DB from a young age. No contact with any family but my DB. From the age of 18 I took custody of my DB and raised him with my DH. ( he was 11) we are very close.
I have never had any doubt that one or both of my parents probably had more DC but this is out of the blue and they say they are older than me !
I know it is not their fault but I do not want any contact with any other siblings as I shut that part of my life away along time ago and it would open all wounds. But do I tell my DB. ? He has been very strong in saying he never wants any contact from any part of our families in the past but by not telling him I feel I am lying to him. My DH says i should tell him I feel I should just ignore it.
WWYD ?

my DB has had a lot of hurt in the past and lost his first wife at a young age and it affected him. I cannot let this happen again.
We are all in happy places now. This has knocked me a bit sideways.

It's too big of a decision to make for him, OP. I do think you're doing the right thing telling him.

It hurts when family members take decisions out of your hands. I know this because a bitch cousin of mine has gone digging for my Mum's birth family on an Ancestry site even though she knows Mum doesn't want to know anything about them. It has caused so much hurt and anger that a decision that was hers alone to make has been over-ridden and now she has to live with knowing who her birth Mum is and that she has siblings living relatively close by. It's been like a grenade going off in our family.

I would establish the facts, and get confirmation they are a sibling before proceeding.

I am sorry it knocked you, but you really do need to let him know. Fine if you dont want contact, nothing wrong with that. But he has to make up his own mind.

So do I. Just because DNA is there doesn't mean this contact is always OK. And also the UK legislation on donor and adoption was put in place for good reasons. So now everyone flies abroad. So Long Lost Families in 20 years time will be much more international and totally DNA based (due to supposed anonymity).

I would be tempted to tell him as gently as possible by keeping some emotional distance from the sender of the email.

I got an email from somebody who thinks they might be a sibling. Are you interested in finding out?

I am aware that I have relations out there. Not sure if they know about me, but I can’t see what tracking them down will achieve. When I moved to the UK I debated getting in touch. But once I made a decision to avoid them and move on, it was a relief. I forged my own path and made my own tribe. I understand not wanting to rake the past all over again. Perhaps you and your brother could make a decision together for any future contact. A rule, once properly made, can remove a lot of future agonising.

So many people feeling lost in the world, but I’m not at all sure that internet searching and DNA testing will help.

Yes 100%. Davina and that bloody show.

@paintingvenice You talk about choice from a position of hurt and bitterness which you seem to be projecting at entirely innocent parties.

The law rightly changed to give those "selfish" and "entitled" people a right to know about their birth origins for good reasons. Do try and remember that the children involved here had no choice in the matter at all. You are an adult and free to make those choices. Myself and many others had none.

In the ‘Long lost families- what happens next’, a fair few relationships have broken down or reverted to Christmas/birthday type contact only. Its not all Happy Ever After endings.

Because my daughter is adopted I come in at this at a slightly different angle. You need to put you guys first. Have you both really recovered from the previous contact? The social workers we met talked about how hard adult adopted found it emotionally and mentally when they met birth family. (It was explaining why it's so important to maintain birth family contact if it was positive)
I suggest you get counselling for you and then think more clearly about next steps/telling your brother. Do things on your timetable

Brief update
My DH and I told my DB last night and my DB reaction was upsetting. Even my DH said maybe we should have said nothing. What a mess

What a shame it upset him you both have been through such a lot, it is probably better that he is upset and then try and work through it than this sibling contacting him out of the blue on SM saying hi I'm your brother/sister

It's an upsetting situation, for sure but one cannot go through life without facing challenges. It seems as though you both really struggle accepting and working through your past and it sounds as though your brother could benefit from some therapy or counselling to develop distress tolerance and work through trauma. Hiding information from him is not going to enable him to cope in the long term.

It's very sad it upset him, but if you'd not told him and he'd later found out that the one person he trusted more than anyone else in the world had 'lied' and kept this from him I think his hurt may have been her far far greater.

I found out I had a half sibling through a message on Facebook. The situation/background was very different to yours, but my parents knew that the sibling would be trying to contact me because they had contacted my older siblings first but nobody told me and I had to find out through a Facebook message. It made a hard situation worse.
Unless you knew for definite that this person wasn’t going to try and contact your brother, I think it’s best you told him and not risk him receiving a message too and then him finding out that they had already tried to contact you.

It would still have been a mess if this person had reached out to your DB independently, and may have been worse. Give it time to settle, you did the right thing. Neither of you created this situation.

Gosh it’s a difficult one. If it had been family you knew I would say stay away but this is someone who presumably has been adopted/ never been part of your family? That puts a slightly different thought on it for me.

Sorry just read your update and I think you were right to tell him.

It was the right thing to do even though it's upsetting. Your brother was probably shocked but will calm down once he's had a chance to absorb this new information. If he's not interested in communicating with the unknown sibling, that's fine. But he should definitely have been told about it, keeping secrets in families will always cause problems in the long run.

Thank you all for your comments.
maybe in most families this new information can be absorbed and then contact made as rightly so my past has nothing to do with this sibling. However I cannot ever go down that route. I have no desire whatsoever to go down a route that ultimately will bring back so many memories and fears. My DB feels exactly the same. We survived and we are now both in good places around people we love and are loved. My DB took the news like I did. He went quiet and like he had seen a ghost. I apologised for telling him but said I had to for many reasons not least he may have the same contact I had from the sibling. He just looked at me and didn’t speak. That broke me. He then asked me to please never mention it again.

It's OK for him to not want to talk about it. I hope you are both OK and able to move past this.

I've no desire not even a bit curious in my half sibling or meeting them at all I think its acceptable not to be interested.

Although you may have upset your DB, I think you did need to tell him, just in case something crops up in future. My own DH has, we believe 6 siblings who he has no interest whatsoever in ever being in contact.

Then you say, okay then. It hasn’t gone badly. You told him, he was triggered, as you expected, and he doesn't want to hear no more. This is okay.

I think you should tell your brother & let him decide. It's a tricky situation. All the best.

Yes he has the right to know. He can choose to ignore it but it should be his choice.

I have just noted that you have told him. That was the right thing to do when though he wants no contact. You have been open and honest with him.