Found a sibling

[WWYDPlease]

Has anyone ever been contacted by a sibling they didn't know they had?

I've been aware I had one for many years, and for some reason today I decided to do a bit of detective work, and I found them. The resemblance to my parent is unbelievable.

I don't really know what to do with this now. I feel weird.

I don't know if this person even knows that they have a different birth parent than the one they know.

Has anyone ever experienced anything like this? Contacted a sibling they found or been contacted by one they didn't know they had?

Xh made contact with a sibling and she was really cross. She hadn’t known that the man who raised her wasn’t her biological father.
It was a bombshell and no one dealt with it well. He approached it badly to be fair. Poor woman. Xh felt rejected, her family were cross, she was cross at her family and at Xh.
Be careful!

Can you sign up to a DNA website and then if she wants to she can find you?

Yes, my brother contacted her and it was a big mistake. He is deeply deeply wounded that there isn’t a connection to the point he’s been kind of suicidal because the whole thing highlighted how fucked up our family is and more skeletons came of the closet, is it was very complex, our dad had died when we found her, I wouldn’t have pursued reaching out because personally, our dad was a nasty abusive arsehole, and she is better off never having him in her life and I felt lien we shouldn’t drag her into our fucked up family, but I wanted to support my other sibling in getting the answers he needed so went along with it because I was worried about him.

What we did was after finding her, we found her mum and then messaged her to see if it would be upending our half siblings world. Turns out her mum had told her truth all along.

I expected it to be hard and was very very cautious but her and my brother were rushing and went too fast, the hurt to me was minimal but both her and my brother ended up heartbroken and feeling rejected.

I knew someone this happened to. He wasn’t surprised as his father had been a lot older than his mother and he’d always thought that it was his father’s second marriage. In fact it turned out that his father had had an affair, before meeting his mother but probably whilst still married to his first wife.

What hurt was that he was contacted by a family tree researcher who was working for what turned out to be his older half brother. He responded to the letter, confirming the details that had been suggested to him, but never heard anything more. That left him wishing that he’d not been contacted in the first place. It was as though he’d been used as an academic exercise with no regard for his personal feelings.

I have one and I was a bit reluctant but met him and really like him. He didn't really care for a relationship and neither did I but funnily enough i think thats why it went well. We have very similar outlooks and attitudes. There are 3 others who are siblings of each other that I knew about for a long time (before the other guy) but they didn't know about me. They have recently found out and want to meet but I have no interest. I think its cos there are 3 of them I'll feel judged and it will be their big drama. I don't know I just have enough going on in my own life now. I am completely uncurious about them, it's hard to explain but it really means nothing to me.

Edited to add, I am really really against DNA websites. It causes absolute chaos just to satisfy someone's fleeting curiosity. That's not how I found out, but I recently had to tell one of my DC all the shit I didn't want to tell them because they were going to do one of these tests. It's my story to tell, my secret to keep if I so choose and I don't like that some website making easy money can overturn lives like that.

I think there are so many "it depends" in each and every situation, it is difficult for any of us to answer you as it will all be so personal.

Things like whether the shared parent is still alive, and if so, what your relationship is like with them.
What about your other parent.
How do you know / how did you find out in the first place you might have a half sibling?
What was the circumstance of relationships when you and / or your half sibling were conceived ?
Who else knows / might know ?

It there an Aunt / Uncle / Friend of your parent who knew about this half sibling ?

I don't want to know the answers you have to any of these questions, but I think you will get different answers from people who have different circumstances from each other.

As a pp said, to find out that you were given up for adoption by 2 parents that stayed together and went on to have other dc who they chose to keep must hit very differently from finding out a 15 yr old gave a baby up for adoption, and then 15 years later had a very different life and had a baby in a stable relationship with someone else, just as one example.

NC for this. I was adopted as a tiny baby, always knew I was adopted, had a very happy upbringing. I decided to find out more about my birth parents when I was working in the very small town where I was born. Living in the nearest city I’d already had an odd experience where someone thought I might have been their sibling after a conversation about birthdays and being adopted. My birthday matched that of her parent’s first child, born when her parents were very young. Parental pressure forced them to give the baby up for adoption. They had gone on to marry and have several other children and were really keen to make contact with their “lost” child. A bit of research quickly showed it wasn’t me. It really spooked me that I could accidentally be found like that and I wanted to know more to protect myself and my real (adoptive) parents.

It was a shock to find that I had both an older half sibling and a younger one. My birth mother was married and had had an affair. She gave me up and returned to her husband. She actually died very young. I found out a little about my older sibling, couldn’t find any trace of the younger one.

The circumstances around it all were quite sad. I got the impression of a sad life and a very unhappy home. I was lucky to have avoided living in that situation. For that reason I’ve never made contact, I doubt that the father of my half siblings will have told them about what happened and my older sibling was a toddler when this was happening.

You could find yourself in a happy situation where you’ll be welcomed and form new bonds or caught up in a lot of misery. My guess is that most adoptions and other circumstances where children are concealed were painful then and still painful now, so it’s maybe a shade more likely that the outcome won’t be particularly positive.

I did contact half siblings I found when I discovered who my biological father was. Unfortunately he had died some years previously but I found out I had five half siblings from his two marriages. He never knew I existed. I had some contact back and forth with a half brother (who it turns out was one day younger than me). He was friendly if cautious and after conferring with his siblings said that there would be no contact for the time being - partly as they did not want to upset his late wife who presumably had no idea.

I've also more recently had a conversation on the phone with another half sibling, I wanted to know more about my bio father, his personality etc. and it was a really helpful conversation. Again, there is no desire on their part to form a relationship so I'm not sure I'll ever meet them. I would love to but I'm OK with the current situation. What's funny is pics I've seen on social media - which make it apparent that I look much more like my lost family than the half siblings I grew up with!

My dad had 3 daughters from his first marriage, I’ve 3 half sisters who I’ve never met. I’ve seen a picture of one as she is in contact with my cousins and she is my dads double, I don’t know about the other two.
they know about me and I obviously know about them but neither side has ever made contact, I’m very curious but think I’ll leave it alone.

I would love to be contacted if it was me.

The situation is that this sibling was born before me. They probably don't know anything about me. I'm afraid they might believe both their parents are their real parents. They don't appear to have other siblings.

Both my parents are dead now.

I have another full-sibling, who I've told. She was interested to look, but I don't think she wants to take it further.

The parent we share was not a good person.

I was contacted many years ago by a friend of my half sister. I had posted on many local forums for info about my dad. My half sister had employed a researcher to find her dad. We met, we are remarkably similar in many ways. We also found out that there are at least another 3 siblings out there somewhere, but given I am the youngest of the 5 and nearly 60, chances of finding them are slim.

I was the sibling that was found, my half sister came looking for me but I had never know that my dad wasn’t my biological dad so it was a bit of a shock, my mum died when I was a child and no one told me.

Turns out there four half siblings who all knew about each other and had known our shared dad as their dad even though they had different mums to each other so I felt very much like an outsider and the only child rejected.

I met the shared dad, didn’t think much of him. Met the siblings and they were all nice enough but didn’t stay in contact.

Please be careful @WWYDPlease

There is an enormous range of reactions people can have. It comes as a greater shock if the person contacted has absolutely no idea of siblings or half-siblings and it can cause a great deal of joy - or distress.

A previous poster's idea of contacting an adoption charity to ask how to approach this is a very good one. I think maybe the Salvation Army has some expertise in this area too. This really is a case where 'fools rush in' because sometimes it works, but sometimes it really doesn't.

Meetings can go either way but very often there's a lot of hope or expectation attached and if the expectations aren't met there can be a crash. Even if it goes well, either side can choose to not keep contact and then the other can be hurt.

If things go well it can hugely enrich everyone's life, or it can be neutral, or it can be an absolute disaster.

Please give this considerable thought and take advice. It's even more complicated if the mutual parent is not a good person.

Agree with those who say whatever you decide don’t do it now, at Christmas. If it’s a shock to them and brings out some skeletons then you don’t want the memory of that to ruin every Xmas for them

I was the sibling in this situation. I am adopted and always wondered about my birth mother. I traced her when I was about 30 and she didn’t want contact. I wish I had left it there. A few years later I contracted my birth sister and we met up. She was shocked as she didn’t know anything about me but slowly came round. I was really hoping for a connection as I am NC with my adoptive sister however it didn’t happen. There was no history, no connection and it was really hard work. We drifted apart after a few years and while I’m glad I know about my history I would caution anyone thinking about it against it.

I have a potential half sister who doesn't know about me, she's not of an age for me to contact her yet and I'm not sure if I will. I need to decide if I can manage the rejection should it occur first, which it might it's one of a few things that might happen in this situation. I'm not sure if my potential biological father (the shared parent) is aware I exist either, I've heard conflicting stories off my mum so I'm not sure what the truth is, she's not known for her honesty and never tells the full/true story.

Those are very good points to think about. In my case the circumstances have been pretty tame, we both knew about each others existance from a young age through a mutual relative, but due to living far apart it took many years to finally meet in person. I have to say though, I doubt I would have bothered meeting up if I didn't have an inkling we have enough common to hit it off. Also, neither of us have other siblings, that's probably another reason, why we both put in an effort to keep the relationship going.

In the cases that I know of from my friends circle it has been more complicated due to the fathers having an affair and didn't go further than a couple of exchanges on facebook or complete refusal to engage. But from what I understand it at least gave a bit of closure to learn that the fathers were generally pretty shitty people, proven by the fact the officially recognized kids were not surprised there have been affairs.

My son found about his half sister thus year, after their grandmother died.

I say found out, but I already knew about her, as his dad told me at the start of the relationship. I knew her name and met her, but my the partner wanted nothing to do with his daughter and never saw her (it was apparently a one night stand).

I told my son about her and even tried to find her on Facebook.

When my son was an adult, he asked his dad and grandparents about her, but they denied she existed and said I was lying!!!

After* *theirnan died, their father went quite crazy (he's a diagnosed schizophrenic, but his mum made sure he took his meds), he sent a message to his daughterm that accidentally went to my son...that's how he found out.

The family had known her for four years after she found her dad via a DNA ancestry site. In that time they never told my sin. In fact they told her that my son didn't want contact with her!

They have a relationship now and it's weird p, but lovely, that he's an uncle.

All these horrible men fucking around and abandoning children 🤬

I'm erring on the side of "don't contact them".

It's possible/probable that I have unknown siblings out there. I don't really care and I'm not interested in finding out. The DNA link is meaningless to me. Biological family is fairly meaningless to me. Close relationships are built up over time and memories, they're deeper than just being related by blood, and you can't just get yourself a ready-made, instant sibling relationship.

And that's the thing. I like meeting new people so I might say yes out of curiosity (and while my circumstances aren't especially happy, they're not traumatic either). But the kind of person who'd track me down is the kind of person who wants that ready-made sibling closeness and frankly I find that creepy and weird. DNA link or not, I wouldn't feel close to someone I didn't know.

Someone I know went a bit overboard finding her long-lost siblings, against all my advice. She got really emotionally invested in the idea of sibling relationships and was hurt when none of the people she found were especially interested. In one case she would comment weekly on one guy's Instagram calling him her "baby bro". They hadn't met and he didn't want to meet! I cringed my face off.