Ancestry results= family bombshell??

[SqueakyRadish]

Hey!
So... I did an ancestry thing just for fun, thought it would be cool to see my heritage etc.

Had my results back last week and it has "matched" me with another user that I share 27% of my DNA with, who it suggests is a half sibling or niece.

The most likely explanation (due to various factors) is that this is a niece.

But what the actual fuck do I do now? I feel awful because I know this and, as far as I know, nobody else in the family does.

I have one brother who has no children (or so I thought!) but who has been living, happily, with his partner and her 2 children for around 10 years.

He could have no idea? He could know and just want to keep it secret? He could know and other people in the family might know but keep it secret?

I literally just don't know what to do. I feel like I can't ask anyone in my family for advice because then I'm putting it on them as well.

Plus, if this other person does not want to be contacted or have anything to do with us then it feels like it would be better to just keep things as they are and do nothing at all.

I don't really know what I want... I just needed somewhere to talk about this and figure out what, if anything, I do next...

You are in a tricky situation. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. But in your case, I would quietly speak with my brother and show him the results. Let him decide whether he wants to take it further. It's easy to say 'just stay silent,' but this concerns him, one way or another. What if he finds out years from now and he asks, 'Why didn’t you tell me?' I believe the truth is always the best way forward.

Unless you’re in need of a kidney, leave it.

family are the people you spend time with. Someone at sometime has chosen that this person isn’t part of your life and you ought to respect that.

What if it was a ONS, they didn’t exchange numbers, presumably before social media was as big, maybe didn’t even get surnames and their parent couldn’t tell them anything about their dad so now they’re using ancestry?

I had to take a few deep breaths after I read this. Your comment made me feel really angry. I found out via ancestry at the age of 47 that the man who raised me wasn’t my father. To cut a very long complicated story short, everyone involved was dead by then and I never got to meet my biological father and two of my half siblings who had died by then. I’m now trying to make up for all the years I didn’t know my family and I have so many unanswered questions. One of the most concerning things was that I discovered some genetic health issues that I had no idea existed and it could have been disastrous without screening.
To everyone on this thread. If you don’t have personal experience of how this feels, don’t flippantly speculate about what you would or wouldn’t feel or how you’d behave. You have absolutely no idea. Lies and secrets and shame ruin peoples lives. We are entitled to understand who we are and where we came from. I’m still having therapy to get to grips with being lied to so egregiously and for so long by people who were supposed to love me, but actually were just protecting themselves. I wish to god one of the people who’d known about this had spoken up about it earlier which would have saved me so much heartache.

No, it's the potential niece who must've done a test.

I had this exact same thing happen 4 years ago. Came up an an aunt but turned out to be a half sister who my mum gave birth to at 17 and was forced to give up for adoption in the 60s. We never once thought it could be a child of my mum's so it was a complete shock. It turned into a wonderful story but it was very traumatic at the time. If you want to PM me please do x

Your DNA comes up saying match for Parent 1 and Parent 2. If you know your family background you can allocate parent1 to either mother or father pretty easily. Your matches then all say 'paternal match', 'maternal match', 'unassigned' or 'both'.

The more closely related you are, the easier it is for ancestry to allocate accordingly. You can get 'both' through your ancestors being in similar social circles and the descendant lines crossing but these are easily spotted from the closeness of the match.

A very close relative having 'both' would generally indicate a niece or nephew rather than half sibling (though you do get a few oddities if you are all very closely related).

I would try to find as much about this woman as possible and see if you can work out where in the world she is / was likely conceived / born and who her mother is. You might be able to map out whether she could be a niece or not.

I’m sorry this happened to you. And you’ve hit the nail on the head “protecting themselves”. Sending love and strength as you navigate this.

Plus, if this other person does not want to be contacted or have anything to do with us then it feels like it would be better to just keep things as they are and do nothing at all

They’ll be notified of the match so may contact you anyway.
Had a few huge surprises when I did mine. But I took the view that anyone who had done the tests and had put it out there, as it were, must be (or, should be) ready to hear things they hadn’t previously known or suspected.

My DF never knew his father and he wasn’t named on his BC - though he had been given his surname. And he didn’t want to find out (certainly not whilst his mother and step father were alive). But after they’d all died I did mine on Ancestry. I was soon contacted by a man, similar age to me, asking whether I knew how we could have a strong match as he couldn’t work it out. Looking at his public tree showed me clearly who my DFs father was. His Grandfather. I thought about it for a bit and decided that he had joined and done his DNA and made it all public so I should tell him what I knew. He was fine with it. Slightly surprised. His mother is still alive but I’ve no idea if he told her.

Also discovered my step grandfather (who always bemoaned that he had no children of his own with my grandmother) had actually had a child with her sister before they were married! As far as the family the child was the child of her husband!

It’s what is possible/likely to happen when you sign up for these things 🤷‍♀️

No…please just don’t tell anyone!

Well, the potential “niece” will be notified of a match to you. Most likely she will contact you and you can take it from there. If she is already on there, she may well be looking for her father. There was a good radio 4 series about these at home DNA kits and all sorts of things came out.

This. I get on with both my brothers though so would have their interests at heart. I would assume they didn't know and present them with the information and let them make the next move.

I would tell my brother. What if he has a child out there he doesn’t know about? What if he finds out later and is devastated at missing more time with her and you could have done something sooner?

Obviously so.

I’d sit tight for a few days and see if the niece makes the first move.

I had this happen, sort of, when I did an ancestry test a few years ago. We discovered my dad had siblings he had never known about. His parents divorced when he was 2, and his dad moved continents, and went on to have another family. It was a bit of a surprise but not a huge shock. Mainly a surprise as he’d been in touch with his dad’s sister throughout his life who had always insisted he was his dad’s only child (I assume she didn’t like the second wife!).

I actually didn’t see the messages from his brother for quite a few months as I wasn’t very active on the site, so I think you have a bit of breathing room/ plausible deniability to watch and wait. I’d want to be sure the niece wanted to know more I think. It sounds like your brothers life wouldn’t be too badly impacted by this news - but who knows what could be going on for her.

We are entitled to understand who we are and where we came from

Yes, strongly agree. I feel sorry for my DF that he never knew who his father was and that he went his whole life quite isolated, as an only child, and no knowledge of he really was. Mostly, that for all his life, he’d had a sister. She may have wanted to know him.

Sperm donation? When I was at uni (several decades ago and IVF was in its infancy), all the guys used to go as often as possible to keep brain their drinking money 🤣. It was a huge joke for us all at the time “how many visits did tonight cost you Bruce”. At the time it was all absolutely anonymous and there wasn’t even proper ID so to speak of - was before computers took over and any ID you did have was paper based and people will have used a ‘dummy one’ for anything like this if they demanded it. I would think there are lots of anomalies coming up now due to stuff like this.

ETA - the guys also had to do ‘medical experiments’ (pharmacokinetic clinical trials) as pretty much mandatory back then with our degree, and they also got paid (poorly, again drinking $$), so us females felt extremely ripped off about our lack of ‘easy’ $$ opportunities. One could say the guys took pity on us for this and therefore shouted many of our drinks. Or, one could say it was to their benefit we had drinks. It was certainly a different time🤣.

What’s your relationship with your brother like?
And was the child born before he was married?

If the answer to those questions are ‘good and yes’ then talk to him. There are two possibilities. He knows and hasn’t told you or doesn’t know. If he does know then he may rather not know more or he might want to meet his only child.

I’d tell your brother. If he’s a good person then he won’t know because it isn’t something he would hide. Presuming he’s a good person, he has a child he doesn’t know exists and would want to try to rectify that situation. It’s also likely this woman is trying to find her father. Everyone deserves to know who their biological parents are if they want to. People like to try to minimise the importance of it, but to some people, it is important.

Thank you - the worst of it is that my mother died when I was under 10 and my ‘father’ was incredibly bitter and made it very obvious he didn’t want me. I was treated very differently from my siblings who were his biological children and I always thought it was because I was worthless.
So sorry for the oversharing, but I cannot convey enough, how this ruined my life.
I appreciate your kindness so much.

Just checking…So your father’s stepfather had a child with his wife’s sister, before he married his wife?

My late db didn't have any children as fast as I know and I'd love to find a surprise neice or nephew. If he was alive I'd definitely let him know, I don't believe in secrets like this - everyone deserves to know who their parents are.

You are not worthless. Wish I could give you a hug. Sending one through here 💐

Great idea