As she moved miles away and severed ties with their mother, the siblings found themselves stranded in a web of unanswered questions and painful distance. The family’s bonds, once strong and unbreakable, began to unravel in the shadow of silence, leaving a poignant void where connection and understanding used to reside.
I am one of three siblings: 29F, 27F (me), and 22M.
This all started about five years ago, when my older sister came to me and told me she was looking into our genealogy and wanted me to do one of those novelty genetics tests. I wasn’t enthusiastic about it, but she was weirdly insistent, so I gave her the samples she asked for and moved on, not really giving it much more thought.
At no point did I have a digital login for any results. I also never thought to mention this to my parents.
A few months after this, Sister moved six hours away for another job and was noncommunicative. She would call Dad every once in a while, but Brother and I found that if we didn’t call/text her first, we wouldn’t hear from her, and she basically cut Mom off outright.
When questioned about this, she would refuse to acknowledge that’s what she was doing. Ultimately, we all just accepted it. Mom was totally baffled and broken hearted, and the rest of us naturally became less close with Sister as a result.
Even she and Dad only talk a few times a year now, and none of us have seen her in person in five years.
Earlier this year, Brother did 23AndMe and got weird results that led to hard conversations. Mom and Dad came clean that the three of us were donor conceived, a choice they made because Dad is infertile.
They apologized for not telling us earlier, but Dad felt strongly about not telling us because he never wanted us to think of him as any less our dad.
Dad called Sister and told her this too after we talked, and she basically had a breakdown on the phone. It turns out that she knew Dad wasn’t her bio father, and firmly believed for five years that Mom had cheated on Dad and had been nursing intense resentments as a result.
Apparently she did a genetics test five years ago and was puzzled that the ancestry info didn’t match with what we knew about Dad’s family. That’s when she came to me to get a sample.
She sent it to a lab with hers, and they confirmed the results were genetic half-siblings, with the same mother and different fathers. She drew her own conclusions from there (that dad was my bio-father and not hers, and that Mom had had an affair) and uprooted her life to get a fresh start.
She’s now furious about the situation and feels like she’s been robbed of the last five years. When we last talked, I was maybe less sympathetic than I should have been and told her cutting us off with no explanation was an insane move, and if she’d told us even a fraction of what was going on, it could have been cleared up years ago.
I acknowledged Mom and Dad messed up here by not being truthful about our genetic identities (which I’m also struggling with my own feelings on), but in the end, it was her decision to do this dramatic move and slow fade with zero explanation.
I also expressed how hurt Brother and I had been to be left out of her life, and that it wasn’t fair to punish us for what she thought had happened. AITA?
Conclusion
The original poster (OP) is dealing with complex emotions stemming from the revelation that they and their siblings are donor-conceived, a truth previously hidden by their parents. The central conflict arises because the older sister, having discovered this information years earlier through independent testing and misinterpreted results, chose to silently distance herself from the entire family without explanation, leading to significant emotional damage and resentment among the siblings.
Given the sister’s decision to self-isolate based on incomplete and incorrect assumptions, was the OP justified in confronting her about the damage done by her actions, or should the OP have approached the situation with more patience given the sister’s five-year period of private suffering and misunderstanding?
Here’s how people reacted:
Your parents could (and maybe should) have told you all a lot sooner, sure, although I understand why they didn’t, your dad is your father and those donors are just that, donors.
Feels strange to me though that you never questioned your sister asking you for samples and never giving you results, especially due to the timing of her becoming distant and moving/losing contact, but I guess it wasn’t your responsibility to figure that out.
She can be upset about losing 5 years with her family that’s fair, but you all lost those 5 years with your sister/daughter too.
In her reality, she basically found a secret that could break apart her family and possibly uproot her little siblings’ and dad’s life, so she keeps it her burden to bear instead of troubling others, distances herself from the perpetrator (aka mom) without being absolutely mean to her. This took a lot of strength to do.
Even if she was wrong at the end, you should be appreciative of her. Be a good sister and soothe her. She thought she was doing what was best for her family aka you.
She is not an asshole in the slightest. But you will be if you or anyone in your family makes her feel worse.
Turn this situation as a team in a way that you’ll look back on and laugh in a decade, and not as a situation that further drives you away.
Everyone should apologise to everyone here. Especially your parents, cause again, the right intentions went horribly wrong.
I want to list what happened here:
* OMG, my dad is not my bio-dad.
* OMG, my sister and I have different bio-dads.
* That’s it, I’m not talking to anyone in the family.
* I don’t talk to anyone in the family for 5 years.
* My sister and brother do their own testing. Dad is not their bio-dad.
* Bro and Sis have conversations, and find out donor sperm was used for all.
* I’m mad that I put everyone, including myself, through help for 5 years for nothing.
If you refuse to communicate to people who are your family, what chance do you have in the world of having any close relationships. People today confuse data and information–your dad not being your bio-dad is data, your parents using donor sperm because of fertility issues is information. Don’t make decisions until you have information not just data. And for Christ sakes talk to people you call family.
Your parents had their reasons for keeping the secret. But, the secret itself destroyed your sister’s faith in her family.
I can’t see me being upset with my sister for filling in the blanks with incorrect information after we’d all been lied to. All I see is someone who made a mistake because lies manipulated everyone.
At any rate, NAH. (If my father wasn’t actually my biological father, I’d prefer not to know, frankly. I identify as his daughter and it would be devastating to find out my truth is a big lie. Just sayin’, I feel sorry for your sister – not angry with her.)
I understand your sister’s reaction, but she took it all that way on a misunderstanding.
Your parents should have made this known to all of you from the start. These days of easy DNA testing mean that these secrets are usually going to come out, and often badly.
I was adopted, and knew from as early as I can remember. I’m glad I did. I’d hate to find out I’d been lied to for decades.
People should just be honest up front about this. Society puts so much emphasis on “bloodlines”, and people think that is the end-all of being “related”. Your parents are those who raised you, regardless of where the genes are from.
To your sister, she was trapped in an impossible situation and didn’t know what to do. Avoiding everyone let her put off blowing up the family and maybe losing her dad forever, or actively deceiving everyone. There are definitely families where the father has cut kids out after learning about paternity fraud….she must have been so scared of being rejected in that way.
You just wanted to comprehend what was going on while your sister was being shady.
She also made that assumption that your mom cheated and, while I’m sure your dad is a respectable guy, it probably left your mom heartbroken to just feel cut off from her own kid like that.
You didn’t even do anything that bad as a follow up, you just stated that it hurt you and your brother.
You’re a good person, just looking out for those around you. Keep being that good person.
come on, this is your parents 100%, she was probably dying inside… What the actual ______?!!!? And she was nice enough to not disrupt the whole family dynamic and just excused herself because… mental breakdown existential crisis best to just process things in your own. Imagine finding out your reality is not what you think…
Your brother did exactly what your sister SHOULD have done and now she’s probably very upset because she realises how epically fucking stupid her decisions were. No doubt she’ll project some of that embarrassment on others and lash out, as is the way when people get owned as badly as this.
You and your brother most likely weren’t “punished”. That seems more like an attempt of protecting herself from possible rejection by doing the rejecting first.
You are right to be unimpressed by her behaviour, but have a little empathy for how other people deal with traumatic reveals.
Your sister didn’t want to destroy your family. So she moved and reduced contact. By not confirming the info with either parent, she could justify not saying anything.
Of course, being abruptly cut from someone’s life, hurts.
Did you ever mention the DNA test to either parent?
Your parents are both the AH’s here.
> She’s now furious about the situation and feels like she was robbed of the last five years
Um, well…totally on her. She can be mad at herself all she wants, but at no one else.