What would you do if you met the man of your dreams, and married him, only to find that he was…….your twin brother, and that you had been separated at birth?
That’s exactly what happened to a British couple.
“A pair of twins who were adopted by separate families as babies got married without knowing they were brother and sister, a peer told the House of Lords.
A court annulled the British couple’s union after they discovered their true relationship, Lord Alton said.
The peer – who heard of the case from a judge who was involved – said the twins felt an “inevitable attraction”.
He said the case showed how important it was for children to be able to find out about their biological parents.”
How terribly tragic.
Eve Vaughn
January 12
11:02 pm
Okay, I just threw up a little in my mouth thinking about a brother and sister getting married, although through no fault of their own, so I can’t begin to imagine what these two must be going through. I feel sorry for them because they’ll have to deal with this for the rest of their lives. I hope they both get the therapy I’m sure they’ll need and this underlines why children have the right to know who their parents are if they’re adopted if for nothing else for medical information and to prevent incidents like this. I hope there were no children involved.
Cara
January 12
11:15 pm
I read this yesterday and the ick factor was mixed with the heart break. Are they still physically attracted to each other? Will they choose to live a taboo life? Sick questions, but they run through my mind. I hope they work this situaiton out ok.
Amie Stuart
January 13
12:05 am
THIS is sad. Very sad.
I used to do adoption search/reunions and I remember one story of older biological siblings who fell in love and ran off together thinking because they were past child-bearing age, it was okay. *Sigh*
byrdloves2read
January 13
12:11 am
Knowing how intuitively twins react to one another, I imagine they truly believed they were soul mates. What a tragic story.
Shiloh Walker
January 13
12:32 am
Now that is sad.
Angela James
January 13
1:10 am
So I was talking to my husband about this, and is it still “family” if you’re not raised with any familial relationship or awareness of someone at all? Does just the fact that they share the same DNA make it icky, or is it because most of us think of brother/sister relationships as a different type of familial bond? In a way, I can kind of understand their fight to keep the marriage. They don’t know each other as brother and sister. They know each other as husband and wife. The only thing making that “wrong” is DNA. I t’s not exactly like the incest fantasies that are talked about as taboo, where the familial relationship/dynamics/power is in place. This is something different. I feel sorry for them because I’ll bet all the people who thought they were a great couple will now think it’s an abomination. What a horrible, horrible thing to have happen.
Amanda Young
January 13
1:52 am
How horrible. I really feel terrible for them. I can’t imagine how much they’re suffering.
Jodi_Lee
January 13
2:20 am
Wow! Sometimes truth IS really stranger than fiction. So, obviously, they weren’t identical…right??
Tracy
January 13
3:05 am
Jodi_lee~all different sex twins are fraternal. They can only be identical if they are the same sex. But same sex twins can be either fraternal or identical. Confusing hey? LOL
TPTB
January 13
3:37 am
Amanda,
I have to wonder too. They weren’t raised as brother and sister so they don’t see each other that way.
It’s a really sad case. I can’t even imagine how they will deal with their love for one another.
TPTB
January 13
3:38 am
Sorry, that should have been Angela, not Amanda.
Kristie (J)
January 13
4:32 am
I read about this too and thought how incredibly sad it was – to finally find your partner and fall in love, only to find out it’s your sibling.
Jane
January 13
2:17 pm
That is a really sad case. They are going to be living with this for the rest of their lives. I think that all the counselling in the world isn’t going to make them fall out of love with each other. They’ll probably have to move a long, long way from each other because seeing each other will constantly re-enforce those feelings. I can’t imagine what they are going through.
Still that guy has a point the laws regarding egg, sperm donation need to be tightened up so that they are on a par with adoption. The rights of the child, not the “parents” should be paramount. I personally think it is an extremely selfish thing to have a child with annoymous egg or sperm donation.
If they don’t well I can see that in the future this will happen all too often. We may end up routinely dna screening couples before marriage and babies when they are born.
whey
January 13
5:57 pm
I call “shenanigans” on this story. No details or verifiable facts on this, just what Lord Alton states someone told him? A little hinky when combined with him using this as an example to push an agenda.
Anonymous
January 13
6:26 pm
Whey,
This sort of thing is more common than you might think. I know of two cases where separated siblings have followed through on their attraction. The children born to one couple were blind and/or deaf, whilst the other couple actually found out they were related and didn’t have children. The second couple stayed together anyway.
And I should say that I am acquainted with these people.
Ann Aguirre
January 14
5:01 am
What Angela said.
Possessing similar DNA doesn’t make two people brother and sister without having shared experiences as part of the same nuclear family. They may share genetic material, but they are never going to think of each other in that way.
Dionne Galace
January 14
7:35 am
Heh, I told this story at the dinner table tonight. I started it this way, “You know when you meet someone and there’s this instant connection and you can’t explain what it is but you just know that other person gets you like no one else can?” and at this point my boyfriend looks at me and has an “awww” look in his eyes and then I say, “Yeah, you know what that connection is? THE FACT THAT THE GUY YOU’RE FUCKING IS YOUR LONG-LOST FRATERNAL TWIN!!” and my mom was all, “oh, honestly, not at the dinner table…”
heh. my word verification is: rimdogq
Katie(babs)
January 14
2:46 pm
If this was me, I would need some serious therapy. Imagine meeting the man of your dreams and want to get married like everyone else, and you find out about this??? So sad and horrible. 🙁 Major FUBAR moment.
Elizabeth Kerri Mahon
January 14
6:49 pm
I actually read a novel years ago when I was in my teens where this happened. Couple met and fell in love, feeling that the whole thing was fated, and then when they tried to have a baby, they found out that they were twins seperated at birth. Of course, the book ends tragically if I recall. How tragic to find it actually happening in real life.
FlannerySC
January 15
7:52 pm
I remember about 12 years ago (I can date it because my daughter was about 1), here in America there were a couple of stories like this in the news. One was a couple that had gotten pregnant in their mid teens and given the baby boy up for adoption. Against the odds, the couple stayed together and ended up marrying and having more kids later. Their daughter met a guy, fell in love and they got engaged. Somehow when they were visiting her family they talked about the fact that he was adopted, and her parents pieced together who he was by various facts that proved out after further research. They hated to break the news to the engaged couple, but had no choice.
This wasn’t a situation that had ever occurred to me. Like I said earlier, my daughter was about 1 year old when the story came out. Six years before, I had given up a baby boy for adoption when I was 15. I made certain that when my two (later) children were old enough to understand that they knew that they had a biological brother out there. I told my daughter when she was 6, and my son when he was 9. They deserve to know now, while they can process the information and ask me questions instead of it shocking them when/if the son I gave up ever comes into our lives. Painful as any conversations about it can be, full disclosure seems to be the only way to go in this time of IT & technology.
The days of adoptions being covered up (by the adoptive parents OR the biological ones) is logically in the past. Too many records on file electronically, too many people to hide from. Also, most adoption agencies seem to stress adoptive parents always letting the children know that they are adopted from the beginning. And now there are websites and agencies- private and state run- when the biological and adopted parties can register once of age (varies by state) so if both are interested in “finding” each other, they can.