Harmlessly connecting with relatives who don't know they're related?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I strongly suspect that I have half-siblings. I know who they are and think I could find contact information easily enough and could ask them. But I have no idea if they know they may have half-siblings.

My father cheated on my mother for many years with his secretary. During this time, the secretary had children. I found a wedding photo of one of the now adult children in an old newspaper online, and also found a photo of the secretary’s husband, the father of record of this offspring. I put those together with a photo of my father. I think the son looks much more like my father than like her husband, and nearly all the dozen or so friends I’ve polled say so too. All these possible siblings are now in their 50s or 60s and their mother is long dead as is my father.

I am interested enough to contact them and learn what the entire extended family looked like from their side of the gulf. However, I don’t know if they have any idea their mother cheated with another married man. If they have a rosy and innocent understanding of their mother and would be hurt to learn otherwise, I sure don’t want to upset things. I’m curious and trying to understand my own family, but don’t need to hurt others in the process.

How might I test this out? Are there web sites that let people find each other if and only if both sides want to? Are there other means out there to do the same? A lost relatives service of some kind?

Thanks!!

2

I am negative about you doing anything about this.

3

If one of my parents wasn’t my parent and I actually had other siblings I didn’t know about, I would want to be told. It wouldn’t effect how I felt about the parent who raised me or the one who cheated other than to think “no way - lol!”.

I admit I might be in the minority about this but, if I was you, I would give them the information and let them decide what to do with it.

4

I definitely have half siblings who I’m not in contact with.

I expect they don’t know I exist. It may truly hurt them to know that I do - certainly they’d have to come to terms with knowing one if their parents is a liar and probably a cheat.

It feels like it would be remarkably selfish for me to do that.

5

I don’t want to approach them as is. Like I say, I have no idea if it would hurt them and don’t want to hurt them.

I’m asking because it’s probably a fairly common problem and maybe somebody has solved it. Especially I wonder if there’s a web site that lets you list your name and the names of people you are interested in contacting, and if two people join the site and name each other, the site connects them. That way I’d only be connecting with people who already implicitly said they want to connect with me. But I don’t know of any such web site and tried searching terms like “estranged” and “adopted” and “reunite” and didn’t find any that way.

Question: Does anybody know of any such solutions?

6

I doubt that a connection like this would be “harmless”.

7

This is more IMHO territory, but IMHO the big problem is that you do not know if this person is related to you. You have some circumstantial evidence, but from the way you describe it it doesn’t seem conclusive. Given that the revelations about their mother may be hurtful and/or unwanted, I’m not sure it’s a good idea without more solid evidence.

8

Moderator Action

Moving thread from GQ to IMHO.

9

My sentiments exactly.

It’s not like your talking about a newly discovered 2nd cousin.

10

Napier, are you an only child? If so, I can see why you might want to contact half-siblings. I’m an only child and I would kill to have siblings, even if they were the result of an affair. I don’t have either of my parents on a pedestal and I for one would be thrilled at my age (69) and my mother’s (92) to know she had an affair. Call me weird, but it’s life. It happens. I’m surprised at all the advice telling you to forget it.

Their mother, the secretary, did she marry or raise the kids as a single mom? Do you know whether your father paid any kind of child support, even surreptitiously? I’d be surprised if the kids didn’t know who their father is (if it was your dad, or whoever it was). Your dad must have come around. Once there were kids in the picture, they couldn’t very well go off to motels at the drop of a hat.

You said these people are in their 50s and 60s. Surely by now they know that stuff happens in the world. If they were in their 20s, I can see how this revelation would upset their apple cart, but they’re what we used to call “elderly” (but thankfully, don’t anymore).

If you do have siblings, do any of them know about this potential quest of yours?

You could always contact one of them in email or writing (so as not to put him/her on the spot unprepared) and say their mom used to work for your dad, and you’re putting together a family history and want to know about the company, or whatever. Make up something plausible. If there’s interest, fine. If the metaphorical door gets slammed in your face, so be it.

This isn’t murder, or treason, for Pete’s sake. If the secretary had several children by your dad, then they both knew exactly what they were doing. The Pill had just come in in the mid-60s and presumably the pregnancies could have been prevented.

Whatever your dad and his secretary did, it’s a lifetime ago, and was not then nor is it now The Crime of the Century. I say pursue it discreetly and gently. It may open some wonderful new doors for all parties.

11

I wouldn’t want to know if I had half-siblings from an affair by one of my parents (hypothetical affair! My parents are saints!). Partly because it would hurt to find out that about my parent, but partly because I have enough awkward distant relationships in my life. This is why I don’t go to high school or college reunions or birthday parties where the only person I know is the birthday person.

Someone shows up in my life…
“I’m your sister!”
“oh, hi. What do we do now?”
“oh I thought we could have a lot of small talk, but when it’s not small talk it will be about how our parents had sex”
“oh great, two of my least favorite kinds of talk”

12

I’m not an only child. I have a sister a couple years younger than I am, or at least as far as I know I do. But I have been completely estranged for 30 years from my family. It’s not that I am very intent on having a sibling to be in contact with, although that might be very nice and I’d be open to it.

The big motivation for me is that my father was a suicide, when I was 12. I am in groups of people working on their own pasts close to a suicide, and we all have in common that we are trying to understand and always on a quest for clues (and, no, there’s nothing we ever learn that fixes that or ends the quest, but we are all still on quests). His secretary was clearly a big part of what was going on leading to his suicide. He wrote her a long and tender note, and wrote a note to a friend of his asking him to take care of the secretary in the aftermath of his death, maybe get the friend’s wife to take the secretary to her mother’s house. To my mother, he wrote: “Dear ___, Sorry I had to do this. If you sell the business, please make sure (the secretary) gets half of whatever you get. (Name)”

So, I think that sounds a lot like child support, and adds to the theory that at least some of them were his offspring, but it’s not proof.

I think they must have been aware of my father as a presence in their mother’s life. He was her employer, for one thing, and she had followed him from job to job. They were having an affair since way before my own parents married. But I think it’s entirely possible they had no idea he might be their father, and entirely possible he wasn’t.

She was divorced. I’m not sure when; it’s eluded my online exploration so far. She has an address change at one point soon after the last kid was born, and her husband doesn’t appear to have lived at the new address, so that’d be my guess.

I’ve toyed with the premise of wanting to know more about the company. It is a bit of a laden situation considering her likely prominence in the suicide, a suicide that perhaps the kids would have been aware of. Being cautious about not doing any harm, I’m sitting on that idea while I look for milder steps.

13

I was in this same situation, except I was the one who told my father he had a half-sibling. It went about as well as expected.

Actually, he wasn’t mad or anything. He just didn’t have the reaction I was expecting. Although, maybe that’s my fault, because his reaction was pretty par for the course.

14

Oh my goodness, Napier. There’s a lot more to your story… I’m so so sorry about your dad. Suicide is such a tragedy in any family. My uncle committed suicide a couple of years ago and it sent shockwaves through the family. I can absolutely understand that you want to know as much as you can about your whole family. I would say to keep pondering this and listen to your intuition. If your dad was a presence in their lives, they probably have questions about his death, too. Clearly their mom was very important to him. As the principals are deceased, and the “kids” are fully mature adults, I don’t see how finding out about you will be a great revelation. Surely they knew their dad had a “legitimate” (excuse the expression) family. At their age, they are well past the “My parents were saints!” stage.

If you’re going to do it, now is the time. Time to find out the whole story is running out (I am aware of this every day that passes…).

P.S. I understand family estrangement. I was somewhat estranged from my mother for 40 years (no physical contact, occasional cards, phone calls). My father died almost 30 years ago. A year and a half ago, I moved Mama to assisted living in my city. Now I see her twice a week. Very strange. I’ve had more contact with her in the last year than in the previous 40! And I fully understand why we did not seek each other’s company during those decades.

15

Napier, I have a slightly similar situation.

My parents were older than average (and my father MUCH older). He was 56 when he married my mom, and they proceeded to have three kids over the next fifteen years. It was (allegedly) his first marriage.

I have wondered over the years how, in the pre-Viagra days, a man that age could expect that his reproductive capabilities were still there.

One answer: girlfriends. But that seems unlikely given the circumstances. He was an immigrant, living in a small town in West Virginia. There were no singles bars filling that market.

So I’ve wondered whether I have half-siblings 20-30 years older than me. I would love to meet them.

But I understand that if my father abandoned a family, it could be weird. My siblings tell me I should forget about it.

I like to think that as we get older, differences on such matters go away.

The fact that I haven’t reached out means that I’m not sure about it.

I agree with Thelma that your situation is more complicated. Just offering my two cents.

I wish you the best.

16

As an only child I would certainly not have any interest at all in finding out I had siblings. Regardless of my only child status, I would have no interest in learning things about my parents after all these years (I’m 70).

Regarding the suicide of your father, you have my sympathy. However, as someone who once attempted suicide, I can assure you that in many if not most cases there is no “why” and the act cannot ever be really understood by anyone else, and often not by the people themselves. None of my business but I think this “quest” is probably very bad for you.

17

Yes, most of us hear our quests are bad for us. That’s one of the reasons we need to form groups together . It’s ok that you think that. But it is better not to push us on the subject. Let us find the rest of the path. We made it this far.

18

So apparently my dad was sleeping with my mom’s sister(My aunt)…the 2 boys who I thought were my cousins are really my half brothers…its all so convoluted at family get togethers and reunions that it is not worth knowing…my dad would never own up to it…he is deceased now…and so is one of the cousin/brothers…his child is who keeps bringing to forefront…and me and my whole sibs really hate her for it…of course she tried to push in on his estate at probation…so it’s all a money thing…so sickening…thats my story

19

Thank you, ThelmaLou. I genuinely appreciate that.

20

I know that I have half-siblings. My father was dating my mother but never married to her and they broke up while I was still a toddler. I’ve never had contact with him after that, but know that he has 3 or 4 other children with the woman that he married after that. I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in being contacted by those half-siblings.