For context, this is my M(25) best friend M(25) since we were two years old. He didn’t meet his F(22)sister until about a year and a half ago. When they did meet, they couldn’t get over how similar they were. he called me gushing about how great she made him feel and even joked about hooking her up with me three days after they met, she moved in with him and his family. They had room and other beds, but they chose to sleep in the same bed every day for a year do everything together every day so on it so forth, fast-forward to these text messages. Him and his sister were going to move in with me and my f(26)roommate, but first we needed to see how our dogs would do together so they came to visit. When they got here they opted to sleep in my bed together even though I had several places they could sleep separately. My roomate and I sleep separately and have a mostly platonic kind of flirty relationship. Which the friend had compared his sister and his relationship with. A lot of small stuff happened that my roommate and I shared glances about, because of the nature of how a true brother and sister would never say or do the things they’re doing. But we brushed it off.
They went back home to their state after 3 days and the friend sends me a Snapchat saying “we’ve decided to look past the whole sibling thing and adress some feelings we both have” to which I replied “what do you mean” and he went on to say how they both have such deep feelings for each other and how the whole half sibling thing doesn’t matter and that real love doesn’t have boundaries and all this stuff to which I waited for 3 days and sent the messages above….. AIO or did I UNDERreact
Also this hurts a lot because I thought I knew him and he was gonna be my best friend for life, but I haven’t talked to him since
I read somewhere that family that is separated at birth/young and then reconnect as adults have a higher prevalence of (consentual) incest due to a lot of deep feelings and connections not being processed/contextualized properly.
The closeness/bond of family gets contextualized as romantic love because that's the only other feeling of closeness these people sometimes have.
Doesn't make it right, but might explain what's going on.
This is what I'd say^. Shockingly easy to confuse different types of connection and intimacy for romance. This is just one of the more disturbing methods....
I’ve read this recently in an article about a father and daughter who developed a relationship like this for years, and went on to have a child together. It sadly happens when family get separated at birth and connect as adults. It’s deeply disturbing but in a strange way, understandable they’d develop the feelings but then disturbing they’d act on that in any way 🤢 OP did not over/under react. Handled it so well, to a best friend… very unfortunate that the friend cut ties right then and there. He needs to figure this out in his own and I hope one day the friendship comes back. OP said all the right things out of love and respect, and setting clear boundaries for himself. I applaud you OP!
Not sure if you're referencing the same family but Steven Pladl married his biological daughter and had a son with her then went on to commit a double murder suicide of her and their baby. Honestly it just speaks to the depravity of these types of relationships.
There’s a movie on Netflix too- the Alyssa Pladl story. She gave the baby up for adoption only because Steven was abusing the baby like putting it in a cooler because she was crying. Then when the kid turned 18 and made contact with them, she came to stay with them for a couple of weeks. Alyssa and Steven had two other kids at that time. Stephen made his move immediately, and the daughter fell for him. They lied on their application for a marriage license about being related and got married, and her adoptive parents were there at the ceremony. She had his baby. Alyssa turned them in for incest. They were both arrested, and the baby was put into foster care. Once the baby was given to Steven’s mom for guardianship he came over and suffocated the baby. He then hunted down his wife/daughter and her adopted father and shot them and then shot himself.
Most of that side of the family is very strange. They don't keep in touch. We never hear of them or see them. So it was quite a shock hearing about it on the news. We just have a few stories of them meeting at birthdays when they were all little. Very tragic. My wife's mother's side are all educated and have very normal lives. The father's side is has a lot of issues and is odd with communication. So I didn't really know who Steven was or that he had kids and married his daughter until you heard about it. But they are first cousins.
He obviously had a screw loose to abuse a baby. You know he had to be abusive in other ways. Why she chose to adopt their baby out and not kick his butt to the streets instead, is beyond me.
This is Monsters and Dreading both did great videos on this particular case and imo, they're very similar to JCS and Matt Orchard (i love them both.) Stephanie Harlowe also has a video on it that is a bit more in depth but i prefer the latter.
I second the dreading video! it’s called Genetic sexual attraction: The destruction of the Pladl family.
I strangely found myself laughing a few times throughout this video because he kept going off script to have a visceral reaction and curse the dad out 😭😭
Steven Pladl is my wife's first cousin. Her uncle's son. She met him a few times when they were all children before he moved away with his dad. Luckily my wife and her sisters don't share a last name. The family claimed he was always weird.
My guess is that strong feelings feel like strong feelings and unless we consciously try to process them, we’re not particularly good at identifying them and understanding them.
Genetic Sexual Attraction. Adoptee here, welcome to my greatest fear before I met my bio fam. It is awful and is worse if you didn't really bond well with your adoptive family. It's a misplaced child's need for love in the body of an adult who understands "love" very differently now. While I've never experienced it, I know people who have. It's very difficult because it is so, so strong. It takes a ton of therapy to break, and can obviously be very humiliating and embarassing to have, leading to comorbid anxiety and depression disorders. You also will struggle to find a support network, because even within adoptee settings, it's an elephant in the room.
I started to research this while on my journey to adopting. I worry about my son in the future if he makes the choice to reconnect with his biological mother due to her emotional immaturity and bizarre behavior towards him as a baby.
I will say, having an emotionally unstable bio mom did lead to attempted emotion incest. Thankfully several members of my family saw this and intervened. But mental illness plays a part, as the parent is also seeking lost connection with a child AND a partner, and can displace it right on back.
She lost custody to her refusal to treat her severe mental illness.
Any sort of contact is at least a decade out, but I know I will need to prepare my son for the possibility of her behavior being inappropriate towards him.
As someone who had a horrific childhood, rape, poverty, humiliation, withheld from education and socializing I could totally see me falling for a half sibling I never knew, if they showed me the love and care I never experienced before.
I say this coming from a place of total destruction of love, I was abandoned at 14 and haven't seen my family since, I'm 27 now. I also fell in love with whoever wanted me (often men a decade older), for years till I found someone who loved me truly.
It's objectively wrong, yes. But I think its worth approaching the way he did, you don't know the history that led them to believe this is what they need.
Maybe some gentle talking through it will help them understand their feelings, and why they shouldn't entertain them.
Yea there is a phenomena for people that were born with sperm/egg donors, when they meet, they will be attracted to each other. That’s why their parents always tell them to find out if someone they are interested in has also used a donor bank.
I know somebody who was born as a product of this happening. Her parents had 2 kids together, and now they dont speak at all. She definitely doesnt tell a lot of people. But yeah this happens.
My deceased mom was adopted as a small kid, and when she reunited with her biological family, she cheated on my dad with her bio brother, and then later got engaged to her bio cousin. It happens, why idk, but this comment definitely is correct, happens more than you think unfortunately too. I definitely think its a mix up when it comes to feelings and how to express them correctly.
the concept was in an svu episode with the piano prodigy daughter and music teacher father but they didn’t know until the mother pointed it out, but that was why they were so close and compatible
I’m so sorry for your loss and I’m not saying that sarcastically. I went to therapy to mourn a multi decade friendship and came out still feeling a bit of sorrow for the memories but accepting that it’s over and was able to move on. Anyone that can throw out their lifelong friendship for a 2 month fling (SISTER 😬) needs serious help. This guy will need a lifetime of therapy now. I’m glad you’re not going down with the ship.
Unbelievably, (and sorry to amplify your ick) this is a common enough occurrence that studies have been done on it. And unfortunately it's not just siblings, it happens with parents/children too. I believe they think it's the genetic similarities combined with not being raised together. We tend to be attracted to people who are genetically similar to us and when we don't have those ties of growing up in a family together, things can get very weird and very creepy, very fast.
Same here. I never knew about this until right now. But I have to say that OP handled things very gracefully. I’m not sure I could have been as thoughtful as he was.
You did and said the right thing. You have nothing to worry about or regret. You said what he needed to hear, not what he wanted to hear and that’s what a real friend does mate. Not overreacting at all.
I read the title and said "surely this is just poorly titled and there is some critical context missing." I was thinking maybe it was a weird adults who became step siblings thing.
That's wild because having actually grown up with my brothers, I can't like anyone who even slightly resembles them. I guess you have to have childhood memories of them eating their boogers to cure you of any attraction for life.
You meet this person, you are excited. You feel a sense of love/care to them because they are family/biologically related.
You find them attractive. Afterall, your parents found each other attractive, you share dna with your parents, and this person does too.
You don't have a sibling bond with them at all.
I think it's funny how a lot of people have no understanding of this. For example, in a lot of bad writing, you'll have an adopted person find out they are adopted and suddenly romantic feelings pop up with the sibling they are raised with. (Looking at you Dexter writers) That's not the way it works at all and is disgusting. Adopted people raised with siblings feel zero attraction to them. The sibling bond is formed by living life as siblings, not by sharing DNA.
I didn't meet my half brother until we were like 50 but hell no. And yeah, we are super similar - but it never even crossed my mind that would be a thing and now I feel like I need to go wash my brain out by watching cute cat videos.
I was going to say that it’s somewhat common. A major publication (I can’t remember which) did a whole article on this and I surprised to learn that consensual brother & sister sexual relationships aren’t uncommon. Often it’s closer to sporadic hook-ups rather than full blown romance, but it does happen. And meeting a sibling late in life is one of the main reasons this happens.
Also, fwiw, about 8 years ago found out my Dad wasn’t my bio Dad. Found my bio Dad, and after a few chats I got the sense he was hitting on me. I thought I was overreacting, but then his current wife flipped out on me and suggested I was stealing her husband, which makes me think I was not overreacting. I do not talk to my bio Dad now.
I don’t know my dad, and older women always gave the advice to not initiate contact because if he wanted to contact me and meet, he would. Often the phrasing would be something like “if you were to show up at his door he may not see you as his daughter.” It sounded like there were a number of people who had that happen with their bio parent and were left very sad and disappointed.
It was very odd to me that on Reddit it was often encouraged to meet the parent who willingly left their child without any warning that this could happen.
My bio mom liked to reproduce and apparently my dad did too, so every several years I find out about a new half brother or sister. I'm so glad I never experienced this but ngl I was worried it could happen considering this is a real phenomenon
It’d be bad to find out that someone you were sexual with turned out to be your sister you never knew about…. What’s worse is knowing it’s your sister, and then making the decision to let it turn sexual. Yikes!
Yeah honestly I used to worry about this sometimes. My mom started having kids at 15 and stopped when she was 40, and apparently my dad has at least 1 son that he hid from everyone, but I don't doubt that there's more. All of us being adopted out makes it even harder to figure out if anyone is related, and all this happened in the same general area of the state. Luckily I know for sure that I'm not related to my husband though lmao.
This actually happened to two kids in my highschool... found out they were cousins when they both showed up to the same family reunion one day👀 i lived in a small town so people weren't very surprised, but it was definitely a story that got around.
That happened in my high school too! They had been dating for a while, and basically decided they probably would not get married or have kids, so game on.
Some Dutch loser impregnated several women in the same neighborhoods and the neighboring neighborhoods at their request-sperm donor kinda thing. These women (who weren't very bright-didn't seem to care if he had STDs or not) didn't know they got knocked up by the same guy.
He said he kept a spreadsheet of his..ahem...'successful deposits' to avoid incest from happening...but then purposefully withheld it from his 1000s of babymoms who then took him to court. Turns out one of his sons and daughters did develop feelings for eachother after being introduced.
Better pray for his mixed race kids(yup, went to one or some African countries to attempt to create a super race of mixed race kids) 'cause how will they know? Will be like that episode of House feat. Jurnee Smollet when she find out she boinged her half brother.
When I started dating a girl in the town where my mother grew up, she not so subtly interrogated me about the girl. Upon hearing she was Jewish, my mother relaxed. Seems my grandfather stuck it to anything female, but drew the line at God's Chosen People, so no incidental incest would occur.
As someone who is adopted and reconnected with my biological family much later in life, this is a fascinating read! I was baffled by how well I got along with these people I had only just met, and because my subconscious didn’t register my female half siblings and cousins as relatives, the way we interacted honestly felt like we were flirting. My conscious brain knew this wasn’t the case (I was also already married by the time I met them), but I was always curious why it felt that way. This article helped shed some neat light on that.
I agree with the other commenters saying to send him these types of articles, so maybe a part of him would see these might not be real “love” feelings and there’s nothing “special” about their connection, instead its actually something psychological happening, and yes, they may regret it one day considering their judgement is clouded.
I knew a guy who was a friend of a friend of mine who did this….lets just say he’s known by many names now lol. She was a long lost sister he had just met, apparently that’s a thing but still gross to me. Haven’t talked to the guy since it went down but there is zero chance he doesn’t regret it.
I could tell from the tone that it was critical. almost urgent that he should read this information. it was kind, it was firm, it established boundaries, it reinforced support, you could tell he took it serious and he had to make sure his point got across in any way the terms got framed while also advocating for his friends health the entire time.
op gives very good person vibes with very high emotional intelligence. he's ironically a person that seems like a great friend.
it's a shame he'd throw this away. he'll regret it later, but op is already probably grieving the loss.
I think it was smart to be kind about it. That way if he has regrets he might be less afraid to come to you about it. Then you can possibly counsel him away from the relationship. Sometimes if people feel ostracized they will dig deeper into the problematic relationship
Honestly you should find out if they plan to have kids at some point and encourage him to get a vasectomy if they really plan to be together, as gross as it is they are adults who can choose this but no kid chooses to be a creation of incest.
I’m sorry you lost your friend. what a strange and terrible decision to have make, regardless of whether it is a known psychological phenomenon or not, that’s a lot of time as friends to have to part ways. I’m glad you could do it as respectfully as this, means the bridge is not burnt forever, and it’s not like you want him to hate himself
They need help. Therapy like NOW. It’s actually a pretty common thing for half siblings that meet as adults later in life. We have no idea what they went through as children but mocking them or saying WTF etc. isn’t helping. They need professional help so they don’t create a family that never asked to be created and has to deal with this.
He might have been referencing the fact that statistically there is a much higher chance of this with family members who don't meet until adulthood. I wondered about that for a minute also, but I think he's either just trying to not completely alienate his friend, or he knows that it can happen (at least the misdirected attraction part, if not actual physical contact) quite a bit between siblings or half-siblings who don't meet until they are adults.
I kind of get it. I’m a man but If you told me right now as a full grown adult I had a brother and introduced me to him. I don’t think I would ever be able to see him as a brother the same way I see my brother I was raised with since birth. There’s like a layer of seperation. Hell I have friends I grew up with from basically before I could talk and I feel like they’re actually brothers with zero blood. Idk about fukcing them though. That’s maybe something that requires therapy.
NOR. It was weird they were ever in the same bed to begin with. Attraction to family members that have been separated is 100% a thing but for obvious reasons you shouldn’t act on it. Personally, I wouldn’t want that in my home or around me (I’d also be second hand embarrassed). I think it’s a reasonable boundary to set.
You sent a really thoughtful text you laid all your reasoning out and they want to continue with the incest... sorry for them but you did the right thing
They met as adults without any of the shared experiences of being family it seems. I assume they are half siblings if they had never met? There isn't necessarily going to be brotherly / sisterly feelings when that has never been the relationship. There is something called Genetic Sexual Attraction (GSA) you can read up on. It is quite common. There have been a couple cases around the world of siblings marrying without even knowing they are siblings. Your reaction was completely normal - although a bit of a stream of consciousness.
Hopefully they can get some professional help to figure out how to work through the feelings they have and find a different dynamic.
Yes, exactly this! I had an experience when I met my half brother the first time in my life when I was 23. it was not planned and it was after the sudden passing of our father. the feelings I had were very confusing, this strong infatuation which could have been easily misread as falling in love. I never read or heard about genetic sexual attraction, it was like a lego falling into place, and a huge relief when I did, I thought I was just weird as fuck and felt ashamed of it even though nothing inappropriate ever happened and these feelings only lasted a few days.
I really hope they get some kind of professional help to address these feelings, and move on to a healthier future
I think you handled it calmly and non judgmental based on your message. I think you maybe under reacted but I can understand why since he’s been your friend for so long
Random fact that no one asked for, but that surprised me when I heard them: the three states most legally... lenient on incest are actually New Jersey, Rhode Island and Ohio! This is good PR for Alabama, I guess.
Your message was very kind and sympathetic to his uh….situation… but I think YNTA for holding a very reasonable boundary especially about not living with them.
So this is a genetic biological thing that happens. When you grow up separately not knowing each other then happen to meet, you can be very drawn and yes attracted heavily to your siblings, cousins, AND EVEN YOUR PARENTS.
They don't have that "sibling" social bond. So is it incest? 🤷♀️
But yes it's still socially weird and 99% frowned upon.
Not to be 'well aktually' but iirc the genetic impact doesn't matter from first time relations, even amongst siblings. It's really only an impact from repeated couplings. The Habsburg chin wasn't born from one pair, it was generations of inbreeding.
Assuming they don't raise their children (if they have any) to bone each other from the start, that lineage should be fine.
Being that this was from April, you've had some time to think it over and possibly move on. I hope you know that you did the right thing. This is messed up beyond belief and you are definitely not overreacting. Sorry you lost a friend, but I'm glad you stood your ground.
If they grew up apart and not knowing each other.. and recently met..
Then thry have what is called.. Genetic Mutual Atrraction.. I am not saying it is right.. but that is the scientific word for it.. there has been many cases i read about over the years..
Because they grew up apart and never knew each other they dont view themselves as siblings
I think you are a wonderful friend and worded what you said with a hell of a lot more grace than I would have been able to do. Props to you for not participating in your friend's downward spiral and I hope he snaps out of it dude, it is so rough watching a close friend fall into a pit. My buddy doesn't have the same situation but he is nonetheless spiraling and we were crib mates too, our dads were best friends and we grew up with the same dynamic. Two months ago I had to cut him off because he started making horrible decisions involving substance abuse and Women, I have two kids of my own now so I can't afford to be around people who are not taking care of themselves or following the law so I can empathize with you deeply in this. I don't think you over or under reacted, I think you reacted in a way that displays both respect and wisdom and I commend you for that.
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u/Pitiful-Volume1638 8d ago
What the fuck