Reunification Dilemma

[LongLostSib]

I'm glad to see this forum is running again. I've been sitting on this question for almost a month.

This is the question: is it too risky to seek out my half-siblings?

We were not separated by adoption. Although I learned of my father's first marriage while he was still alive, it wasn't until years after his death that I discovered he had at least three other children. He went to extreme lengths to keep me and my two brothers from finding out about our half-siblings. My mother doesn't have much information. She didn't ask many questions.

My father never said a word about any of this, ever. I only discovered the previous marriage by stumbling upon a court document. I was afraid to confront him. I was very young and I thought there would be time. I was fourteen when he died.

Shortly before I graduated from college I found copies of three birth certificates in the garage while looking for his Army medals. Three half-sisters, 38, 37, and 34 years old. There was a reference to an earlier pregnancy on the oldest birth certificate, but it was just a date. I don't even know if the child was carried to term.

I am 26 and my brothers are 22 and 19.

I've hesitated to contact my half-sisters all these years because of the possibility of rejection. I wonder what could cause such a total estrangement, and how that would affect a reunion. My father had a drinking problem early in my life, but that appeared to end after a few years. He was a frightening drunk, though. One of my earliest memories is of riding in the car with my drunk father as he challenged other drivers on the expressway to race him.

My half-siblings were not at his funeral.

I found out about GSA accidentally while reading about the Oedipus legend from Greek mythology in Wikipedia. Reading the tragic stories on this forum was a serious shock. I didn't sleep again for over two days.

I thought I should abstain from contacting them, but that seems unworkable. There are just so many of us. My brothers know about our half-sisters. Our half-sisters might know about us. There may yet be others I don't know about. Contact looks inevitable.

Furthermore, I have lots of questions, and maybe they do as well. I knew our father the longest. He left his daughters when they were ten, nine, and six years old.

I've read that GSA occurs in as many as half of reunions, especially with siblings who resemble one another. I don't know what they look like, and I'm a little afraid to find out.

If GSA does indeed occur in half of these reunions, then the odds look extremely bad in the case of my family. A reunion of three brothers and three sisters is actually nine reunions in one. If my math is correct, the probability of GSA occurring in at least one of three reunions is 87.5%. For at least one in nine, the corresponding figure is just over 99.8%. That is not a typo.

I haven't done much research yet, but I know the following: all three half-sisters are married, and at least two have children. One is a military officer, and GSA would probably be a career-killer.

This looks like a colossal train wreck waiting to happen, and I fear the best I can do is postpone it. I'm trying to think of ways to make a potential reunion less disorderly in hopes of reducing the risk, but I often feel like I'm just kidding myself, and that there's no realistic way to avert disaster. Is there?

I need advice.

[BarbGonyo]

Welcome to the GSA website.

How interesting to hear from someone who thinks ahead and does actual reading on a subject before a reunion. Most of GSA people have never heard of GSA until they are reunited and in a situation they don't understand and don't know what to do about it.

If you you have examined this site totally then you will know that I have written about others experiences including my own. You are now at the age my son was when I located him. That was 27 years ago and GSA is getting stronger and becoming more open now than it was then.

The way I see your situation is that you have a least 3 siblings that are woman. You say they are married and have children. Actually none of this makes a difference in GSA including your obvious age differences.

You are right to wonder if this would be the proverbial can of worms because it can be. It can also be a fulfilling wonderful reunion where brothers and sisters get to put the pieces of their lives together and share family experiences and become very close. They can also become upset, sexually involved etc.

This is true of any life situation. We can sit back and do nothing because we fear what might happen or we can adventure out to find out the family secrets in hopes of answering the unanswerable questions we have always dealt with.

This is why people involved with adoption whether adoptees or birthfamilies have such a strong need to know. It is due to the fact that there were secrets kept from them all their lives and they feel they have a right to TRUTH.

They may have very strong driving needs to solve their mysteries. You may have mild curiousity to burning needs. But then you are not the only one involved here. There are 3 of you and 3 of them that you know of. If you decide not to search one of the others may still want to search. It could be one of your sisters who find all of you.

Idealily people would educate themselves on this subject first and even go to a group like Truth Seekers in Adoption to hear others stories of reunions and\or read my book.

Most people don't want to bother they just want to find and see what happens. I applaud your wisdom in checking things out first.

I would never tell you to search or not search. Only you know what you need to do.


If you are interested in a book on reunions, information can be found on this site on how to send for it.

I hope this helps and that you will write again.

Barb Gonyo "The Forbidden Love, GSA"
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[LongLostSib]

Thank you, Barb, for your reply. I've thought about this some more and resigned myself to the inevitability of reunion. I asked myself if I could live my whole life knowing they are out there and not meeting them. I can't. Now I'm looking for the least dangerous way to proceed.

I didn't expect their marital status or the age differences or anything else to make much difference, I just wanted to show how high the stakes are. For now, I'm learning as much as I can about them and about GSA. Eventually I'll have to tell my brothers about my concerns. That will be difficult. We've never had any conversations about sexuality, and I'd hoped to keep it that way. We're intensely uncomfortable around the subject.

I'm currently thinking it would be better to reunite one at a time rather than all at once. I intend to take my time in any case.

[Teenie]

Through my own personal experience, I think it would have been better if a reunion had been arranged with my sister and I meeting my half-brother at the same time. Whether it would have made any difference to the way that he and I had felt towards each other, I doubt very much, but it may have been easier for him meeting the two sisters at the same time.

It was a year after he and I had met that he and my sister met. Their relationship is no where as intense as ours was but, in my view, there are some GSA feelings there between the two of them, but both of them deny there are.

Maybe if we had all met together, there wouldn't of been the "explosion" that there was?

Teenie

[LongLostSib]

I see your point, Teenie. This leaves me back where I started. My rationale for choosing individual meetings was that they might be less chaotic, but I can see how they could actually make things worse. I don't think I can reason my way out of this problem.

What I really wonder is if advance knowledge of this phenomenon could have made any difference for the other people here who are struggling to cope with it. But it looks as if everyone else here was blindsided by GSA.