Engaged couple discover they are brother and sister just before wedding

[jimmy olsen]

Gross!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2057081/Engaged-couple-discover-brother-sister-parents-meet-days-wedding.html

Engaged couple discover they are brother and sister when their parents meet just before wedding

    Unnamed pair are expecting a child and had been together for five years

By Stewart Maclean
Created 12:49 PM on 3rd November 2011
An engaged couple who dated for five years have been left in turmoil after their families met and they discovered they were brother and sister.

The woman, who is due to give birth next month, is devastated by the discovery that the father of her child is her brother.

The couple, who met at university, had decided they wanted to introduce their single parent families to each other before they got  married.

But at the meeting it emerged they were brother and sister who had been separated as small children.

The unnamed South African couple are still in shock after making the discovery last Saturday.

The country's Sowetan newspaper reported that the siblings had been raised separately after their mother and father went through an acrimonious divorce.

It reported: 'Their parents separated when the woman was eight months old and the man was two years old.

'The man's father said he dumped his wife in 1983 because she was cheating on him. The girl was raised by her mother, while her brother was raised by his father.

'Neither of them knew they had a sibling.'

The Sowetan reported that the children grew up separately with their single parents near the towns of Nelspruit and Bushbuckbridge, which lie 50 miles apart in South Africa's eastern Mpumalanga province.

They reportedly met again at university in 2007 and fell in love.

Their two families did not meet throughout their five-year relationship, until they were brought together last week to discuss wedding arrangements.

In many African cultures it is traditional for the family of a male partner to pay a lobola, or 'bride price', to that of his fiancée.

In doing so, the two families normally arrange a summit at which they are formally introduced and able to conduct the negotiations.

But the couple's plans were derailed when their parents came face to face and revealed their bombshell.

The woman told the Sowetan she was devastated by the revelation.

She said: 'It was love at first sight. We were studying together at Tshwane University of Technology in Nelspruit.

'When I first saw him, we connected. We fell in love and since that day, we never looked back.

'All we wanted to do was just to have a family and many kids.

'So you can imagine how shocked we were when they broke the news. We are going to have a child together. We do not know what we will tell him when he grows up.'

The couple said they had decided to split after hearing the news and were discussing how to handle the shock with their separated parents.

The man added: 'We can't think straight at the moment and will just take everything one step at a time.'

Incest remains one of society's last taboos and is an unthinkable concept to most people.

Yet research by the British Medical Journal showed that half of those separated from relatives at a young age experience strong sexual feelings when they are reunited.

Psychiatrists believe the natural repulsion brothers and sisters feel growing up together as children acts as an inhibitor to incest.

But those who miss out on this time can develop powerful, obsessive feelings for their sibling in adulthood.

[Eddie Teach]

Gross!

Racist.

[Ideologue]

It's too late.  Just roll with it.

[Maximus]

Yea if they weren't raised as brother and sister I don't see why it would be a problem.

[Syt]

Sounds like a typical Sims game.

[DGuller]

Yea if they weren't raised as brother and sister I don't see why it would be a problem.

The genetic defects of their children would be one big problem, I would think.

[garbon]

Yea if they weren't raised as brother and sister I don't see why it would be a problem.

The genetic defects of their children would be one big problem, I would think.

Per part of the article, it sounds like she is already pregnant.

[Tonitrus]

Yea if they weren't raised as brother and sister I don't see why it would be a problem.

The genetic defects of their children would be one big problem, I would think.

Hapsburgs and Egyptian Pharaohs seemed to get along just fine.

[Martinus]

Yea if they weren't raised as brother and sister I don't see why it would be a problem.

The genetic defects of their children would be one big problem, I would think.

Wake me up when they start neutering people with genetically transmitted diseases - until then I don't see why the state has any business telling some adults they cannot have kids and not the others.

That being said, at least your position against their marriage is based in a potential third party harm - Maximus's apparent line of reasoning is completely incomprehensiblw to me since it does not even purport to do that.

[Josquius]

Interesting.
I have read that this is quite common (well, as common as such a weird situation can be), if siblings aren't raised together they will be attracted to each other for some reason.

[Martinus]

Interesting.
I have read that this is quite common (well, as common as such a weird situation can be), if siblings aren't raised together they will be attracted to each other for some reason.

Incest is yucky, unnatural and does not occur spontaneously in the animal kingdom.

[Ideologue]

Interesting.
I have read that this is quite common (well, as common as such a weird situation can be), if siblings aren't raised together they will be attracted to each other for some reason.

A phenotypically similar mate (which a sibling is likely to be) evidences genetic similarity, and hence any offspring will contain more of your genes than if you'd mated with a less similar person, but because of inbreeding problems we exhibit a defense mechanism (although problems are hardly a given, only likelier, at least in a single-generation example).

I've also heard there's a notion that novelty/exoticism is also sought after specifically because of dissimilar genes, which may improve your offspring's fitness.

I guess you just don't want to be in the middle.

Has anyone here ever gone to the trouble of finding out how closely related they are to their sexual partners?  I'm not much into genealogy.  Cal?

[DGuller]

Interesting.
I have read that this is quite common (well, as common as such a weird situation can be), if siblings aren't raised together they will be attracted to each other for some reason.

I have read that too.  In the article posted in the OP.

[Ideologue]

Makes one wish they had a long-lost sibling, huh?  Obsessive love sounds pretty great.

[The Brain]

Has anyone here ever gone to the trouble of finding out how closely related they are to their sexual partners?  I'm not much into genealogy.  Cal?

I have. Turned out inbreeding wasn't a problem.