Here’s my introduction; I am a new member: MariaSofie

Dear kindred spirits,

I am really glad to have found this forum, for the past four years I was on the gsa forum that was started by Barbara Gonyo. At first I believed that the gsa forum served my purpose and my experiences with gsa. Because I was trying to ‘overcome it’, to forget about my brother in this way and to be happy with my husband. Needless to say that I failed miserably otherwise I would not be here! And now, five years after meeting my half-brother for the first time and falling hopelessly in love with him, I am in a very different place and believe this forum is where I can now indeed find kindred spirits. I look forward to interacting with you!

Here’s a little bit about myself: I am a 47-year old woman from Northern Europe. I am the result of a holiday romance my mam and dad had in a Southern European country and grew up only knowing the first name of my dad. It is a miracle that I was able to find him. As I said, this is now nearly 5 years ago. I was married at the time in a comfortable marriage with a sweet husband but for me the passion had long gone. We had no children and no common goals in life left after having been together for twenty years. When I met my new family, it became very clear that I had been existing, not living and that I wanted a different life. I think that would even have happened had I not fallen in love with my brother. But I did and that made for a few difficult years where I hurt my husband a lot and where my brother and I were trying to come to terms with our feelings for each other. He is ten years younger than me and that in itself I found difficult as well. Should I want a life for him where he was with someone he could not have children with? Although a sexual relationship between two consenting adults is not criminalised in either of our countries, the taboo was a huge problem, mainly for him. He believed that no one would ever accept our relationship. And he did not want to live a secret life.

Fast forward to now: a year ago I had the courage and strength to leave my husband and my brother and I have recently been open about our love for each other and about our relationship. We call it our ‘coming-out’. We have told our families and friends. We have been living together for nearly a year now, but only very recently openly as a couple. We wanted to be sure that our relationship was working and we both believe that you only know this after having lived together for a while. We are both very happy that we have taken this step and that we can now live within one of our main values; Honesty. The reactions have been very good overall, a lot better than we expected. But of course.... there are exceptions, I would like to write more about this another time.

I really look forward to reading and interacting more here and getting to know your stories, struggles, successes and dreams for the future!

Take care,
MariaSofie

Welcome aboard someone will be a long soon to approve you. Theres a number of brother/sister and gsa couples here

Thank you CelesChere, that is good to know!

Hi, MariaSofie,

Welcome to Kindred Spirits, and congratulations on your love for your brother. I’ve upgraded your membership.

We recently had another new member named Lost Sister come here from the GSA Forum. KS welcomes anyone who is involved with or has feelings for a relative, and supports everyone in trying to handle that in whatever way works best for them.

Usually I ask new members to post their story, but you’ve already done that. So I hope you enjoy the forum! You are among friends.

Best,
UN

Welcome aboard! So glad to have you here.

Thank you Unowen and FullMarriageEquality, glad to be here!

Hiya MariaSofia! and welcome ^_^ I'm happy you've shared your story with us, and if you'd like sharing details we have a forum for that too.

Hi Mariasofia,

Don’t worry about children me and my sister just got together as she was entering her menopause, it’s not about procreating it’s about love

Mariasophia- I agree with Shasta, mom and I can't have children either-we started too late. But our love is like yours, it's all that matters!

Thank you for your responses and good to know you all don’t care about whether you can have children. My brother has also made that choice as he finds our love more important. But it is something I find a pity.... I also wonder; are you all also a lot younger younger than your female partners?

Not really, Maria. We have a lot of father-daughter couples here. You could post a poll if you’d like to find out.

Best,
UN

welcome

Hi Unowen, I understand that and my question was not a general one. I meant that question specifically for the three men who commented that it wasn’t about children, but about love. They mentioned that their female partners were too old to have children, hence my question about them being younger. As my brother is a lot younger than me and I know he would have liked to have children, but I am too old for that....

MariaSofie wrote:Hi Unowen, I understand that and my question was not a general one. I meant that question specifically for the three men who commented that it wasn’t about children, but about love. They mentioned that their female partners were too old to have children, hence my question about them being younger. As my brother is a lot younger than me and I know he would have liked to have children, but I am too old for that....

I see. Thanks for the clarification. I’ll shut up and let them answer for themselves.

Best,
UN

Welcome to the forum maria, me and my sister wish you the best of luck in your relationship

Welcome to KS, there are lots of people here who have had relationships where there was a significant age gap, and it seems to me that the age difference tends to worry the older partner more than the younger generally. I was with my father for a few years, and it bothered him a lot, didn't bother me in the slightest that he was much older. So, it makes perfect sense to me that you'd worry about your brother being younger, but like everyone here has said, love is more important than having kids or age differences in general. That you're happy together, that is what really counts here.

Thank you Ian! And Jane Doe; that’s good to hear

Maria- The age difference in ou relationship is normal, as we are mother and son, as opposed to being siblings. The father and daughter couples have a little more time for children simply because the female is the younger.

MarieSofie...I too am in similar situation with my half brother. We both are in marriages which makes things difficult for us, as our feelings are getting stronger everyday! Welcome to KS, I too was in the GSA forum, but didn’t get the support I needed.

MariaSofie wrote:Hi Unowen, I understand that and my question was not a general one. I meant that question specifically for the three men who commented that it wasn’t about children, but about love. They mentioned that their female partners were too old to have children, hence my question about them being younger. As my brother is a lot younger than me and I know he would have liked to have children, but I am too old for that....

I can sympathize with you MariaSofie, as well as you mothers and older sisters as I am 43. Having children is a natural fulfillment of ones expression of love.

Being the clever woman I am, have an idea.
There are some women here who are single, and still in their child bearing years. Being here, you know she will be supportive of your incestuous relationship. Then how about some matchmaking? There must be some women who would be interested in being the second 'wife'.

It could fulfill the desires of all three. The Older mother or sister to see her beloved son or brother with children, younger son or brother to have his own children, the single woman to have children. Brother, son could then openly continue his consanguineous relationship.

No one is going to question the second 'marriage', so what that mum or older sister permanently lives with you, she can help look after the kids and provide other 'benefits'.

Ideally, but not necessarily, would be if both women were to so degree bisexual as I think in this situation a polyamorous 'marriage' would work.

(My spell checker does not like the word, 'polyamorous', have I spelled it correctly?)

Hi Likaself,

Thank you very much for reading my message and for your solution

I cannot see it work for me for many reasons, just to name a few; my brother and I are not in a secret relationship. Our friends and family know that we are in love and live as a monogamous couple. So we wouldn’t want a third party in our relationship. We are happy to be together without further complications. Then there’s the issue of geography; we are all spread out over the world!!!
And last but not least as it’s probably the most important here is the issue of the natural love, bonding and connection that a biological mother has with her child, and the fact that I would want the child to see me as his or her mother, I wouldn’t want a third party interfering with anything. I reckon it can be hard enough to agree with one other human being (as in your partner) about the upbringing of a child, what source of devastation and disagreements would this pose!?

Maybe others would see it differently, but I would certainly not want to go there.

All in all my brother and I are now living together as a couple for a year and a half, the first 10 months secretly and for 8 months we have been open about our relationship. Things are going well and the issue of children is no longer on my mind really.

We have adopted a kitten and will get a puppy as well, you could say (tongue in cheek) that that’s our solution

But, as I said, I do like that you thought of a solution, thank you!

Take care,
María