‘I found out my wife of six years might be my sister’

A shocked man has discovered his wife could be his sister in a nightmare turn of events. The pair share children but had no idea they were related, he told Reddit.

The couple met eight years ago when the man was working out of town. They began dating long-distance, and later he moved so they could be together.

The couple married and had two children. Sadly, shortly after their wedding, his wife became ill, which set off this crazy chain of events.

The horrified man explained that the couple found out they are likely to be related because they were trying to find a donor for his wife who is in need of a kidney transplant. They checked with her relatives, but none of them was a match.

Given his wife’s health, the man decided to get tested to see if he could donate himself. He explained: “I knew it would be a long shot so I decided to get tested to see if I could donate. I got a call the other day saying that I was a match.”

But, that wasn’t all the test found. He went on: “The doctor then said something about wanting to do additional testing due to some information from the HLA (human leukocyte antigen) tissue test results. I didn’t think much of it and agreed.”

When the results came back, the man learned he and his wife had an “abnormally high match percentage”.

He went on: “I was shocked and confused. (The doctor) explained that because of how DNA information is passed down through generations a parent to a child could have at least a 50 percent match and siblings could have a 0-100 percent match. It was rare to have a high match as husband and wife.”

As it turned out the pair are related. The poster said: “We’re related – no, I’m not kidding.”

Because the man had a closed adoption, he was unable to track his family, meaning there was little to no way he could have known. He explained: “All of my family is from my adopted parents. My parents adopted me two minutes after I was born.

“Their name is on my birth certificate. They have not told me anything about my bio parents and don’t have any info.”

He added: “I don’t know what to do moving forward but I know it may be wrong. She is my wife and the mother of our kids.”

A doctor weighed in on the post itself to explain. They said: “I am a clinical laboratory scientist working in a histocompatibility and immunogenics lab aka transplant lab. I do the testing to find out if recipients and donors are matches through genetic typing, donor specific antibody testing, etc.”

They went on: “If you are haploidentical to your wife, you are biological siblings. If it’s only a few haplotype matches, you could be cousins, or potentially not related and it’s random assortment (you got lucky).

“You might be biological siblings, you might be cousins, or the doctor could be wrong.”