Sometimes a strong marriage is destroyed not by betrayal and not by the fading of feelings, but by an unexpected result of a genetic test. These spouses decided to study family roots and accidentally found a common relative. And if a man calmly accepted this fact, for his wife it was a serious blow.
The couple decided to find out more about their ancestors and took a DNA test together, but did not suspect that its result would destroy their union.
“The other day a friend of mine came to me and asked for advice,” a Reddit user said. He said his wife is filing for divorce after 23 years of marriage. They took a genetic test for family history research and found that they are brother and sister in the sixth generation.”
According to him, the friend’s wife took the news to heart. Upon learning that her husband was her distant cousin, she ran to the bathroom, where she vomited. The woman claimed that her whole life was a lie. She decided to divorce.
Parents, brothers and sisters, friends and colleagues tried to convince her, arguing that the degree of relationship is too insignificant to somehow affect their relationship and the health of their children. However, the woman repeated: she was disgusted by the idea that she not only slept with her cousin, but also married and gave birth to children from him.
Most people can’t even trace their family roots that far.
The husband asked the author of the post for advice and suggested that he talk to his wife, but the request baffled him. He admitted that he did not know how to approach a conversation with a woman, and considered her reaction inadequate.
Users in the comments agreed that the wife is dramatizing the situation: “If they are cousins in the sixth generation, then their last common ancestor lived 7 generations ago. In other words, they share a common great-great-great-great-grandfather. Most people can’t even trace their family roots that far.” “Most likely, the common ancestor lived in the 1700s. In addition, the spouses have practically no similarities in DNA.
Perhaps the wife is using this fact as a reason for divorce.
One commenter suggested that many people – if not most – are married to someone who is technically a distant relative. “If you married a person of your ethnic group, and his family lives in your region, there is a huge chance that you have some kind of distant common ancestor,” he concluded.
The relationship of the heroes of the plot cannot be considered incest, that is, an intimate relationship between close blood relatives. Such a distant degree of relationship also does not fit the concept of inbreeding – it is used when relatively close family members, for example, cousins, marry.
So a woman has no reason to be afraid of incest and should contact a genetic consultant. The expert will explain to her that the unrest is in vain and you can not destroy the marriage … Unless, of course, she did not use this information simply as a reason for divorce.