A Brazilian couple who were abandoned as babies have discovered live on radio that they have the same birth mother.
Adriana, 39, and her partner Leandro, 37, have been together for seven years and have a six-year-old daughter together.
The couple, both from different towns, have spent their lives searching for their birth mothers; both called Maria, who had given them up as infants.
But in a shocking twist revealed on Brazilian radio station, Radio Globo this week the pair – who did not want to reveal their last names – were actually searching for the same person.
Adriana, who works as a cosmetic saleswoman, was left in the care of her father as a one-year-old when her mother walked out on the family.
At age eight, Leandro, who works as a truck driver, discovered that the woman he knew as his mother was not his biological mother.
Born in Brazil’s southeast state of Sao Paulo, Leandro remained in his home town while Adriana moved away to work as a maid and was married for 15 years and had three children.
The couple first met and fell in love 10 years ago after Adriana’s marriage broke down and she moved back to Sao Paulo.
However, when Adriana was reunited with her mother live on air, the station that helped find her the woman named Maria revealed that she also had an estranged son named Leandro whom she had given up as a baby.
As it becomes clear in the interview that Maria is also Leandro’s mother Adriana is left devastated and begins to breakdown and sob.
“Leandro is my husband,” Adriana said after finding out.
“Now I’m scared to go home and find out that Leandro doesn’t want me any more. I love him so much.”
The biological siblings, who never legally married, yesterday they confirmed with Radio Globo that they would stay together despite the relation.
“Only death is going to separate us,” Adriana said.
“All this happened because God wanted it to happen.
“Of course it would have been different if we had known all this before, but we didn’t and we fell in love.
“We thought it was funny that both our mothers had the same name, but it is a common name so we just thought it was a coincidence.
“At first we were really knocked by it all.
“But we had a family meeting and told everyone that we are going to stay husband and wife, whatever anyone might think.
“We have so many plans together, nothing’s going to break us up, nothing.”
The couple say they have kept in touch with their birth mother and don’t condemn her for leaving them as children.
While incest remains one of humanity’s chief taboos research published in the British Medical Journal found that half of those separated from biological relatives at a young age experience strong feelings of arousal when they are reunited.
Psychiatrists believe the natural revulsion siblings feel toward each other during childhood acts as a natural inhibitor to incest but brothers and sisters who miss out on this time can develop powerful, sexual feelings for their sibling in adulthood.
