Tinder-Siblings

After 16 years apart, siblings Erik de Vries and Josephine Egberts were finally reunited in a very unconventional way!

Back in 1999, siblings Erik de Vries and Josephine Egberts from the Netherlands, were broken apart when their parents divorced. Erik, along with his twin brother Maarten went to live with their father in Belgium, while Josephine went to live with their mother; sadly the separation resulted in brother and sister completely losing touch with one another.

Fast forward to March of this year, Erik, now 24, had moved back to the Netherlands for school and like many single twenty-somethings, he signed up and joined Tinder.

He told Connections Mic, “The first time I swiped her profile I had absolutely no idea,” He continued, “to be honest, it hasn’t been on my mind in the past few years after Maarten, my brother, and I finished a failed search for Josephine a few years ago.”

One day when he was swiping through profiles, he became matched up with a 22 year old Josephine; they had no idea they were related at the time.

So naturally Erik started talking to her, “In our first conversation I was actually flirting with her so the conversation was very superficial.” 

Erik told the NL times that after a few chats he couldn’t shake the feeling that something felt very familiar about Josephine, “In our next conversation, I started to get some clues and figured she might actually be my sister. This kind of shocked me, so I decided not to contact her for a few days.”

After a few days, Erik mustered up the courage to ask Josephine about her full identity; the two exchanged stories about their past and then soon realized- they were brother and sister; they met up a week later.

Erik said, “The fact that we had a lost sister and she had lost her twin brothers did give her suspicion as well.”

Josephine added, “When I saw him, it was suddenly very clear, It was so special to see my own blood brother again after 16 years.”

A writer named Sjoerd Zwart heard about the story from a friend who actually happened to know Erik and he was able to bring together all three siblings for a family picture; their first one in nearly 15 years.

 

(Image via Connections MC)