Every lesbian’s been through the experience of having their girlfriend mistaken as their sister. Whether you’re bringing your son to the ER because his stomach hurts a little bit or checking into a roadside motel on a road trip to adopt a rescue puppy from Branson, Missouri; the people behind the desk with control over your lives somehow always default to “sister,” no matter how much you don’t look alike or couldn’t possibly be related for other reasons.

This has happened to me in every relationship I’d ever been in, but my most recent girlfriend and I got it more than most. I understand why — we have the same sandy blonde hair and the same full eyebrows. We’re both pretty thin, although I am more of a pear and she is more of an apple. We share all of our clothing. Sometimes, we even end up in matching outfits! Others might find this embarrassing and tell their partner to change their clothes before they go out, because god forbid they show up at the coffee shop together in identical gray Target tank tops and barrel jeans. But not us! We always embraced our similar style as evidence of our deep connection to one another.

We start every day with the same bowl of yogurt, fruit and hemp seeds.. We both work from home but we meet up in the dining/living room for lunch. We have a dog named Mildred, named after my grandma who I actually think was gay (found some stuff going through her estate….) We also have this weird accent that we both talk in all the time that started out as how we talk to Mildred, but now it’s also how we talk to each other.

Still we have differences too! For example; I have eczema, but she has psoriasis. I like watching Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, but she’d prefers Newsradio. We have this one friend Jenna who I think is really fake and annoying but my girlfriend thinks she’s actually really nice and just acts like that cause she works at Buzzfeed. So it’s not like we are totally merged, or identical in any way. Like any two girls, we are similar in some ways, and different in others.

Anyways, despite all those differences, the world sees two girls of approximately the same height with the same hair color who don’t appear to hate each other and immediately think: sisters. I shouldn’t have been surprised that people always assumed we were sisters, even if they saw us kiss on the mouth, or holding hands in the mall, or even if we were at the fertility clinic talking about starting a family together, or if we booked a hotel room with one bed, or if we were each other’s plus one to a wedding. What could we do? It’s just a lesbian curse.

Well, this is where our story might not be the same as the stories of other lesbians. Trigger warning!

We decided to send out our DNA to ancestry dot com because she wanted to find her Dad and I wanted to find out if I was related to Pocahontas.

My girlfriend was conceived via sperm donor. Meanwhile, I was raised by my Stepdad, Jerry, and never met my real Dad because according to my Mom, he is a bad person. I was never even curious about meeting him. My Mom explained to me very early on that Jerry is the only Dad I ever needed. Also, Jerry has a house upstate, and it’s very nice.

Anyhow, you can imagine our surprise when our results came back… we had the same Dad. Can you believe it?

In this one case, when everybody thought that a lesbian couple were sisters, they were right. ☹️

You might wonder if we decided to break up after finding out that we were, in fact, sisters. Well, I guess this story has a happy ending. We realized that we don’t have sex or even kiss very often actually. Furthermore, both of us have always wished we had a sister. I have two brothers, and she was an only child.

So we decided instead to officially transition our relationship from girlfriends to sisters. We still live together and share clothes and now when people assume we’re sisters, it doesn’t bother us one bit!