Real Issues Surrounding a Real Experience

Genetic Sexual Attraction is experienced by up to half of all pubescent or post-pubescent people involved in:


1. reuniting with a close pubescent/post-pubescent genetic relative for the first time since one of them was seven years of age or younger

...or...

2. meeting a close pubescent/post-pubescent genetic relative for the first time.


It can be an extremely intense or overpowering attraction on a physical, sexual, and/or emotional level, and is a natural reaction to the circumstances.

Here are a few common examples to give you and idea:

1. A woman gives up her son for adoption at birth. Twenty years later, that son finds his birth mother, and she experiences GSA.

2. A stormy marriage ends while the wife is pregnant or when they have a toddler (a girl). The ex-husband virtually disappears, or the ex-wife deliberately disappears with the girl. Twenty years later the biological father and daughter reunite, and they both experience GSA.

3. A man has a son with his first wife and they divorce. Years later, the man, living some ways away, remarries and has a daughter with his new wife. The daughter does not meet her half brother until they are post-pubescent, and she experiences GSA.



GSA can be a result with these facts of life, some of which are increasing with our highly mobile populations and emerging connectivities:

1. egg and sperm donation
2. embryo and child adoption
3. one night stands, short relationships, and secret affairs that result in children (sometimes without the father even knowing)
4. incarceration, divorce, and estrangement or sole custody orders

GSA appears to occur along sexual orientation lines, which means a heterosexual man and his heterosexual genetic son who are reunited or meet for the first time are unlikely to experience GSA. However, if one of them is gay or bisexual, he may experience GSA.

GSA almost always involves some pain, sometimes much pain for many people.

Most people know what it is like to be strongly attracted to someone who isn’t mutually attracted to them, or is “off limits” for whatever reason. With GSA, it can be like that, only much worse.


Sometimes, GSA is mutually occurring, meaning at least two of the individuals are attracted to each other. In such cases, problems may include:

1. Feeling alone or like nobody understands. GSA is still underrepresented in media and research, and anti-consanguinamory laws and prejudices don’t help change this. Supportive communities are forming, however.

2. Internalized feelings of confusion or shame due to societal or cultural prejudices against consanguinamory.

3. Acting on the attraction would go against existing vows to others, or the mere existence of the attraction is causing neglect to existing relationships or jealousy from existing partners.

4. General disapproval or jealousy from other family.

5. General social prejudice, bullying, or discrimination.

6. Criminalization of consensual sex between, or denial of marriage rights to, close genetic relatives.

7. One of them is under the legal age of consent for their jurisdiction (think of an 18-year-old and a 16-year-old where 18 is the age of consent.)

8. Incompatibility. If not ourselves, we all know someone who has been mutually attracted to someone with whom he or she is incompatible in a way that is impossible or extremely difficult to resolve.

9. Abuse. As above, we all know some relationships can involve abuse. In some GSA cases, the abuse may have been one of the contributing factors to the original separation. If an abusive person hasn’t changed, it can be expected that person will be abusive to the person with whom he or she has reunited or met. Toxic people should be avoided, regardless of your genetic or social relation to them.

10. General disruption of normal life. (You’re happy, you have a life you like, living where you like, and then all of a sudden someone who lives away from you comes into your life and you’re intensely attracted, and even if this is a mostly positive thing, change can be stressful.)

This blog is a sex-positive blog that supports the rights of any consenting adults to share love, sex, residence, and marriage. That includes people experiencing GSA. Not everyone who has experienced GSA agrees with such a position. Some of those who do not agree with this blog’s position discourage any sex between close genetic relatives, some between parents with their genetic adult children. It is important for those seeking assistance in navigating the stormy seas of GSA know where people who are giving them advice are coming from. If someone is against any sex outside of marriage and thinks only two, heterosexual, nonconsanguineous people should have the right to marry, or thinks there should never be any sex between close genetic relatives, that is important to know.

The problems surrounding GSA are made worse by laws, discrimination, prejudices, and blanket condemnation against consanguinamory (consensual incest); discouraging open, honest and inclusive discussion; and a lack of research. There are still not many places where someone experiencing GSA can get help, and the last thing they need when they seek help is finger pointing and someone pushing their personal sexual morality on them.

This is the best FREE GSA-specific forum I know about.

See:

Genetic Sexual Attraction Can Lead to Lasting Love

Hate Hurts

The Two Main Paths to Consanguinamory


Suppression Brings Ongoing Pain


Hate Adds Pain to Genetic Sexual Attraction