Genetic sexual attraction

Genetic Sexual Attraction: husband and
wife discover they are brother and sister
The phenomenon can happen in
siblings separated at birth and is
experienced in up to half of post-
adoption reunions
A Brazilian married couple have
discovered that they are brother and
sister on live radio

A Brazilian married couple, who have
both searched for their mothers who
abandoned them as children, have
discovered the two women they were
looking for was in-fact the same person
while live on air, making them brother
and sister.
Adriana, 39, and her husband Leandro,
37, who did not want to share their
surnames, have known each other for 10
years and now have a six year old
daughter together.
Both Adriana and Leandro, who live in
Sao Paulo, had been searching for their
mother for a number of years. Leandro
knew his mother was called Maria, and
that she had abandoned him at the age of
eight. He was brought up by his step-
mother.
View of Sao Vicente, southern coast of Sao Paulo,
Brazil
Adriana knew her mother was also called
Maria, and that she had been abandoned
at the age of one. She was brought up by
her father.
The couple thought that their mothers,
who they believed to be two different
women, should the same name was a
“coincidence,” as Maria is a common
name in Brazil.
But Adriana’s refusal to give up the
search for her mother led her to calling
into to Brazilian radio station Globo
Radio, and eventually managing to speak
to her mother on The Time is Now
programme, which specialises in finding
lost relatives, the Mirror reports .
At the end of Adriana’s conversation with
Maria, her mother revealed she also had a
son called Leandro, who did not know
her.
Adriana, shocked at the realisation that
her husband was also her brother, said: “I
don’t believe that you’re telling me this.
Leandro is my husband.”
The phenomenon that Leandro and
Adriana have experienced is called
Genetic Sexual Attraction, and it occurs
between “two adults who have been
separated during the critical years of
development and bonding and are
reunited alter as adults,” according to a
GSA website, which has now been turned
into a GSA support-based forum.
In 2003, the Post-Adoption Centre, which
offers information and counselling to
people undertaking adoptee reunions, and
which at the time was seeing 3,000 clients
a year, estimated that up to half of
reunions were accompanied by anything
from temporary attraction to obsessive
sexual obsession, according to the
Guardian. A study by University College
London found similar results.
The attraction that occurs between
separated family members can been
defined by people not having experienced
what is known as the Westermark Effect,
a hypothetical psychological effect that
suggests people who live in close
domestic proximity during the first few
years of their lives together means they
become desensitised to any later sexual
attraction. People who experience GSA
have supposedly not had this critical
period of desensitisation together.
“Now I’m scared to go home and find out
Leandro doesn’t want me anymore. I love
him so much,” Adriana told her mother
on the radio.
The couple were reportedly never
married legally. Adriana said: “Only death
is going to separate us. 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.”
Their case is not isolated, and the more
extreme cases of GSA are prone to
making national headlines; in 2008, the
story of a pair of twins who were
separated at birth but who later married
was widely covered. They had been
adopted by different families and
completely unaware they were twins until
after they were married. The marriage
was annulled.
And GSA was even used as plot line in
Neighbours in the early 2000s, when the
character of Serena Bishop becomes
immediately attracted to a new character,
Luka Dokich, before discovering he is her
half-brother.
In the case of Adriana and Leandro, they
are determined to stay together, despite
what “anyone might think”. Their attitude
to their relationship reflects the findings
of Dr Maurice Greenberg, who spoke to
the Guardian in 2003, said it is essential to
determine GSA as incest only in terms of
biology, as the relationships that occur –
even when sexual - are between two
consenting adults.
Adriana said: "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 is going to break us up. Nothing