They are actually half-siblings. They share the same father and are virtually twins in the sense they were born only 28 days apart from each other.
They were raised separately and and met for the first time when they were both 27 years old.
In a story typical of Genetic Sexual Attraction, they both felt as if they experienced love at first sight. Many reunited relatives experience GSA but never act on it, and yet the overwhelming feelings of sexual attraction can cause a lot of pain and suffering.
Rachael and Shawn are one of those couples who “crossed the line” with each other and acted on their passionate feelings. Rachael described the feeling of giving in, It’s like kissing myself.
Now they just want to be a normal couple with normal lives. If they could, they would marry, but no state in the country allows marriages between siblings yet.
I appreciate their willingness to come out and share their story with us. I hope they are doing well and I hope they’ve found a place where they can finally be a normal couple.
-Vielle
original story ran on the ABC news website, Feb. 19, 2007
Among her many revelations, she describes having a sexual affair with her father, Joaquin.
To understand her relationship with her father, you must go back to childhood. He abandoned her and the family when Anais was eleven. She missed him dearly and sought to win his return to her. She wrote to him but he did not return.
Over the years her yearning sublimated into her writing and her art. Into her twenties, her absent father became a mythical figure to her. He was Don Juan, the seducer of women. She called him her Sun King. She saw herself in him. She believed she was her father’s daughter and followed in his footsteps of sexual exploration and conquest.
In turn, she became the female corollary of her father’s Don Juan. She cuckolded her husband. She was a sexual explorer through her twenties. She was liberated and yet, it seemed, always under the sexual shadow of a man, whether he be Henry Miller, or her psychoanalyst, Otto Rank, or the mythical shadow of her absent father.
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| Joaquin Nin |
On their meeting, Joaquin was immobile in bed because of an injured back. She spent the day in his bedroom, talking, getting to know him after twenty years of fantasizing about him.
There was a synergy between them. Each saw something of themselves in the other.
Anais sat on his bed as they talked. He caressed her foot.
Joaquin breaks the tension they are both feeling. “Do you believe in dreams?” he asks her.
“Yes,” she replies.
“I had a dream of you which frightened me. I dreamed that you masturbated me with jeweled fingers and that I kissed you like a lover. For the first time in my life I was terrified.”
“I also had a dream of you.”
“I don’t feel toward you as if you were my daughter.”
“I don’t feel as if you were my Father.”
Their foreplay of words continues as they drew closer. Finally they kiss. Anais describes:
I hesitated. I was tortured by a complexity of feelings, wanting his mouth, yet afraid, feeling I was to kiss a brother, yet tempted-terrified and desirous. I was taut. He smiled and opened his mouth. We kissed, and that kiss unleashed a wave of desire. I was lying across his body and with my breast I felt his desire, hard, palpitating. Another kiss. More terror than joy. The joy of something unameable, obscure.
They continue to kiss in his bed. He caresses her:
When his hand caressed me--oh, the knowingness of those caresses--I melted.
She was filled with conflicting emotions. She was drawn to him with desire and wished to please him, but part of her held back:
My body yielded to the penetration of his hand, but I resisted, I resisted enjoyment. . . I was timid and unwilling, yet passionately moved.
She pretended to enjoy and tried to hide her angst. She touched her father’s penis,
Again I lay over him and felt the hardness of his penis. He uncovered himself. I caressed him with a hand. I saw him quiver with desire.
With a strange violence, i lifted my negligee and I lay over him. . . Ecstatic, his face, and I now frenzied with the desire to unite with him . . . undulating, caressing him, clinging to him. His orgasm was tremendous, of his whole being. He emptied all of himself in me . . . and my yielding was immense, with my whole being, with only that core of fear which arrested the supreme orgasm in me.
After their first love making her angst returns but she stays with him and goes back to his bed to make love to him again and again for days. She feels “magnificent joy” but it is weighed down by a sense of guilt. She did her best to hide her reservations from her father. She wanted him to enjoy it fully even if she could not.
She felt poisoned, filled with her father’s semen,
divided, and dying because of the division--the struggle to seize joy, and joy unattainable. . . I had the man I loved with my mind; I had him in my arms, in my body . . . The man I sought throughout the world, who branded my childhood and haunted me. I had loved fragments of him in other men . . . and the whole was there, body and face so beautiful, so ardent, with a greater force, all united, synthesized, more brilliancy, more abstractions, and more force and more sensuality! . . . The sperm was a poison, a love that was a poison. . .
On the second night they make love again. This time, she finally felt unreserved joy in her carnal love with her father:
We burned away all the prejudices. we flamed up with a new passion. I have never, never felt anything so absolute. How I gave myself to you? All the other moments of love, I realize now, were incomplete--a game. Last night I realized what love is. I poured my whole being into you.
They spent days together sharing poems and stories about their lives, they spent the nights coupled in sensuality.
At night--caresses. He begs me to undress and lie at his side. His caressing suppleness and mine, the feelings which run from head to toes--vibrations of all the senses, a thousand new vibrations . . . a new union, a unison of delicacies, subtleties, exaltation, keener awareness and perception. A joy which spreads in vast circles, a joy for me without climax because of that deeper, inner holding back.
Her father teaches her about pleasuring and love making:
Endless stories about women. Exploits. Teaching me at the same time that last expertness in love--the games, the subtleties, new caresses. I had at moments the feeling that here was Don Juan indeed, Don Juan who had possessed more than a thousand women, and I was lying there learning from him, and he was telling me how much talent I had, how amazing an amorous sensibility, how beautifully tuned and responsive I was. Amazed at the richness of my honey. “You walk like a courtesan from Greece You seem to offer your sex when you walk.”
For nights on end, Anais is filled to overflowing with her father’s semen, so much so, she has to hold a kerchief between her legs when she returns to her room.
Day by day, Joaquin’s back began to get better and he freer to move. On the fourth night:
He lay over me, it was an orgy, and he penetrated me three and four times without pausing and without withdrawing--his new strength, new desire, and new spurt coming like waves following each other. I sank into the dim, veiled, unclimaxed joy, into the mist of caresses, languors, into continuous excitation, experiencing at last, profoundly, a passion for this man, a passion founded on awe, admiration. . . I told him these had been the most beautiful nights of my life, and when I said this I saw he had wanted keenly to know if this were so. I poured out love, worship, awareness.
For weeks and months Anais saw her father many times. They continued to make love to each other. But also, Anais went back to her affair with Henry Miller and her psychoanalyst, not to mention her husband.
As the love affair continued, Anais began to know the real Joaquin and the mythical father/Sun King began to fade for her. The real Juaquin was aging. She began to see his weakness and his humanity. Underneath it all, he was insecure and tried to cling to her, but Anais slowly brought their affair to an end. She continued to love him and did not end it abruptly.
Months later, she described meeting him in another city after some days or weeks apart. Her father reaches into her clothing and and she accepts the pleasure he gives her making soft chirping noises to the movements of his fingers on her sex.
Eventually Joaquin concedes it is at an end and it seems, thereafter, they are but father and daughter.
The love affair with her father was pivotal in Anais’ life. It was a breakthrough. She became a self possessed woman, no longer possessed by the myth of her father.
Since she published her diaries, some have doubted her. Some see her as a victim. Some see her as a narcissist. None see all of her even though her life became an open book.
I do know that Anais has shared with all of us, something beautiful. Something we thought only the divines would dare.
In appreciation,
Vielle
♥ ♥ ♥ ♡ ♡
I just watched Ma Mere, directed by Christophe Honoré. Yes, it is another French film exploring shades of incestuous love. It is about Pierre (Louis Garrel), a young man who visits his mother on holiday and gets to know her for the first time. He was raised by his grandmother and never really knew his mother.
Helene (Isabelle Huppert) is not a typical mom. She has spent her adult life in excess of sex and alcohol. Now she finds she has nothing but this to teach and share with her son. She also fears he will despise her for who she is. There is push and pull between mother and son. She shows him glimpses of who she is, but he does not turn away and still seeks to know her, to bond with her.
The strange relationship between mom and son is troubling but touching. Helene gradually opens up and draws her son into her world in the only way she knows how. In letting him in, she also opens up a whole new world for him as he discovers his own sexuality. Helene introduces him to her wild girlfriend. She guides and then watches as her son discovers his sexual potential. Mother and son share the woman, and this is their closest moment. Pierre locks eyes with his mom as he climaxes with the other woman. They both flirt with something more but Helene stops it and leaves before it can progress further. She sets him up with another woman to "take care" of him and take his sexual education even further.
Pierre has crossed over into the depravity of his mother's life. Now he is like her and she no longer fears that he will reject her. Sadly, the excess and the relentless drive toward consummation ultimately leads to tragedy born of guilt, as almost all incest themes do, but the bond formed between mother and son is unbroken.
I enjoyed most of this movie very much, but I didn't think much of the predictable and unnecessary tragic ending. It would have been a much better movie without the ending. Why do writers and film makers inevitably feel the need to denigrate their own work it this way? They show us something beautiful and different, then basically condemn it by saying that anyone who experiences this cannot live on. The guilty suicide is trite, it does not ring true with the character, and is really just a device to absolve the writer and the viewer of having taken part in a subject that threatens to contaminate everyone who comes in contact with it.
Still, it is worth watching in spite of this.
On a happier note, this is a true story. It is from a published case study in which the patient's name has been changed (photo is unrelated for illustration).
Laura is a career woman. She has three children and, up to this point, led a quite normal life. She is married and never considered herself a lesbian. She was raised by an adoptive family and had never met her biological kin. At the age of 40, she did some research and tracked down her biological sister, Jane. Here Laura describes their first meeting and subsequent affair:
Jane knew I was my mother's daughter just by looking at me. I took my shoes off to show my feet, my hands and knuckles, photographs of me from the back. It began with fascination with similarities and differences. We needed to be together and still do.
Last year Jane and her husband were apart while selling a house and we spent increasing times together. I liked feeling her against me, her hands, leaning. It was part of belonging--what I wanted from my mum because I never belonged anywhere.
Laura recognized she was having some unusual feelings about her sister but didn't quite identify it as sexual. Not immediately anyway. She discussed this with a counselor at the adoption center (where the case study is from) and she was warned about GSA and that she should take precautions. Still, Laura did not want to believe she was having sexual feelings for her newfound sis. She wasn't even a lesbian, after all. She told that counselor it was all right because "All we want to do is cuddle." She ignored the warnings and went on seeing her sister alone.
It just felt like falling in love. It was someone I'd belong to, it's my sister, it's nice, I'm lucky. We couldn't get enough time together. A goodbye kiss on the cheek, then the lips. No resistance. It seemed right.
Both sisters were married but the husbands had no inkling of the gently blooming sexual relationship. The two families went on vacation together and it continued:
That's where it went below the waist, I never thought it would happen. I just wanted to be close.
Laura continued to confess to her counselor about her ongoing incestuous love affair. The sisters explored each other sexually. The counselor refers to it as a "genital relationship." Exactly how the sisters express their love "genitally" is left to our imagination, but the depth of their passion is clear. Each sister is drawn to join with the other in sensuality and shared joy. They made love to each other on and off in secret for months. The synergy of sex and love and family recognition is so strong, Laura tells her counselor she would willingly leave her husband to live with her sister if it weren't for the children. The love and sexual feelings are mutual between the sisters.
Source: Pathologies of the West by Roland Littlewood
With love,
Vielle
This story saddens me. 26 year old Kirsty and her 44 year old father, Stephen, sat before a Scottish judge on June 11 to face sentencing for their love. Kirsty put her head in her hands and moaned "oh no" when the judge declared her father would spend 16 months in prison. He soon handed the same sentence to Kirsty.
Kirsty's grandfather, her father's father, broke down and cried. He had to be escorted from the court.
Kirsty and her father were handcuffed and led away to their mutual punishment.
The UK tabloids have pulled out all the stops in branding Stephen a pervert and a sex criminal. Stephen has become the victim of harassment and assault. Both their lives have been shattered by the criminal charges and the horrific press coverage.
The truth is, Stephen and Kirsten experienced GSA (Genetic Sexual Attraction) which is quite common among reunited relatives. In fact, Stephen did not even know Kirsten existed until she showed up on his doorstep two years ago. Kirsten tracked down her biological father wishing to meet him and develop a relationship.
As with most people who experience GSA, Stephen and Kirsten had no ill motive or "perversion" intended. GSA happens suddenly and unexpectedly. It is overwhelming and feels quite natural despite social beliefs about incest.
Kirsty has been described in the press as an emotionally wounded and needy person. Her defense lawyer explains that she had a difficult childhood. In finding her father she found love and an emotional bond grew quickly between them. After a lifetime of wondering and fantasizing about a missing family member, feelings can be very strong and confused on meeting.
Kirsty was an adult woman when she met her father for the first time. Like others in this situation, strong overwhelming sexual desire becomes intertwined with the normal kinds of affections that occur between family members. As an adult she is not the victim of abuse but willing participant in a form of love that may be hard to understand but has done harm to no one.
After their reunion, they started seeing a lot of each other. Through her lawyer, Kirsty expressed that she felt loved, maybe for the first time in her life. Kirsty invited her father to her home. That's where she made love to him for the first time. Like others who experience GSA, sexuality is only part of the relationship. After having sex, they continued with building their relationship as father and daughter, but sexuality continued to be part of it.
It was noted in court that the two sent highly sexual text messages to each other addressed to "Daddy" and "Daughter" respectively. The tabloid press wants to use this to paint them as perverse, but this is exactly the sort of confluence of sexual and familial love that can be so powerful in people who were not raised together.
The second time they acknowledge having sex was several weeks after their first encounter. This time it was at a bed and breakfast where they had hoped to keep it a secret but they were recognized and turned in. They had already been on warning from the court because Stephen's wife became aware that her husband was being sexual with his daughter and she had turned them in to the authorities.
Often with people who experience GSA, the sexual part of the relationship eventually fades away but the familial bond continues in a more normal way. For Kirsty and Stephen, this process was interupted and destroyed by the UK authorities and courts. They may never be able to lead normal lives after this, much less have anything like a father-daughter relationship.
If I have to say it a thousand times, consensual sex between adults who happen to be related causes no harm and should not be a crime.
My heart goes out to Kirsten and Stephen. I hope very much that they can find a way forward in their lives and just maybe share love once again.
With sadness,
Vielle
Sechuan native, Li Qin is 23 years old and beautiful. She is lucky to be so beautiful and to have a father who can capture her eligant form so artistically for the world to see. At least, that is the opinion of her mother who very much supports the dad-and-daughter artistic collaboration. Li Qin's 61-year-old father, Li Zhuangping is a skilled oil painter. One day he asked her if she would like to pose for him as a model. Qin accepted and has posed nude for her father numerous times now.
Li Zhuangping explains that he would only paint his daughter nude as long as she wishes it and agrees to it. For her part, Li Qin will only pose nude for her father's paintings; she has explained that she draws the line at other media and will not pose nude for photos or video.
The paintings by Mr. Li of his daughter are entrancing and sensual. She is pictured in natural scenes, in varying poses with wild animals. As a subject he treats her respectfully but without shyness. He does not overly eroticise his daughter's body but shares with us a vision of her as both alluring and elligant. The realism of his art hides little and through his artist's eye we see her nakedness almost starkly but softened by her winsome poses and the natural loveliness of her youthful form.
Needless to say, there has been some public controversy about this collaboration. Some have suggested that Qin has taken her "Daddy's little girl" thing way too far. Personally, I think the paintings are beautiful and surely reflect the beauty and intimacy of this father daughter relationship. I envy the young miss Li and can only wish that I could have such a close relationship with my own dad, were he alive today. I have to completely agree with the view of psychologist, Dr. Michelle Golland, who states:
Since she's not a minor, I have to think to myself, is someone being harmed in this scenario?. Is there a history of abuse in the past? If not, she's an adult and can make the decisions for herself.
For a woman to expose her body to the gaze of any artist, she must feel comfortable and there must be a feeling of trust. For a daughter to bare her body for her father there must be a very deep feeling of trust indeed. Qin must feel very safe with her father to to have sat for him time and time again. To pose nude, alone with an artist, is an intimate experience. They must have a very close and special relationship that allowed father and daughter to share this together. I do not believe there is any shame in this artistic endevor, rather they honor each other in a celebration of grace and beauty that the world would miss had they not been so bold.
From the Mountain Goddess Spirit series
I for one deeply appreciate the sincerity and openess of this father-daughter art team. The elder Li's talent for making art is matched and surpassed by the younger Li's natural unadorned beauty. There is also a deep inner beauty that shines in Qin and is captured in Zhuangping's delicate paintings. We are all the richer for the bravery of this sensual daughter and her talented father.
In appreciation,
Vielle