 A mother who was reunited with her son after giving him up for adoption more than 30 years ago says the pair are now in love and are trying for a baby.
British-born Kim West, 51, and her son Ben Ford, 32, who lives in Michigan, have been in a relationship since they met in 2014 and have ‘incredible and mind-blowing’ sex.
West, who grew up in Islington, London, became pregnant while studying in California and after giving birth to her son aged 19, gave him up for adoption. After Ford was adopted, she came back to the UK but was unable to make a relationship work.
But in December 2013, she received a letter from her son, who was looking to track down his biological parents. And ever since the pair were reunited in January 2014, when Ford was still married to his wife Victoria, they realised they were attracted to each other.
Now two years on, Ford has split from his wife in order to be in a relationship with his mother with the pair living in Michigan in what they describe as ‘Genetic Sexual Attraction’.And now they plan to marry and are even trying to have a baby together.
West, who works as an interior designer, told New Day: ‘This is not incest, it is GSA. We are like peas in a pod and are meant to be together. ‘I know people will say we’re disgusting, that we should be able to control our feelings, but when you’re hit by a love so consuming you are willing to give up everything for it, you have to fight for it.
‘It’s a once in a lifetime chance and something Ben and I are not willing to walk away from.’ Ford first got in touch with his biological mother in December 2013, while living with his wife in Colorado, as he wanted to know more about his birth parents.
They arranged to meet up and the couple grew close, and eventually shared their first kiss after enjoying a bottle of champagne in a hotel.
Soon after, Ford, a freelance computer coder, left his wife Victoria after realising he had fallen for his mother and moved to Michigan, where they met with another GSA couple.
He told New Day’s Alley Einstein: ‘When I met Kim, I couldn’t think of her as my mum but instead as a sexual being. I had seen a therapist at an adoption support group and had learnt about the GSA phenomenon.’
Now the couple are planning a special wedding and hope to have a baby together. They also say they will consider surrogacy, if they are unable to have a biological child.
Incest is illegal in the couple’s home state of Michigan but say they would be willing to move. Genetic sexual attraction is a seldom-talked about phenomenon that occurs between adoptees and their long-lost parents.
It describes feelings of intense intimacy between two relatives who have been separated during the critical years of development and bonding, and then meet for the first time as adults. When an adult-child and their biological parent finally meet, the brain struggles to associate each other as family.
Instead, they become captivated with one another, sharing similar physical features, likes and dislikes, which is coupled with complex feelings of intimacy. This can lead both parties to express their emotions sexually.
The phenomenon was first identified by Barbara Gonyo in the Eighties, after she a wrote book called I’m His Mother, But He’s Not My Son, which recounted her personal story of reuniting with the son she placed for adoption at 16.
GSA is rare between people raised together in early childhood due to a reverse sexual imprinting known as the Westermarck effect, which desensitizes them sexual attraction. Experts believe that this effect evolved to prevent inbreeding.
How adults who reunite with estranged parents risk ‘genetic sexual attraction’
Research by the British Medical Journal shows that half of people separated from relatives at a young age experience strong sexual feelings when they are reunited.
Psychiatrists believe the natural repulsion relatives feel for one another as children acts as an inhibitor to committing incest. But those who miss out on this time can develop powerful, obsessive feelings for their parents or even siblings in adulthood.
Genetic Sexual Attraction (GSA) is a term that describes the phenomenon of sexual attraction between close relatives, such as siblings, first and second cousins or a parent and offspring who first meet as adults. The term GSA was coined 30 years ago by American Barbara Gonyo.
She wrote a book about the lust she felt for the adult son she had given up for adoption 26 years earlier. She never acted on her feelings.
One couple who have spoke out about their GSA relationship is Australian father and daughter John and Jenny Deaves. It is understood that the pair were estranged prior to reuniting back in 2000, only seeing each other three times.
But once reunited their relationship quickly became intimate ending Mr Deaves marriage to then wife Dorothy.
However, GSA is rare between people raised together in early childhood due to a reverse sexual imprinting known as the Westermarck effect, which desensitizes them sexual attraction.
Experts believe that this effect evolved to prevent inbreeding.
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(Nana Kwesi)