Double-Love Explained

After some online conversations with friends who have had their offline friends and family not understand their relationships, I felt the need to write this article for the benefit of exsanguinamorous people who are just trying to understand how and why these relationships occur, and in what ways they differ from exsanguine ones. Double-love is experienced in both GSA and non-GSA consanguinamory, and it appears to be something unique to us.

Most people believe that it is impossible to feel both family love and lovers love towards the same person simultaneously, that the two roles will necessarily conflict and cause any type of incestuous relationship to be inherently unhealthy. This is compounded by further misunderstandings that makes people believe that there is something inherently wrong with even being attracted to a family member in the first place, because ‘normal’ people experience the Westermarck effect, and thus such attractions for them are impossible.

Speaking from personal experience, and from speaking to so many others over the years, I can confidently say that being able to experience both types of love for that one special person, and the roles not conflicting, is the one thing that sets our people apart as unique. You’re probably wondering how the roles don’t conflict… what if say, a brother and sister were together, and say a problem crops up for them… for instance lets say that the company she works for goes bump and she now has to find a new job. She goes home to her brother/partner and tells him about it, they’re obviously both upset but now his wages have to carry them through until she finds alternative employment. She is relying on him as a PARTNER, you’d say… but he is also her brother, and as a brother he would also want to look after her as FAMILY too, in fact if she was a single woman and there was no consanguinamory involved he might have temporarily supported her anyway. So here the two roles are in complete agreement, he supports her as BOTH brother and partner with the same actions.

So what about feelings… do they conflict at all? I would argue not. The complete blending of both types of love leads to a very deep and intense bond, if you aren’t wired up this way it might be hard to understand or imagine, a bit like how a straight person cannot truly know what it is like to be gay despite the best of their imagination. This truly spectacular blend of the two loves is what we call ‘double-love’ and it basically means that the partners become EVERYTHING to each other, we give all that we are and get the same in return. People often throw around the claim that their partner is their ‘other half’… but with double-love that has additional depth and meaning… our family partners literally are our other halves, in every way possible including down to our genes.

Once this intensity and depth of double-love has been experienced, it can be difficult or near on impossible for some of us to consider going back to ‘normal’ single-love relationships. I’ve tried it and felt it about as fulfilling as a round of toast on an empty stomach. There is nothing that compares or even comes close. To many of us, ‘normal’ feels really empty without the family aspect.

Consanguinamory is our normal, it is beautiful, intense, passionate and deep… our double-love is limitless and powerful. It is time for us to be heard and understood on an intellectual level at least, even though exsanguinamorous people cannot feel what we feel. It’s time for the discrimination and the misunderstandings between our communities to stop, time for change.