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Tributes to Althea Hayton

Althea Hayton, founder of Womb Twin, passed away peacefully on August 13 (sorry for the delay in posting this news on the blog). We are all ...

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Same sex attraction and the vanished twin (1)

I have been thinking of how same sex attraction may be to do with being a womb twin survivor.  The first scenario is  a womb twin survivor whose womb twin was the same sex,  who finds another womb twin survivor of the same sex whose womb twin was also the same sex.

So the two people are deeply attracted to one another, in the way that many womb twin survivors are, because in each case the relationship in some way compensates for their prenatal loss. Now we must be clear what we mean here;  we are describing a deep love relationship that may or may not be expressed sexually.  Same sex attraction is not the same as homosexuality.  Many same-sex couples live together and have little difficulty remaining celibate, including among the clergy. Here is one example.

It is enough for them simply to be together, in a brother-sister dyad- just like a pair of same sex fraternal twins.


Freud gave us the idea of the Alter Ego, and he said that for some people they "Invest their libido in people who are like themselves". That sounds very much like a twin to me!

Why same sex attraction? Some people say it is a social thing:  The idea is that parents, or society in general somehow inculcate the idea of same sex attraction into children and young people.  If that is the case then single sex societies such as single sex schools would give more opportunities for same sex attraction to develop into some form of sexual behavior.  Clearly same sex schools would be attractive to teachers who like to keep company with people of the same sex, as would the armed forces, or some sports teams. It is not clear if being in such a group influences the individuals within it towards same sex attraction, or if a pre-existing latent tendency to fall in love with a member of the same sex is given more opportunity to be expressed.

In fact story after story makes clear that homosexual children often realise that they are attracted to the same sex at a very early age, by the age of 9 years or so, and that the biggest social problem they have is being honest about it. They have such a problem in fact that many of them resort to suicide out of sheer desperation.
Literature is peppered with cases of same sex couples who are not homosexual - take Sherlock Holmes and Watson for example.  In this article it says;

In One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, David Halperin discusses three male pairs from ancient texts (Achilles and Patroclus; Gilgamesh and Enkidu; David and Jonathan) noting that the first two pairs include socially accepted homoerotic desire, but arguing that the Biblical description of David and Jonathan's mutual attachment 'passing the love of women' should probably be read as meaning that their love is remarkable precisely because it does not have a sexual component. The ambiguity arises because one of the results of friendship's anomalous status is the absence of a vocabulary to describe it. 

I think we now have the vocabularly:  this is a healing bond between two womb twin survivors.

A healing bond restores the lost part of the self and makes both parties whole again.

What do you think?



2 comments:

  1. Well I certainly understand where you are going with this. That need to complete the twin bond to get back to where you started to complete the homeostatis that or where we started from to be whole again. The one question is what if the sexual componnet needs to be considered. What if both you and your twin were gay and that was a bond that cememted you even closer as it gave you both a safe haven from the world. Then he dies. Is your twining then an act of trying to find another lone twin to fill that void or is it you trying to find a partner or is it both. Since Victor has passed i find myself in a sub group of a sub group of a subgroup ....etc. Sometimes the level of frustration is beyond description. Vince twin to Victor

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    1. I, too, understand this premise. I had an identical twin sister and fraternal triplet brother. I have had a same-sex attraction from a very young age(around 3) but the other half of it is that I love gay men and transsexuals and want to be around them all the time. That way all my needs and desires are fulfilled... my triplet bond (or a replica of it) is reinstated.

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