When I was 14, my parents informed me that I had a half brother. He was my father’s son by another woman. My parents were already married when my brother was born, but I hadn’t come along yet. It was a huge scandal when it happened. My half brother came to live with us after his mother died. He was 16. My half brother got me pregnant. He didn’t rape me; I wanted to have sex with him. Everyone in the family found out—huge scandal number two—and it took me years to get over it and stop blaming myself.
Now I’m 26 and engaged. What do I tell my fiancé? My parents wound up divorcing—my mother called the police on my half brother and tried to physically prevent me from getting an abortion—and I don’t speak to her anymore. But my father and brother are still in my life.
I get panic attacks when I think about having to tell my fiancé about any of this, Dan, because I don’t want him to see me as sick. But if I don’t tell him, he’ll hear about it from someone else. What do I do?
The Sister Act
“This could happen to anyone,” says Debra Lieberman, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Miami.
A quick clarification: Lieberman means this could happen to anyone who meets a sibling under similar circumstances.
Coresidence throughout childhood—particularly early childhood—creates sexual aversion in adulthood, explains Lieberman, who has studied “sibling incest avoidance” extensively. It’s a phenomenon called the “Westermarck effect,” and it doesn’t just affect biological siblings; adults who grew up in the same home experience the same feelings of sexual revulsion.
“TSA and her half brother were not raised throughout childhood together and neither observed his or her mother caring for the other as an infant,” explains Lieberman. “These are the two cues that have been shown to lead to the categorization of another as a sibling. When these cues are present, strong sexual aversions tend to develop. Without these cues, no natural sexual aversion will develop.”
(What this means, of course, is that everybody who read TSA’s letter and thought, “What a sicko! I would never fuck any of my siblings!” needs to back the fuck off. If your parents had surprised you with a long-lost sibling when you were 14, dear readers, you, too, could be facing an extremely awkward conversation with your fiancé. There but for the grace of God, etc.)
So what, if anything, should you tell the man you’re about to marry, TSA?
“If it were me,” says Lieberman, “I would probably say something. I would explain the situation and the science. Unfortunately, this might gross out her fiancé, especially if he has sisters. But living with this stress”—the fear that he’ll find out at some point—”does not seem like a happy life.”
I agree with Lieberman: Tell your fiancé what happened, TSA. Emphasize that you were young, confused, and Westermarck-effect-deprived. You can also refer him to Lieberman’s website—www.debralieberman
.com—where he can peruse the research.
Good luck, TSA.
I’m a 23-year-old female in a monogamish relationship—thank you for that word!—with my wonderful boyfriend of two years. I moved away last year to attend graduate school, and we agreed it was okay to sleep with other people while we’re apart. The last person I slept with was an acquaintance who knew both of us and understood what the deal was with our relationship. My question is, if I’m just looking for casual sex or a one-night stand, should I make it clear that we’re just going to have sex and I’m not interested in dating? How much should I tell the person I’m trying to pick up about a significant other they won’t ever meet?
Full Disclosure Necessary, Yathink?
If you meet a guy in a bar, exchange four words with him (and two of them are “Open up!” right before he spits a Jäger shot into your mouth), and you wind up back at your place, FDNY, the person you’re about to fuck can reasonably make two assumptions: (1) you’re a slut (in the sex-positive, reclaiming-that-word, sisterhood-is-powerful, drink-Jäger-out-of-a-hot-guy’s-mouth sense of the term), and (2) he’s unlikely to see you again. Under circumstances like these, FDNY, you are not obligated to disclose your relationship status. The only things you’re obligated to disclose are the precise kind of clitoral stimulation you require and the exact time you’ll need him out of your apartment…
But if a nice boy asks you out on something that your parents and steampunks call a “date,” and he explains that you’re really, really special, and he refrains from spitting Jäger shots into your mouth, you are obligated to disclose your relationship status to him, lest he make the entirely reasonable assumption that you’re single and interested in him, too.
I am in love with an intelligent woman. She is exactly what I’ve always wanted: smart, articulate, independent, and friggin’ beautiful. The thing is, we fight constantly. Everything is going well, and then I say the wrong thing or use the wrong tone, and she blows up. In these fights, I am required to remain calm, but she can yell, scream, mock, or ridicule. These fights sometimes end in physical confrontations that she instigates. The therapist we’re seeing takes my side, but still nothing gets better. Her feelings are the only ones that matter. I’m afraid to read the advice you’re going to give me.
Confused, Pissed, and Sad
You don’t mention your own looks, CPAS, but I’m guessing there’s a big looks gap in this relationship, i.e., your girlfriend is objectively hot, while you fall somewhere between “Ron Jeremy” and “unconventionally attractive” on the male beauty spectrum. And that’s not an accident: She knows that you think you’re unlikely to do better than her, looks-wise, and that allows her to be just as psycho as she wants to be. Because she knows you’re not going anywhere.
Here’s the advice you were afraid of, CPAS: Go somewhere, anywhere, that she isn’t. You wouldn’t be putting up with this shit if this woman’s outsides were as ugly as her insides.
DTMFA.
What happened to your column? I remember back when your columns involved wonderful details about things like proper dildo protocol, indulging odd fetishes, and funny sex adventures. Now it’s all about the philosophy of what loving relationships should truly entail. I miss the old Dan who would coach readers on how to put large things inside themselves and recount funny/titillating anecdotes.
Where’s My Dirt?
Google happened to my column.
Back in the getting-large-things-inside-my-readers days, WMD, people would write me and ask, “How do I get this large thing inside of me?” Now people with large things can turn to Google for information about how to get their large things inside themselves. Another question I used to get all the time: “What’s a cock ring?” Now cock rings have their own Wiki page.
There’s just so much good, basic info about sex online—including basic how-to info—that people don’t have to ask me for basic information about fetishes or kinks or dildo protocols anymore. So most of the questions I get nowadays, and most of the ones I answer, are about relationships. Don’t blame me, WMD, blame Google’s algorithms.
It has been a long time since I filled a column or two with titillating sex anecdotes. I’m on vacation right now, so… wow me with your best/kinkiest/craziest vacation-sex stories, dear readers, and I’ll fill next week’s column with ’em.
Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.
TSA: Google “genetic sexual attraction,” which generally occurs when the Westermarck effect is not present to beat it down. This kind of thing is more common than most people are willing to admit.
I propose an alternate, sex-positive spelling of the world “slut” to distinguish it from the sex-shaming social-order-enforcing one.
I offer: slyt
I am flabbergasted by Dan’s analysis of CPAS. Yes, CPAS should dump her, because she is abusing him. But this has nothing to do with looks. It is irrelevant what the guy looks like, and what his girlfriend looks like!
Weird…
First!
Not first!
TSA: the Brady Bunch movie already covered this. Getting pregnant was fucking stupid, but 14 year olds do lots of fucking stupid things (especially if they’ve only ever received abstinence-only education).
Have you gotten therapy for this? I highly recommend talking to a professional about it (one who understands the Westermarck effect, not one who thinks you were an incest victim), and I highly de-recommend telling your fiance about it–it’s your sexual history, and history is not relevant to your current relationship. But the fact that you’re having panic attacks strongly suggests that you’re not as over this as you seem to think you are.
Ugh, CPAS’s SO is my worest nightmare of what I fear becoming in a relationship and a template for most of the people in my family (both male and female). Whenever I feel my temper getting the best of me, I imagine someone I care about seeing me the way he discribes her and get sick.
Listen to Dan, CPAS. It only get’s worse as the years go on (ex. my grandparents) and no one deserves to live like that. DTMFA while you still can.
Seems like “engaged” is exactly the right moment to reveal this info. After you both are committed (so he’s emotionally invested and prepared to listen to the explanation), but before the actual wedding (so you aren’t withholding info he might find relevant when deciding to get married).
Your brother will be at the wedding, and in your life. There’s no way to keep this secret the rest of your lives. Sit down and explain the uncomfortable reality to your fiance, possibly with a knowledgeable therapist present to help provide context. You were both children, and should not be held responsible. Hoping that the fiance proves himself worthy of you.
@3: I side with Dan on this one. How else do you explain that this guy’s willing to stick with an abusive bitch rather than dumping her like I would do? If he feels that she’d ordinarily be out of his league, he’s willing to put up with her screaming in order to be seen with her and get some mimsy. If he thought he could get someone as hot as her, her ass would bounce twice on the pavement after he booted her out. And I agree that CPAS should DTMFA. No sex is worth being treated like that.
EW! Why would nature do this to siblings? Genetic sexual attraction couldn’t possibly be good for evolution anyway with the increased likelihood that a sibling pair’s offspring would carry defective traits on, so WHY?!
Mrs. DePointe: she can’t NOT tell him about it, because he would be very angry when/if he finds out about it somewhere else. That kind of omission could end their marriage.
CPAS, you knew the advice you were going to get before you even wrote in. I think you should give yourself permission to take it. Good luck.
I’m surprised LW1’s situation doesn’t happen more often in those scenarios. Add two unbonded half-siblings together with peak hormonal chaos and this isn’t exactly an unlikely outcome. Tell the fiance. If the relationship with the half-brother is normal and healthy now, and the fiance can see that, he should be ok with it.
And CPS you have to know what the right course is, as 11 suggests. I can’t even imagine that the therapist hasn’t taken you aside and advised you to get the hell out of Dodge. This isn’t normal; it isn’t healthy; and it’s a recipe for a terrible outcome complete with cops and bloodshed. Please get out before you get physically injured or arrested (because if you have to defend yourself and end up hurting her, the onus will be on you to prove that it was self defense). She’s a bitch. Worse, she’s a crazy, unhinged bitch who sees you as her personal punching bag. DTMFA and RUN. Don’t look back.
People do get weird about these things, TSA, though. I was involved with my mom’s boyfriend’s son at about that age, and they freaked out. No matter that there wasn’t any genetic similarity, but just because it seemed ‘weird’. But it is true – you stick two 16 year olds together who just met and who get a long well and have a lot of hormones, and well, you shouldn’t be surprised at the outcomes.
@9: GSA isn’t really a function of being genetically related; it’s more a function of general attraction mechanisms that get exacerbated. Despite the “opposites attract” mantra, in reality we’re more likely to be attracted to people who are similar to us: shared interests, shared values, shared temperament, shared culture, etc. All of those things are more likely to be present with people we’re genetically related to. Which means that were it not for the instinctual revulsion we feel at the notion of hooking up with relatives, most of us would not leave the house.
The Westermarck effect is the mechanism by which that evolution-saving “instinctual revulsion” is acquired. In short, seeing someone raised by the same person(s) that raised you makes them sexually unattractive to you. That’s why most people are grossed out at the prospect of kissing/shagging a sibling: because you saw that sibling get raised by your parents.
When genetically related people meet as adults or even as teenagers, there is no Westermarck effect and thus no instinctual revulsion (though there is still societal taboo). So your biology doesn’t see that relative as “icky”; it sees that relative as a sexual possibility, just like anyone else. And since you and the relative have so many things in common, sometimes a sexual attraction is the result.
Now couple the lack of revulsion and potential sexual attraction with a teenager’s massive horniness, lack of long-term vision, and overall poor impulse control. The results are not that surprising.
Nice boys ask you out on dates. Hot boys spit Jager in your mouth.
Good to know.
OMG, CPAS, seven years ago I could have written that letter. Get out. You’re her emotional (& sometimes physical, apparently) punching bag. Your self-confidence, self-image and sanity are worth far more than whatever it is you’re getting out of this woman. Get out & don’t come back. Ever.
Re. CPAS
Isn’t it kind of a shitty thing to tell someone who’s being abused that they must be ugly? And why the assumption that there’s a looks gap? Isn’t that kind of jumping to conclusions? Lousy advice, other than the DTMFA part, which is a no-brainer.
As it happens, I am acquainted with a stunningly good-looking guy who is married to, and emotionally (and likely physically) abused by a much-less-attractive woman. I have often speculated that she abuses him to keep him in line because she’s afraid of him leaving her for someone else, which he could quite easily.
I think it’s a bit silly to assume that looks are always an important factor, though. Some people are just abusive pieces of shit, and whoever is unlucky enough to become attached to them ends up being the victim.
not vacation sex, but hella kinky. I once had a baby-producing fuckfest my own half-brother. It’s not gross. We didn’t grow up together; there’s some science. That’s the kinkiest thing I’ve ever done.
Dear TSA,
Have you ever been informed by your partner that they’d been raped?
It would most likely not happen until a fair ways into a stable relationship. Would it really change how you felt about your partner (except in my case to max out my protectionistic tendencies)? In a weird way it validates how important you are to your partner because they are willing to tell you, and put themselves on the line for you. In essence, they are protecting you from themselves, or at least the stigma they carry.
My response was to listen to everything she had to tell me, hug and kiss her through the tears, and let her have her way with me as much as she wished that weekend. Outside of the tears part, same as usual.
I won’t lie that it wasn’t a heavy burden, it still is. I have had vivid dream flashbacks over the years, always with the same result: I wish there were anything more or better I could do for her. I still marvel that somehow, even as a clueless teenager, I did the right things to allow a normal sexual relationship to thrive for her. A big part of that was listening to what she wanted, and letting her body teach me what I needed to know. My regrets mostly center around being addicted to pot at the time, ’cause I wish I could still remember all of those lessons.
Peace.
@ 3 – yeah, assuming TSA’s description is accurate, the girlfriend is an abusive piece of shit. Everything else is irrelevant.
The behavior that CNAS’s girlfriend exhibits indicates she may be suffering from borderline personality disorder.
@19…what?
anyway, CPAS is in a relationship with someone who reminds me of who I was starting to become. I never truly got to the point of physical violence, but I always feared it. I was unfair and overly-needy in relationships and took it out, both aggressively and passive-aggressively, on my partners. I was jealous, insecure, and constantly frustrated. I would get furious over things I sometimes couldn’t even identify, and then more angry when my partner would call me out or get angry back.
The road to self-discovery only really started after I was dumped. While I regret not having the opportunity to change during the relationship (there was no frank discussion of my behavior and how it was affecting our relationship), I have no regrets about who I’ve become and the partner I was lucky enough to snag after doing so much work. I’ve learned to be much more up-front about my needs, and also to find multiple ways to get needs met. I’ve learned to express when I’m jealous and to channel it into better actions.
Still working on it all, but I agree that DTMFA is the right action — for both parties.
Ms Erica – [Hoping that the fiance proves himself worthy of you.]
Just how worthy is that, anyway? I don’t fault TSA for the romance at all, but she doesn’t seem the stuff of a heroine. The one thing in her plus column, and I’ll allow that it’s a big one, is her insisting on taking a reasonable share of responsibility for the big kerfuffle. But in the rest of the letter, she reminds me a bit of Mrs Bennet – the dramatization seems similar.
I agree with your first paragraph. As for the wedding, I bow to your superiour knowledge, as I myself am never going to marry. If I were to do so, though, it would seem to me quite reasonable for my HTB to request that none of my exes attend, blood-related or otherwise. I doubt I’d have a second thought about acceding to such a request.
I’ll join in a hope that TSA’s fiance doesn’t find what happened or her sickening, but can’t necessarily go much farther. It seems reasonable that he might not think the worse of her for that particular chapter of history while also not wanting the situation to be part of his life, or new insight into her character might reveal to him that they just aren’t a match without any fault on either side.
Not that you were doing this, but I’ve seen a lot of posters recently in various places playing the You Deserve Better card without sufficient support, and anything that even remotely looks like that has been irking me.
@22,
I have been in the position of TSA’s fiancee when told by a girlfriend about her rape. It kind of came out in a “can you still love me” way. I could, and did.
Peace.
@22 – PLEASE give me a clue about the path which you followed to transform yourself.
Your description of yourself coincides closely with my own of me. I am you at the point of having just been properly dumped for exactly the same behavior, and the same mental process, as you describe.
With deep gratitude: Thank you.
Sort of hoping that TSA’s fiance doesn’t have a relationship with the BIL-to-be yet. I can’t imagine being friendly/friends with someone and then finding this info out. At least if they have yet to meet, then the fiance can take his time establishing trust. She has to tell the finace though, since everybody in the family found out.
Damn Dan, you missed the boat with this one. Your looks have nothing to do with being abused in a relationship and it was classless to suggest they do. If you meant to say that you though that the LW had (what he thought of as) compelling reasons to stay because he thought he could never find a hotter GF, that still says nothing about the LW’s looks.
Do only ugly women get abused, Dan? How about gay guys-are the cute ones protected? Didn’t look that way down at the Cook County Domestic Violence Courthouse, helping folks fill out Emergency Orders of Protection.
It doesn’t sound like TSA is in an open or poly relationship. Based on that premise, the fact that her brother is still in her life is going to be a problem, possibly a deal breaker.
Continuing relationships with ex-lovers are always problematical at best, particularly if the current lover isn’t aware of the prior relationships. Incest makes it an even greater problem. Assuming the prior relationships were public knowledge, at some point somebody will say something and the current lover will find out. Since TSA, rightly, believes her future spouse is going to find out eventually (possibly from her mother) it would be best if he found out now and from her. I do think she was wrong not to have told him before she agreed to marry him. This is the kind of secret that will leave festering wounds.
@3 Personal experience means I’m willing to put £5 that Dan’s right on that, mind. If he’s wrong, though, the second paragraph stands just as well on its own as with the first.
Re: TSA – man, that’s a severely uncool position to be in. Good job, Dan, for going and grabbing someone in a lab coat to get the message across to TSA. @28 – it’s hardly a conventional “ex-lover still in life” situation, though. I’d have thought the “fucked up shit happens”, when properly explained and understood, would render that a non-issue.
9-Whitness– Let’s take a deep breath and remember what nature is, what evolution is, and how natural selection works. It gets trickier when emotional and behavioral traits such as sexual attraction get thrown in amidst the physical ones, but the principles are the same.
For a review: Nature does not do anything to siblings. There is no commanding force with consciousness. There is no reason. Nothing is “good” for evolution. “Good” is a moral value judgment and therefore a word to be avoided when discussing evolution. There is only adaptive to the environment and not adaptive to the environment, and the environment keeps changing.
It is true that for most mammals including humans, offspring from closely related incestuous relationships is likely to result in deleterious recessives showing up from inbreeding. (It doesn’t much matter in, say, fish.)
You asked WHY? Non-adaptive individuals are born all the time. Why Down’s syndrome? Why psychopaths? Why educated straight women with no particular desire for children? There doesn’t have to be a reason. Natural selection hones and refines, hones and refines again.
I was in a relationship very much like the one CPAS is in – and while there may not be an externally discernable looks gap, I’d bed that CPAS sees one in the mirror: has low self esteem. I did, and I put up with a lot of abuse, which every now and again did get physical. Get out now.
I feel sorry for TSA’s mother. Her teenaged daughter got pregnant by an older half-brother who’s a product of her husband’s affair and forced to live with her, a constant reminder of her husband’s affair! And now she’s lost her husband AND daughter because she tried to protect her?
There must be more to the story, but if you’re reading this, TSA, and there aren’t other major reasons to stay away from your mother, maybe reconsider?
@Whitness
Though you’re likely to get an earful about multiplying recessive traits and the dangers of incest, few people will note that almost all of our domesticated animals are in some way products of incest. Mating father to daughter and mother to son is a fairly common practice from milk cows to show dogs. Incest doesn’t automatically damage genes, it just solidifies and spreads certain traits throughout the species. This can be a bad thing if both relatives have a recessive gene for a genetic disorder, but a ‘good’ thing if they have recessive genes for a desirable feature. It’s not inherently bad or good. Evolutionarily speaking, it may give the offspring an advantage.
…aaand thunk, the thread drops dead.
@ 32–Have you thought of capitalizing on other assets? Or dating not beautiful women? There’s real actual people with feelings and longings and stuff inside those unattractive bodies, as you probably know.
21 been there myself– Allow me a quibble. In my experience, people do not suffer from borderline personality disorders themselves. They make everyone near them suffer while they breeze through life fine. With depression, bi-polar, schizophrenia, even to a certain extent alcoholism, the person with the illness is the identified patient. With borderline disorders, it’s the people who love them who go to the psychotherapists convinced that there’s something wrong.
So yeah, Dan’s advice to DTMFA is good. Dan’s guess that the letter writer is ugly might be true, might not be, and is irrelevant. We don’t know why people stay in relationships that are obviously bad for them. (Obvious to everyone else.) Maybe this guy hasn’t found someone who is as smart, articulate, independent and beautiful without the temper and violent tendencies. Maybe to him the good outweighs the bad. Whatever. He needs to know there’s someone better for him out there.
I always wondered how they kept the Brady Bunch kids apart.
Re: TSA
I had a remarkably similar situation. I was an exchange student when I was 16 and lived with a family for a year. During that time I came to regard the host parents as my own parents and even came to call them Mother and Father like their own children did. In the household with me was a 19 yr old and a 16 yr old and *surprise surprise* I ended up with a huge crush on the 16 yr old, as he did on me. One night we ended up hooking up, but were stupid and didn’t use protection and I got pregnant. I miscarried and the host family found out but they weren’t mad at us, just wanted us to be careful. Now 5 years later I still have a good and healthy relationship with him, even though I still call his parents Mother and Father when we communicate.
It is definitely more awkward when you are related by blood but think of it like having a sexy new step-sibling, you know it’s wrong but that probably just inflames the hormonal teenage brain even more!
@25: If you want to change, but don’t know how, therapy is your best bet. It may take a while to find a counselor you “click” with, but who doesn’t coddle you, but the effort will be well worth it. CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) may be your best bet. Best wishes to you.
Idunno about this genetic sexual attraction thing. I’m most interested in guys who are genetically not at all related whatsoever, and appear to share no traits with me. I’m average height and pasty White, and the male side of my family is pretty hairy.I’m mostly interested in tall dark skinned Latinos, Asians, and Black guys with less body hair than I have. Basically men who look like they could not be related to me whatsoever in any way.
CPAS has the relationship he needs and wants. He may be pissed and sad but that’s only because he hasn’t fully accepted his role as her bitch. She needs to understand he wants her in charge and not be afraid to dominate him. Her confidence (along with a hairbrush and crop) will makes theirs a happy home.
@41, Interestingly your personal experiences and life aren’t used to explain all of human experience and nature. Huh. Go figure.
There are plenty of “smart, articulate, independent, and friggin’ beautiful” women out there who arent also psycho. I should know, I live with one. Don’t settle.
There’s a good Lisa Kudrow movie about her getting knocked up by her step-brother.
The first letter reminds me of Sleeping Dogs Lie. I mean, does he really need to know?
Unless you’re still wanting to fuck your half-brother. Then, tell him now…
@23/28 – for some people, continuing relationships with ex-lovers is a problem. For me and my husband, most of our LTR exes are still close friends. Generally, the blah sex was what ended the relationships, as they evolved into more of a friendship. So, yes, we each had exes at our wedding.
vennominon, I meant that I hope her fiance takes the “There but for the grace of God” attitude, rather than being a judgmental prick. Saying “I hope he’s worthy of you” means that in my view, she’s a regular person, not damaged goods.
Although, if @5 is right, TSA’s panic attacks may show that she isn’t comfortable with herself yet, and could use some therapy before she starts building a life with someone else.
Um, and the column’s been around for eleven years on the Internet alone. Time causes changes in tone. If a twenty-nine-year-old man starts a writing project, no one should be too shocked when eleven years later he turns forty-one [numbers made up on the spot].
DAMMIT, I mean forty. Still, it’s fair game. Commence making fun of me.
@2: I’ve always been partial to “sloot” myself.
@3: It’s not *necessarily* irrelevant: normative attractiveness is a privileged cultural category, and differences in attractiveness are therefore often manifested as differences in social privilege (e.g. ability to attract potential/desired sexual partners) and power. Dan’s hypothesizing that CPAS is less normatively-attractive than hir girlfriend because when people put up with emotional abuse, there’s usually some reason (generally the abuser is exercising some sort of power/control over the abused), and getting people to recognize what’s motivating them to stay in a hurtful relationship can help them dismantle that motivation or exercise of power by the abuser in order to leave. It may NOT be looks in this case, but attractiveness is statistically more likely to be the root of a power differential favoring a woman over a man (vs. things like economic self-sufficiency or physical prowess; of course we don’t KNOW CPAS is a man, just that hir girlfriend is a woman, but that, too, is statistically more likely).
@12: Given the stigma around incest (consensual and abusive both), it may happen far more often than we know; as with TSA, most people are not going to be exactly thrilled about sharing this sort of story, even, or perhaps especially, if they view the sex as consensual and not rape.
@41: Genetics predisposes people to certain behaviors; it’s never solely responsible for them, as all of them are contextualized within (limited by, enacted within, and understood through) a certain historical-cultural frame (for example, people have genetic predispositions to eat about as much food as is necessary they burn off, or possibly more if they come from a genetic population acclimated to areas with long fallow periods for which they would have needed to stock up on calories, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t ‘diet’ or develop aversions to food for socialized/cultural/personal history reasons; people have genetic predispositions to engage in partnered sexual activity and probably with more than one partner, but plenty of people are asexual, have low libidos, and make and keep monogamous commitments). Saying “people generally have a predisposition toward sexual attraction to people who are similar both genetically and personality-wise” does not mean that it’s true for everyone, nor that there’s anything “wrong” with people for whom it’s not true. Given that most aspects of human identity are culturally inflected with power differentials and sexual preferences are often related to power differences/power exchange, an attraction to people who are in some way “other” is actually pretty common – the most common example is probably an attraction to people who are differently-gendered than oneself (gender is a major source of differences in power/privilege, after all; there may be genetic predispositions at play here, too, but if so, they are also strongly culturally-reinforced).
@CPAS:
IMPORTANT!
Don’t DTMFA right away. Find some other women you like to see you with your current “gf”. Talk to them. Get to know them a little bit. THEN dump your GF, and say “She just didn’t seem like the person I should spend the rest of my life with. What are you doing on Saturday?”
Hot chicks make you attractive to other women, so take advantage!
And, as a general note from an averagely-attractive guy, I’ve never (well, not since I got out of my incredibly shy/creepy stage) had any trouble having hot girlfriends – so long as I meet them in places where we get to know each other personally. At the bar, not so much. But yes, averagely attractive guys CAN have attractive girlfriends, so long as you don’t act like an insecure jealous asshole, which is a huge turn-off.
@46:
He probably doesn’t need to know.
But she needs to know he knows. That’s the only way she’ll be happy in the relationship.
@34: Protect? “tried to physically prevent me from getting an abortion” sounds like protection to you?
Me thinks that last entry was about a borderline woman.
I don’t think CPAS is necessarily ugly, or even less attractive than his bitchy girlfriend but I’m sure there is some kind of imbalance there. Maybe he’s a low-status man (which, in the het world, Dan, doesn’t necessarily mean physically unattractive – as it does for women and gay men – but maybe something like nerdy, poor, unambitious or passive). Low-status men have problems finding partners and CPAS may be reluctant to give up on this miserable relationship for the same reason he may have rounded his girlfriend up to ‘beautiful’. He may fear this is as good as it’s going to get.
I agree with the people who say you missed it here, Dan… My own brother is like CPAS.. he’s in a marriage with a woman who treats him like this when they fight, including the physical hitting. They both are head-turners.
Confused, Pissed, and Sad/CPAS: Your GF sounds like a classic narcissist. I’m currently in therapy to get over the years of abuse my horrid narcissistic mother heaped on me. LEAVE THIS WOMAN! Narcissists care nothing for anyone else–they continually need their own feelings validated and egos constantly boosted by the dupes who hang around them. (And they’re good at duping–most narcissists are attractive and charming people, so it’s easy to get sucked in by one.) Narcissists manipulate those around them, cutting them down, invalidating their experiences and feelings. They’re all around horrible, horrible people. And therapy NEVER works on them, because as far as they’re concerned, they’re perfect; the problem is with everyone else. Get out now.
@47 My premise inferred a monogamous relationship and nothing TSA wrote would indicate otherwise. A friend can become a lover, but can a lover become just a friend? People are divided on the issue. Only with respect to a closed hetero relationship, once you have been intimate with someone there is always some risk, given the right set of circumstances, of becoming intimate with that person again. Certain boundaries have already been crossed. I assume both of you were honest about the nature of your relationships with your exes before getting married. It is one thing to know in advance what you are getting into and another to have its sprung on you as a surprise sometime in the future. Prior knowledge alters the dynamic. Some people argue that the past doesn’t matter, which is true when the past is truly the past. However, is that really true when you have a continuing relationship with an ex?
To those of you who used rape as an analogy. The basic flaw with that analogy is that unless a child results from the rape (the father sometimes has certain legal rights) the victim doesn’t normally have a continuing relationship with the rapist.
As a conversation starter, TSA could watch John Sayles’s Lonestar. It’s a good movie with a bit of a half-sibling thing at the end.
@21 – Yes, me too. And that is exactly what I thought, but just that letter is not enough to go on for a diagnosis, huh?
Also on TSA: I can relate, a little. I remember one girlfriend, to whom I was deeply attracted, and found the same kind of electricity with both her sister and mother. Of course, I never went there! I think this is way more common than people like to admit.
Uh … CPAS, you’ve got an ineffectual therapist who’s not getting the message across to her. Why? Because your bitch of a partner is pretending to be DEAF, so that she doesn’t have to alter her behaviour.
Get out NOW before you get even more damaged.
@3, @8, and others above — yes, it’s a little shitty to speculate about CPAS’s looks when he’s already in a bad situation. But I think there’s something you’re missing (and which I think was part of Dan’s intended, albeit not so successfully worded, meaning): that this is the calculcation that CPAS’ abusive partner is making, consciously or unconsciously.
I don’t think Dan is endorsing the economy-of-looks paradigm (‘if there’s a physical attractiveness differential between partners, the more physically attractive has extra bargaining power’). I think he is exposing the kind of calculations that go on in CPAS’ abusive partner’s mind, so as to help him do what probably is the most difficult step, namely, to fall out of love with her.
Now, of course it’s possible that CPAS himself is terribly attractive (someone upstream wrote about such a situation, in which a handsome guy is abused by a less attractive woman) and that the causes are in some other source of insecurity rather than his looks. Still, insecurity there must be, to explain why he doesn’t get rid of such an obviously abusive partner. Somewhere, somehow, CPAS is doing the math wrong (‘I’ll never have such a wonderful/beautiful/smart/independent etc. woman in my life, because I don’t deserve to, and if I got this one it was sheer luck, so I should stick to her’). And CPAS’ partner is making the complementary kind of calculation (‘I’m with inferior here. Why on earth am I doing that to myself? Let me punish him for revenge!’), which allows her to keep her insecurities under control (‘I’m still pretty, because I can abuse this guy and still he won’t go away! Yay!’).
Unfortunately such calculations, consciously or unconsciously, still often go on in relationships. Again, I don’t think Dan is endorsing it as much as exposing it (in this specific case).
FDNY provides limited information about her situation. Were they in a closed or open relationship before she moved away? How far away did she move? How much regular physical contact does she have with the BF? Is he taking the trouble to visit her and vice versa? Is she still in grad school? What are the career opportunities in her field where her BF lives? What is the BF status? Is he is in college or grad school? Does he have a job or started a career? How mobile are his skill sets? Could/would he be willing to relocate to be with her? Will either of them want to stop screwing around once they get back together, if they do? The list of variables goes on.
Long distance relationships are difficult to maintain even where there is exclusivity. The longer the separation lasts the harder it becomes, mainly because you are no longer part of the other person’s life. You have less in common when you no longer have shared experiences. People can’t control their emotions and proximity breeds intimacy. To assume that neither party will form emotional attachments during the separation is naïve, particularly once sex is added to the mix.
The boyfriend did not agree to an open or monogamish relationship, only (complete?) freedom to screw around while they were apart. FDNY does not say what, if any, boundaries or ground rules were established. While they had a relationship before, they will have to reintegrate (reconnect) each other into lives that have diverged. Without additional information, the best FDNY can expect, if and when she returns, is (at least initially) some form of friends with benefits arrangement. Traits and behaviors that were accepted or ignored while they were together may be annoying or worse after she returns.
CPAS –
I’ve been there – or in a *very* similar place – where my partner would yell and get upset, but at the slightest sign of animation (in conversation) from me – be that a raised voice, speaking more quickly, etc. – she would accuse me of getting “aggro” (as in aggravated), etc. Attempts to remain calm were then met with “Stop patronizing me!”
There wasn’t a looks differential between us, and things were say, 80% good in the relationship. Good enough to try to work on it for a couple of years.
The thing is: it never got better. It actually got worse, including leading to her physically assaulting me (which crossed the line, and I promptly DTMFA).
All I can say is: you’ve tried to work on this, you’ve tried to affect change, but it appears clear that there is no motivation for her to change her behavior – if she hasn’t done it yet, it’s probably not going to happen. So DTMFA is probably the right advice.
After that happens, there are liable to be lots of promises of change, but tread carefully, because if she didn’t change before, and change is being foisted on her (she’s not changing because she wants to, but because she has to), lasting change probably isn’t likely.
Trust me when I say that there are other awesome, intelligent, articulate, and beautiful women out there. And if you don’t find them, they may find you. Just keep being yourself and have fun – those two things will make you the most attractive guy in the room.
@50: Nice!
I once worked with a political reporter who would never tell what a politician’s political affiliation was, presumably to undo decades of partisan rancor, which is a noble motivation, at least superficially.
I suggested that perhaps she shouldn’t name the politicians, either, lest she trigger pre-conceptions. For that matter, maybe leave out what they said and did, too, just to be safe.
Or maybe replace gender-specific possessive pronouns with one, non-specific one, and in doing so remove the false dichotomy of gender and sex from the lives of all who read it.
CPAS –
I’ve been there – or in a *very* similar place – where my partner would yell and get upset, but at the slightest sign of animation (in conversation) from me – be that a raised voice, speaking more quickly, etc. – she would accuse me of getting “aggro” (as in aggravated), etc. Attempts to remain calm were then met with “Stop patronizing me!”
There wasn’t a looks differential between us, and things were say, 80% good in the relationship. Good enough to try to work on it for a couple of years.
The thing is: it never got better. It actually got worse, including leading to her physically assaulting me (which crossed the line, and I promptly DTMFA).
All I can say is: you’ve tried to work on this, you’ve tried to affect change, but it appears clear that there is no motivation for her to change her behavior – if she hasn’t done it yet, it’s probably not going to happen. So DTMFA is probably the right advice.
After that happens, there are liable to be lots of promises of change, but tread carefully, because if she didn’t change before, and change is being foisted on her (she’s not changing because she wants to, but because she has to), lasting change probably isn’t likely.
Trust me when I say that there are other awesome, intelligent, articulate, and beautiful women out there. And if you don’t find them, they may find you. Just keep being yourself and have fun – those two things will make you the most attractive guy in the room.
@58 Plenty of people in monogamous relationships have no problems with being friends with or simply being in the same social circles as previous lovers. Like everything else, just because some people make a mess of something does not mean that other people cant do it right.
To say that “given the right set of circumstances” people might get back with the ex, is no argument at all. Given the right set of circumstances people cheat with friends they have know a long time and never before slept with or with total strangers. Following that kind of reasoning, everybody should lock themselves and their significant others in a box and never come out again.
@51 (biggie): you’ve just summarized my life experience (down to also having had to escape a ‘creepy’ phase). Yes, it is possible for average-looking people of both sexes actually to have ‘hot-looking’ partners (if that’s what they’re looking for), by simply allowing personalities to meet. Of course, we shouldn’t want to ignore someone whose personality is quite compatible on looks alone… but I suppose you weren’t implying that.
@60: I was once witness to a situation not unlike TSA’s (except that I was friends with the ‘half-brother’ boy, so I saw it mostly from his perspective, and his half sister didn’t get pregnant), and I was once (while I was travelling abroad) in a situation not like @39 above, with a host family I called ‘father’ and ‘mother’. Yes, I do think such things happen a hell of a lot more often than most people think, and we just cover things up in shame.
@8, @30, and @55:
I think @62 put it very succinctly.
There was a time for me where, despite knowing that I could find “someone” else, I thought the abusive person I was with was the person for me.
A lot of this had to do with my dating history: I am fairly particular and hadn’t been a good fit with the people I had dated before. So when my new partner came along and things were 80% good, that was a lot better than previous relationships, and I thought we could “get there from here.” Especially because I know that all relationships take work and compromise. Well, I was wrong…we couldn’t get there from here.
The lesson I took away was: Don’t settle. Yes, things take work, but things should also feel natural. And if you’re getting beat up (verbally, physically, emotionally) and are unable to communicate effectively with your partner, something’s wrong.
@58 – “I assume both of you were honest about the nature of your relationships with your exes before getting married.” Yes, we both knew the sexual history with our partner’s exes before we got married. And so did most of our friends, since we were all from the same circle of college friends.
“It is one thing to know in advance what you are getting into…” Right – TSA should tell her fiance now, before they get married, so he understands that he is joining a family with this awkward (but not immoral) history.
@67 – exactly!
CPAS and other men being abused, be aware that if your girlfriend gets hurt in one of these “physical encounters” she could call the police and you could get arrested and charged. The police are much more likely to believe that a man hurt a woman than the other way around. Happened to my friend’s son, girlfriend tried to hurt him, missed and fell. She called the police, etc, etc. He was very, very lucky to not go to jail.
CPAS, learn from my experience: I was you many years ago, and did not dump the woman in the beginning, when I knew I needed to. Four and a half years of terrible, heart-breaking and destructive fighting ensued. Finally I found the courage, in spite of the love, to dumped her. Four years I cannot get back. Four years that could have been spent with the right woman whom I eventually met and married.
Hey CPAS,
I bet your girl never does that stuff when other people are around and is probably trying to isolate you from people in your life that you care about.
I don’t know what your living arrangements are, but the next time this thing happens, which probably won’t be long, just say to her the following: “I think it’s time you leave”.
Barring that, you can say, “I think it’s time I leave”.
After that, fucking don’t engage her in any conversation – other than to tell her you’ll drop off whatever she claims to have forgotten to take with her.
“I think it’s time you leave” – say it with me.
I did not say this years ago when I should have and I am telling you now my friend: get as far away from this person as possible, as soon as possible and stay that way.
Well, let me pile on again CPAS – do what @73 is telling you to do, but when you do, be prepared for a blowup – and take the advice of @71. Ideally be someplace with witnesses. I had to flee on foot, and it was not easy.
Re TSA,
That is one bizarre situation, but I think Lieberman’s advice is sound. If a prospective mate admitted a story like that to me I think I’d be stunned, but it wouldn’t be a deal breaker. Just another version of “Well you’re not screwing him NOW are you?!” I’d accept it and move on.
CPAS: I was in a similar situation. The relationship ended in violence. I called the police. They arrested us both. The only thing that saved me was that I was bleeding, with torn clothing, obviously beaten on and she wasn’t. So, uh, get the fuck out. Now.
I hate bullies. As a gay man, I’ve always been leery of them. I thank God for your It Gets Better video message. Hopefully it will inspire others to look farther down the road past the bullies and onto a better future. For that you deserve a world of respect, my only question is how or why you chose to become a bully too. I read your comments about Marcus B., and it seems so stomach-churning that I couldn’t believe you had said those things. You fell pretty hard down on my respect-o-meter today.
I thought people would be discussing the nonmonogamy letter since those are often very popular, but instead there is a lot of controversy over CPAS’s letter which I felt was pretty mundane. Interesting.
@58: It’s plenty possible for lovers to become friends. I just spent an evening with a group that included my first lover, his current girlfriend, another former lover of mine, and his wife and kid. We had a great time. And over the course of that vacation I spent an evening at the home of each of those lovers with no problems or boundary-crossing at all. I’m still close friends with a number of my exes — I typically spend Thanksgiving with one of them and her family. It’s not that unusual.
@60: I’ve made out with both a parent and their child, completely separately, without either knowing about the other. Nothing serious with either, and to this day they don’t know and are never finding out.
I doubt TSA has read down here – or read comments at all – but in case she or anyone else in a comparable situation could use an opinion:
I’ve seen some documentaries on GSA and the Westermark effect online before, and if a partner told me about something like that in his past I wouldn’t think badly of him at all. Dan said it best: there but for the grace of god go I.
@TSA: I agree with Debra Leiberman, too. I hope it all works out for you. And no, I don’t think you’re sick; just confused as a teenager. If you’re engaged, I also agree with others in that you really do need to tell your fiance about the situation with your step-brother, however in your past. At least you’d have a clean slate and could move on.
@57 AliC99: I second that! OMG!!!! CPAS sounds like he’s dating my older sister, a direct cross between Queen Victoria and Mother Teresa (first she gives you her middle finger for NOT just absolutely worshipping her and giving her everything you have, then cries that she needs to lie down from exhaustion)! CPAS—leave the witch already!!
Thanks again for another great column, Dan!
I was in a relationship where I was not very nice, kinda like CPAS’ relationship. I never hit him, but I think he thought I might in the future. Thing is, he was an unbelievably attractive man. An idiot, but very attractive. He would drive me insane with his narcissism and ego. He had such low self-esteem that he would overcompensate to the point that I was repulsed.
Yes, I was an asshole, but so was he, in his own way. I take responsibility for my actions, especially after he dumped my ass, which took me a long time to recover from. I thought that I was doomed to be this way with all my relationships: an asshole.
Really, we were a horrible match. I do not act like that in my current relationship, because we are better suited for each other. My current man is not afraid to accept his faults, does not try to hide them. I can respect that, and therefore, respect him. I found with a lot of soul-searching that I should never be with someone with low self-esteem because I would probably make it worse, while pissing me off in the meantime. You live, and you learn.
14 and 27 and whoever else is blaming Dan for pointing out the extreme likelihood of ‘look differential.’ The guys letter made it very clear his ‘hot’ girlfriend was a fuck dream cum true for him which was the source of her power over him. Dan’s answer was dead straight on. Men will put up with batshit crazy bitches if they think that is the best they will ever get…
As for Sis, your family drama is very sad and unfortunate. If future hubbies gross-outness is in any way religious based you might point out this little passage:
Genesis Chapter 20 is a hell of an interesting read:
Abraham (yeah the patriarch of both the muslim and jewish faith) said of Sarah his wife, “She is my sister.” Did he not himself say to me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’
12 (Abraham said): She is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife.
This is really no big deal and hardly unexpected. Given all the ‘broken’ and hybrid families out there consider this a public service- the people need to know. Thanks Dan!
Interesting answer on Google also. Amazing how much has changed in such a short period of time.
I learned so much from this column. As a straight man with only a male sibling, I always wondered how brothers weren’t attracted to or at least curious about their sisters.
@58 and the trauma of rape,
I used rape as an example of a traumatic incident that placed me in the position of TSA’s fiancee. I wanted to express the similarities with the timing and the extremely negative self image burden carried by the women. And I wanted to convey my acceptance and support to ease that burden for my girlfriend. Given all the circumstances, especially my being a frequently stoned idiot, it still seems a miracle that I helped her to find a vibrant sexuality.
This is a case of needing an editor to look over what is written and ask just what I meant. I think her fiancee will accept TSA’s history and help her make the best of the situation. I think she should learn to trust him, he does want to marry her.
Peace
TSA, you have nothing to be ashamed of, and if your fiance is a decent guy, he will be able to handle your story and not think any worse of you for it. Definitely tell him now, so both of you have a chance to deal with it before getting into all that wedding-planning and wedding stress.
For what it’s worth, I know at least a few people who have had sex, or sexual encounters, with their first cousins. Depending on how the genes get tossed around, they could be just as closely genetically related as half-siblings. I don’t think it’s abnormal for people to have that kind of attraction, with or without a Westermarck effect to help explain it. You have nothing to apologize for here. It happens. I’m glad you don’t feel like you’re forced to be a victim in this situation. When other people (e.g. mom, relatives, whoever) react as if you are one, that can be much harder on you than whatever prompted their reaction in the first place. However, keep in mind that your mom and others might be traumatized by this discovery, and wouldn’t react in a completely rational or understanding manner. Maybe there’s a limit to how much they can be blamed for that, you know? When getting married, it might be a good time to let go of some of that, if you can.
CPaS, the list of qualities you really want in a woman–“smart, articulate, independent, and friggin’ beautiful”–is missing most of the good stuff that’s important for a relationship. If you dump this one (which I agree with Dan, you should!) and move on, it will do no good if you’re looking for the same list. How about substituting things like, “kind, generous, caring, good to me, communicates well, can laugh at own mistakes, doesn’t take offense easily”, and other qualities in that vein?
also a bit perplexed on the advice to CPAS and the whole looks thing…but either way, it aint worth it to hang with a psycho bitch no matter how hot, articulate and smart she is. totally DTMFbiotchA
@31
Oh do please continue with your closing argument. I so desperately want to hear more about that. Not as a troll; I promise I am only curious to read more of your thoughts on all you mentioned there.
Dump the MF woman, for sure! But I think Dan is off-base saying this is only about looks. I have seen relationships where the woman is fat and ugly and the guy looks like he could do much better, and yet still gets abused. Who knows why these guys love the bitches, but they see or need something we don’t.
But if he is reading and he thinks that she is using her looks to get leverage over him, this guy should not just DTMFA, he should dump her and date fat ugly nice girls for a while (just take them out, don’t break their hearts). That’ll teach her.
Re Sister act, simple stuff print out what Dan wrote and hand it over with a note on the bottom with the words “Let’s Talk this is me” if he goes berserk then time to dump him… shit happens.
@31 is full of BS, Miss 90. “offspring from closely related incestuous relationships is likely to result in deleterious recessives showing up from inbreeding. (It doesn’t much matter in, say, fish.)” First, you need to have deleterious recessive genes before you need to worry about incest causing genetic problems, and even then, you odds are only 1 in 4 for a brother and sister with the bad gene to both pass it on to their child, and 1 in 8 for half siblings, one in 16 for cousins. The main problem with inbred folks is if the family has a distinctive look or other physical features, the resulting child will probably have those features in a more exaggerated form (e.g. the Habsburg chin. But the Habsburgs were inbreeding the royal houses of Spain France and Austria for many generations before they produced an idiot. And it only takes one generation of outbreeding to undo all the inbreeding that could possibly be done in 100 generations)
I’m amused by FDNY’s through-the-looking-glass take on long distance relationships. In most cases, the agreement the two participants make goes something like, “I promise not to fuck anybody else” (with the unspoken part being “but if I meet somebody wonderful enough, I will break up with you honorably.”) In her case, it’s more like “I promise not to break up with you, but if I meet anybody wonderful, I promise only to fuck them honorably.”
The sad part is that both of those promises are equally unenforceable. Bottom line is, _any_ relationship is subject to replacement under the right conditions. Long-distance relationships are particularly vulnerable to this, and someone who goes into one expecting otherwise is setting himself up for a painful surprise.
That said, if the two of you do make it all the way through grad school, get back together, and still find each other to be partner material, more power to you.
Oh, and what Dan said: in a nutshell, don’t go breaking any hearts of unsuspecting folks who might consider themselves potential (replacement) mates.
To CACS: Stop using mealy-mouthed language like “These fights sometimes end in physical confrontations that she instigates.” If the reality is that “she hits you,” then say that, without qualification. Otherwise it sounds like some share of the violence belongs at your doorstep. This will eventually land you in jail while she skates.
Meanwhile, don’t wait for the next incident. Take her somewhere public, dump her ass there (don’t try to do this at home), and get the hell away from her.
@85: Yeah, it’s weird. There’s this intense physical feeling of revulsion and nausea that comes up whenever I even think about anything sexual with someone I grew up with.
I agree with everyone who thinks looks have nothing to do with CPAS’s situation. I don’t even think his girlfriend is that attractive; it’s just in CPAS’s head. I’ve been in similar situations and I look good. It’s just insecurity and low self esteem. CPAS needs to DTMFA and find a good individual therapist.
I don’t know why TSA is panicking. It’s just not a big deal. No one decent would care. She reminds me of those people who are terrified of their incredibly weird and kinky fantasies of spanking someone…
@94: FDNY’s take makes a lot more sense to me… it’s hard not to fuck other people, easy to stay with someone you care about.
And yes, a promise to stay with someone is enforceable. You don’t know when someone else has sex but you know when they leave you. So you can make it difficult for someone to leave: say, set up an agreement that whoever leaves the other person loses money, or gets beat up. Or social sanctions.
That’s actually one of the purposes of marriage: by making it difficult for either person to end the relationship, you encourage people to stay with it instead of leaving.
TSA:
Your past doesn’t negate everything that made your fiance fall in love with you and decide to marry you. If he truly loves you, your story won’t change his feelings. If it does, better to break things off now. If you stay together, you’ll both go through fucked up times and make mistakes after you get married too, and hopefully you’ll stand by each other. When you love someone, you take them as they are, flaws and all.
“She is exactly what I’ve always wanted: smart, articulate, independent, and friggin’ beautiful.”
Looks like you get to add a new item to the list of things you now know you want in a partner: the ability to care for your feelings as well as her own.
I have to disagree with everyone including Dan on CPAS. What it sounds like is that CPAS is incapabale of rising to the occasion of exerting influence to counter manipulate his GF.
The first tragedy of dumping his GF would be the lost opportunity of learning to deal with the situation already, and secondly he would lose the opportunity of learning how to manipulate other girls like her.
His GF probably simply needs someone who can rise to the challenge of counter infuluencing her by using the same tactics against her.
Think of it as an exercise in intellect. You have to dominate her by messing with her values and worldview. Good luck.
@100 – your second paragraph is more or less exactly what my therapist did with me when I was involved with someone I believe was a BPD sufferer. Without the bit about ‘counter manipulating’
As to why CPAS would put up with her, there doesn’t have to be a looks disparity. He could just have low self-esteem and/or a distorted view of his own desirability. All that is necessary for someone to stay with an abuser is for the abused to believe they can’t do any better or that they deserve the treatment.
@101
I forgot to mention that manipulation should be used strategically, and not by default.
Thats what distinguishes a GOOD leader from a psycopath.
My brother is in the exact relationship CPAS is in, except they are married and have three kids, so there is no DTMF to be done. I don’t think looks will have much to do with it (my brother is as hot as his wife, and often has women hitting on him), just the need for her to be absolutely in control and right at all times – and for him to be wrong and under the thumb. She’s perfectly reasonable most of the time. It’s pretty weird. My brother just does what CPAS does, and I have no idea how. I think I’d have walked out long ago.
Awww Dan, CPS isn’t going to dump the girl. Men are shallow, shallow, shallow. The only thing they care about is how a woman looks. If she’s hot, nothing else matters. If she isn’t hot, she’s invisible. Men want two things in a woman, skinny and hot, they don’t care beyond that.
CPAS, she could be insecure, neurotic and needy. Or she could be suffering from a hormonal imbalance. Hormonal birth control leaves many women bereft of their true persona and turned into angry, irritable, unstable, irrational and often physically violent facsimiles of themselves. I used to refer to it as “the hi-jackers have control of the aeroplane”. If she has started on or changed her birth control since you met, this could account for out-of-character behaviour. Try 2-3 months using non-hormonal birth control and see the difference. Dan, I’m your biggest fan but shame on you for not even investigating the possibility she’s not a witch before burning her at the stake.
TSA Tell him, your fiance has the right to know. Giving the stress you feel about this, you know in your gut that this is not like talking about previous lovers/boyfriends (which as we all know we should avoid these types of conversations as nothing comes good comes out of them). Difference here is that it was your half brother, it is incest (screw that BS about the Westermarck effect, you knew it was wrong, it was sick, yet you went ahead and did it anyway). It will come out, so he mind as well find out from you.
BTW, this is going to sound bad, but if I was the your fiance and you told me this not sure if I would proceed with the marriage…I would have to think about it for awhile. Yes, you were a kid, yes, it sounds like your family life growing up was not normal to say the least….but what you did was wrong. You knew it, he knew it, you were 14 so you knew the difference between right and wrong. It says alot about you as a person, and it says alot about your family, how you were raised, and would me question if your morals/beliefs as a result of this are really inline with mine. Besides, he deserves the right to know so that he can decide for himself if he wants to spend the rest of his life dealing with the baggage that comes from a family as screwed up as your’s was and is !!!!!
People keep missing the problem, her continuing relationship with her brother. She dumped her mother for her brother and her father who was more than a little responsible for this mess. I’m sorry, but the mother was justified in freaking out. She was being required to accept a hell of a lot when her husband’s bastard came to live with them.
@beentheredonethat I agree, the fact that she dropped her mother to keep her relationship with her brother and father is a problem. As I said above, the fiance has a right to know what happened so that he can decide for himself if he still wants to marry her. What she did in the past would probably be enough to make most normal guys run. And if it wasn’t, the fact that she dropped her mother for those two buffons sure as hell should be. Tell the fiance, don’t tell the fiance…probably does not matter in the long run because either way this relationship is doomed (breakup now or divorce down the road) unless her fiance is as screwed up as her or perhaps another long lost blood relative…in which case they will make a perfect couple 🙂
By the way…you have to wonder about the fiance and what skeletons he is hiding or the emotional problems he has himself. Giving this girl’s past / her values / her issues / probably low self esteeem / etc…I gotta believe he is not much of a catch himself. Yea, yea, I know…this is judgemental…but unless she hides it well…I can’t help but conclude that this girl is an emotional basket-case and has shown her true colors in terms of values/issues/drama/low self esteem/etc… yet the guy still wants to marry her. Either love truely is blind or this guy is a mess himself.
CPS,
Pretty much a consensus of comments – DTMFA.
But as someone who’s been through this personally, and as a professional who deals with this routinely, I strongly urge you to google “cycle of violence.” I suggest doing this when you have a substantial amount of time, and only when you are alone or are with only people who you trust and are supportive. It is very likely that you will react very emotionally as you read. You will be amazed that your unique experiences are actually not only very common, but are predictable and part of a well-documented pattern.
You will learn that you are involved in a toxic relationship and there are psychological reasons why it will be difficult for you to break the pattern and get out.
But you need to get out. AND, before you allow yourself to get into a new relationship, you need to better understand the relationship you are in, why you got into it, and why you stayed, knowing it was bad.
Good luck. You have the power to make your life better.
@97: Well, yes, if you consider paying a penalty in order to get out of a relationship to be the same thing as enforcement of the promise to not get out of the relationship. You still lost the relationship, which is presumably what you really wanted to keep.
That, and good luck getting your girlfriend to not laugh in your face if you suggest financial or other “penalties” if she dumps you while she’s on the other coast. If I had a romantic partner who seriously suggested something like that to keep us honest while apart, I would break up before moving — it’s frankly creepy. You stay with someone because you care about them, not because they have made it too injurious to leave.
The financial dissolution of a marriage is not a penalty, by the way; it is the division of jointly acquired assets.
Quoth @108:
I thought she dumped her mother because her mom called the cops and tried to physically prevent her from having an abortion? That’s not “freaking out”; that’s actively causing injury to TSA, her brother, and likely her dad. And I’m guessing those weren’t the only times her mom sabotaged her.
Not sure why you’re assigning blame for getting rid of mom. I can only assume you’ve never had the “pleasure” of a toxic parent. Sometime you need to cut yourself off from certain relatives.
Hunter 78: You are projecting your own biases on the mother. You have no clue as to what the mother’s motives were. She may be devotedly catholic or of some other religion which holds abortion to be a mortal sin. That may offend your sensibilities and that of others who post here, but it is still a valid moral principle as long as you ensure that the resulting child is raised by a loving family. Sort like your comment about a guardianless child, which is an inconsistent and hypocritical position to take given your subsequent rant on the mother trying to prevent the abortion. Frankly, I have no problem with killing people either before or after they are born. The human race would be far better off if more people were culled. Starting with the lobbyists, politicians, lawyers, and religious zealots (including secular humanists). After all, religion is just a believe system. Forget calling the police, I would have castrated the bastard for so abusing my hospitality in such a gross manner and done the same to the father for failing so abjectly to protect their daughter. Ultimately the father was responsible for the actions of his son.
Just my modest proposal with a tip of my hat to Jonathan Swift.
to whitness:
It’s God’s plan! He designed us this way. Who do you think Adam and Eve’s children had sex with? Incest is OK according to the Bible.
@107: What if you don’t think it was wrong? What if you only think it’s likely that other people would think it’s wrong?
I’m not saying it wasn’t wrong, but I’d say it was wrong more along the lines of, I dunno, stealing your parent’s car to go joy riding or something.
The only think TSA is “guilty” of is having natural feelings and not having a developed enough brain to resist them.
@108: What’s wrong with her continuing relationship with her father/brother? Her father does not seem to have done anything bad to her. And she seems to believe (and probably is) just as culpable in the issues with her brother as her brother is. Only her mother forcefully tried to circumvent TSA’s will. Sounds like the relationship with the mother would have been just fine if not for that.
CPAS, I hung on to the relationship that you are considering ending. To the point of marriage with children. Thought I could manage it, or make it work, or something. I was right. It works for everybody, but me. I can’t bail now because I can’t in good conscience leave my kids with their mother. Yes, that’s the way it works when you’re the dad. Listen to Dan (ignoring the bit about your ugliness.) DTMFA
obviously incest spawned the human race, have you not been reading your bible??
I have had the terrible misfortune of becoming well-known in my extended social circle as being reasonable, caring, calm, and grown-up. I mean, these are all generally true, but it means I can’t get away with NOT being any of these things, which is frustrating as all hell when I have to deal with petty, vindictive, passive aggressive, immature fuckheads of mutual acquaintance.
Several times in the past few years I have had serious issues with people being complete turds to me, our mutual friends have said “Oh that’s just how he/she is…” while I have basically been ordered to stay on my best behaviour because I’m “better than them”.
Thankfully my actual partners are mature and sensible, but CPaS’s situation just reminded me of that. It sucks being the only grown-up in the room, sometimes…
Have to agree with Where’s My Dirt? – what’s happened to the column, and for that matter, the podcast? Have all the interesting questions been asked? After listening to the marriage proposal at the end of episode 249, I had to think that the Lovecast has officially jumped the shark.
There is nothing wrong with consensual incest. That’s not a matter of opinion. It’s a fact. It’s fine to be judgmental, as long as you make the correct judgments!
@114: Well, we enforce the criminal law by penalizing people who violate it, for instance. The idea is to make it less likely that someone will choose to break up with you by requiring the process of ending a relationship to be difficult.
I don’t know why you think stabilizing a relationship is a bad thing or creepy. I mean, some people will leave someone as soon as they find someone better, but if people want to make it less likely, they should have that option.
There is a trade-off between the length of a relationship and the potential quality of your partner. If you change partners regularly, you have the opportunity for novelty as well as always dating someone of your preferred age. You could keep “trading up” in whatever you value, to get a better and better partner when you get the opportunity, but you lose the benefits from building a long-term relationship. And if someone wanted those benefits it makes sense to structure things to encourage long-term relationships.
Hence, marriage, for instance, which you must think is creepy also.
You oversimplify things when you say “You stay with someone because you care about them, not because they have made it too injurious to leave.” Any relationship has benefits and drawbacks, and people often have mixed feelings. In hard times, people often stay together because they care about the person and because they don’t want to lose the relationship or its benefits, or they don’t want to move, or they don’t want to give up mutual friends, or they don’t want to go through the emotional pain of a breakup.
Nonmonogamy is another way to encourage long-term relationships because then you don’t have to end your relationship to date or have sex with someone new. (And for some people, monogamy might be a way to encourage long-term relationships!)
There are definitely penalties associated with divorce. I wasn’t specifically referring to financial ones, I meant more like the waiting period required and process involved and so forth.
But there are financial ones as well. For one thing, there are often legal and court fees. You may have to move or sell your house or property quickly. You lose the tax benefits. And, yes, depending on the state, you may be required to pay some form of support, or, in community property states, give up some of your individually earned income.
Interesting fact: there are some states that have a special type of marriage (so-called “covenant marriage”) which is harder to get out of than a regular marriage, and you can choose either type of marriage when you get married. Which is a great idea, because people should be able to lock themselves in, if they so choose.
man, this bs is starting to read like ann landers…
107, what you say is almost like a parody: “You knew it, he knew it, you were 14 so you knew the difference between right and wrong.” Probably not old enough to legally consent to sex in most states, but hey, old enough to be judged by you, right?
I don’t think TSA did a darn thing wrong, and she has nothing to be ashamed of. I can sympathize with why her mother wanted to go to the police–wouldn’t you do that, if you thought your 14 year old was being preyed upon by an older boy, no matter who he was? But I can also sympathize with why this upset TSA, because she believed that the brother was innocent and didn’t want to see him harshly punished for something she participated in. It also forces her to play a victim role that may have made her feel worse about what happened.
Maybe there’s a lot more to the story between TSA and her mother than we know, but if the main reason for their estrangement is the mother’s reaction to this situation, I hope that TSA will eventually be able to establish a relationship with her again. The mother’s actions may not have been good for TSA at the time, but they also make sense in some respects, and obviously the mother is traumatized by what happened as well. She can’t be expected to react and behave perfectly under those circumstances.
@Hunter78
Dude, I prefaced it with the fact that it was judgemental. No need for name calling.
And yes, guys dig girls for the chemistry, but it is our history that makes us the person we are today. Fact, the girl slept with her half brother. Fact, she got pregnant by sleeping with her half brother. Fact, she had an abortion. Fact, she no longer talks to her mother because her mother tried to stop her from getting an abortion and called the police on her half brother. FACT: it’s been 12 years and she has not forgiving her mother. BIGGEST FACT – she has concealed all of this from her fiance.
Putting everything aside that happened when she was 14…it’s these last two facts are probably the most revealing.
– While I do not agree with her mother trying to stop her from getting an abortion, TSA was only 14 at the time. TSA had already shown poor judgement by sleeping with her half brother and by not having safe sex (she got pregnant). It’s a parent’s job to love, care for and protect their children. The mother probably thought she was doing this. Note, I said thought. And quite possible her mother is one of those Christian anti-abortion zealots. In which case the incest and pregnancy probably drove her stark raving mad at the time. All this on top of her husband’s son from an affair coming to live with them. That’s a lot to handle…even for the best of moms.
But either way, it’s been 12 years and TSA has not forgiving her mother for trying to do what she probably thought was right at the time. The mother made a mistake, yes. But she can’t forgive her mother. Hmmmm says a lot (Empathy, compassion, forgiveness).
– She has not told her fiancé. No need to go into too much detail on this except to say that it would appear she is not very open or honest with her fiancé.
So yes, it’s the chemistry we dig. But it’s the complete person (inside and out) that we love.
@Suzy (post 129)
Are you kidding me? She was 14, not 5. She was old enough to know right from wrong. Is 14 still a child, yes. Was she still growing and maturing, yes. But she was still old enough to know right from wrong. The irony is that you are right that in most states she is not old enough to have consensual sex, but she is old enough to be charged as an adult for murder. Go figure.
But for the life of me I can’t see how you could possible say “I don’t think TSA did a darn thing wrong”. She did do something wrong. She did 2 things wrong…had sex with her half brother…and she had unprotected sex. Should she still feel ashamed about it? No. We all make mistakes, it’s part of who we are, we learn from them, and probably most importantly we have to own up to them so that we can accept them and move past them. Too many people make excuses either for themselves or for others (she was too young, she did not know what she was doing, it wasn’t my fault, etc).
Without knowing the whole story, I too agree that the mother’s reactions made sense at the time, and that she was just trying to protect her daughter. Yes, the mother probably handled it poorly, but a situation like this is tough for all involved and the mother probably over reacted. It would be hard not to.
With regards to “hey, old enough to be judged by you”. Yes, I have no problem saying that what she did when she was 14 was wrong. Does it make her a bad person? No, it makes her human. And I hope one day she finally gets past it and no longer feels ashamed for what she did when she was 14.
There is a problem with trading up and getting a reputation for doing so. Few people stay a the top of food chain for an extended period of time. If you do it to others, at some point it will be done to you and probably repeatedly as your attractiveness deteriorates over time? Possibly this is the reason for cult of trying to appear forever young in this culture. You’ve limited yourself to interacting with people who consider other people a fungible commodity.
@129,
The source of TSA’s Mom’s attitude toward the half brother is understandable. Husband has affair while actively making family with her; live with it. Mistress dies, and she is forced to accept husband’s infidelity in form of his son; live with it. The boy gets her daughter pregnant.
Just rereading the above makes my head hurt. I have no idea about the Mom’s religious beliefs, but it’s pretty clear that the Mom’s role in this was shut up and take it til this point. Then for whatever reason (she tries to protect her grandchild) she went against her husband’s flow, she gets chucked out by her family. Pretty fucking brutal from that angle.
I have sympathy for TSA, but I feel sorry for her Mom. Until TSA resolves the issues underlying thier break, then all she’s doing is burying the trauma. Since I am attempting to create a resolution myself (with family issues of neglect and betrayal), I can tell her the stakes could be the stability of her future marriage. At least all of her parties are still alive
Peace.
FDNY: Call me. 😉
CPAS: Fuck her. Fuck her good, hard, and long. Fuck her and fuck her and fuck her. Fuck her how she likes it. Fuck her how you like it. Ignore her except for the fucking. When she starts the yelling, walk away. ESPECIALLY if she ever says something like, “DONTCHU WALK AWAY FROM ME!” When she STFU, fuck her REAL good. Make her get there, the right way.
Then, one day, when she’s yelling at you, stare at her. When she stops the yelling say, “If you EVER scream at me again, I will stop fucking you. We can talk. But the next time you raise your voice at me is right after the last time I fuck you.”
She might be worth keeping, if you can show her that you are more valuable than getting yelled at ever deserves.
I really think Sister Act needs a good therapist to assure her that actually no she doesn’t need to tell her fiance. She really, truly doesn’t. It’s in the past and time to be over it. The reason she wants to tell him is most likely due to residual shame and revulsion.
Count me in the exes as friends category. I feel if you can’t be friends you’re not really over them, or they’re douchebags. But a blanket refusal of contact to me spells unresolved relationship issues.
I completely, totally, and whole-heartedly agree with #3. Dan, Dan, Dan – it’s not just a looks thing, Honey. It’s a self-esteem thing. Trust me. I’ve met a lot of men who get locked into abusive relationships (almost as many as there are women who do). The abusive women they were with weren’t necessarily trollips, but they weren’t the prettiest pieces of ass these guys had either. In my circle, it seems to happen most to men who were older and freaking out because all their friends were settling down. The problem is these men didn’t just settle down… They settled. And I’m certain it happens to younger men, too, but not as much as younger women (men aren’t in as big of a hurry to settle down).
Really, the ending up with a nasty asshole thing is very common for those of us who grew up in dysfunctional families. The assholes make us feel safe because they are familiar (like “mommy” or “daddy”) and/or you may even believe you can “fix” that person—giving you a false sense of control (this is called codependency). BTDT. Seen it too happen too to male friends sadly. 🙁
@126: “I don’t know why you think stabilizing a relationship is a bad thing or creepy.”
Stabilizing a relationship BY THREATENING PAINFUL CONSEQUENCES if it ends is creepy. Jesus Christ, you even mentioned beating them up as one possible example consequence. On what planet is that not creepy? So is telling your boyfriend he owes you ten thousand dollars if he dumps you. Ask for that from me and I’d dump you on the spot, just for that.
Yes, there are additional considerations in deciding to stay other than “Because I care about her.” Examples include “Because it would cause a lot of pain to everybody involved, to smash the family like that” or “Divorce is generally a financial catastrophe for all concerned, except the lawyers, so maybe staying together and working it out might be wiser.” You will note, however, that all of these involve consideration of the other people, which is a minor variation on “Because I care about her.” They aren’t examples of “Because I’m stuck in the trap she laid, and dare not chew off my own leg.”
There’s nothing wrong with running these calculations in your head when contemplating making a run for it, especially if they cause you to reconsider. (Seriously, in most cases (i.e. barring abuse), what you are feeling at the moment is just infatuation, and once that wears off, both you and the new squeeze will be in basically the same relationships as the ones you both left. Is it really worth it to cause so much pain?)
Still, that’s a LOT different than setting it up at the outset so that if you leave I get to beat you up or empty your bank account in retaliation for leaving.
134, ftw.
Dan is absolutely right about CPaS. I saw this first hand, with a former friend who was, by all accounts, a skinny, unattractive weirdo. But, he had a stunningly hot girlfriend, to whom everyone else I knew reacted with incredulity, pulling me aside and asking “what’s SHE doing with HIM!?!” That was, until they saw her flip her fucking lid on him, usually in public, and with an apparent glee that betrayed a deep-seated streak of willful cruelty. She actually had an evil sparkle in her eye. Seriously. Of course, that’s probably what made the sex so great (according to him, anyway).
When he was finally unable to tolerate further torment from her drug-addled vacuity, vicious mood swings and vituperative emotional manipulation (which often included explicit reminders of just how far out of his league she really was), she would react with outright violence, situations so out of control that most folks would have called the cops, though I and others would come and extract him instead. There was one time where in the midst of an argument, she grabbed his favorite sweatshirt, cut it up with a butcher knife right in front of him, then proceeded to throw it on the ground, and piss on it. She literally hiked her skirt up and let loose like some kind of Bob Guccione centerfold. Ultimately, only moving to opposite corners of the country could break their twisted, psychopathological bond.
DTMFA might be even harder for this guy than it seems. If she’s anything like that one (who knows, they might even BE one and the same!) he should consider filing a restraining order first.
Dan is absolutely right about CPaS. I saw this first hand, with a former friend who was, by all accounts, a skinny, unattractive weirdo. But, he had a stunningly hot girlfriend, to whom everyone else I knew reacted with incredulity, pulling me aside and asking “what’s SHE doing with HIM!?!” That was, until they saw her flip her fucking lid on him, usually in public, and with an apparent glee that betrayed a deep-seated streak of willful cruelty. She actually had an evil sparkle in her eye. Seriously. Of course, that’s probably what made the sex so great (according to him, anyway).
When he was finally unable to tolerate further torment from her drug-addled vacuity, vicious mood swings and vituperative emotional manipulation (which often included explicit reminders of just how far out of his league she really was), she would react with outright violence, situations so out of control that most folks would have called the cops, though I and others would come and extract him instead. There was one time where in the midst of an argument, she grabbed his favorite sweatshirt, cut it up with a butcher knife right in front of him, then proceeded to throw it on the ground, and piss on it. She literally hiked her skirt up and let loose like some kind of Bob Guccione centerfold. Ultimately, only moving to opposite corners of the country could break their twisted, psychopathological bond.
DTMFA might be even harder for this guy than it seems. If she’s anything like that one (who knows, they might even BE one and the same!) he should consider filing a restraining order first.
@116,
It amazes me how TSA’s story keeps percolating through my brain, and causes me to reexamine all the opinions expressed here. Going back to the beginning, ie before the brother shows up, the problems stem from the CPOS father. In fact TSA’s problems are side effects of the CPOS’s creation. The Mom caused… what? She’s toxic because she responded badly to the (statutory) rape of her daughter? The Mom, TSA, and the brother are victims of the CPOS’s actions.
The more I think about it, the issue of abandoning her mother is more shameful, because, in my opinion, it’s a case of blaming the victim. TSA isn’t 14 anymore, so it’s time to do the grown up thing of considering another person’s point of view and trying to solve the problem instead of running away.
wendykh This is an uncommon situation. What is it about huge family scandals that you don’t get? It is only a matter of time until a drunken (that is generally the case)friend or family member makes some off hand remark (or direct reference) (usually at some kind of family gathering) about the scandals under the assumption that the fiance already knows all about it. Or are you proposing somekind of ridiculous conspiracy of silence by everyone who knows about the scandal. She and he will be far better off if he hears about from her and it is long past the time that she should have told him.
In the case of any ex-lover from an affair, the consensus opinion of most experts is that an ex-lover can never remain a friend because the only way to ensure that the affair is over is to sever all contact. This is a bomb waiting to explode when the other person in the relationship or marriage is unaware of the affair. It is just tempting fate. When they are aware, it is futile to attempt to reconcile until and unless the affair is both really, truly over and as importantly that it is demonstrably over. That is only possible after all contact is severed. The ex-lover has to effectively be expunged. Letters, diaries, pictures, gifts, memories, compromised friends all have to be eliminated which is why it is so hard for most people to reconcile. The cost is to just high and people can’t or won’t pay the price. It is a whole lot easier and less painful (for both parties) to start over with some one new. Children make reconciling or starting over so much more complicated.
I know I’m way off topic, but I may as well continue with my rant. The first victim of an affair is credibility. Since the cheater has engaged in lies, deceit, and betrayal, it isn’t so much that they don’t have credibility as that they have negative credibility. Some how they have to prove that they aren’t lying before they can start to prove that they are telling the truth. Where one ends and the other begins is impossible to tell since they tend to overlap. How a cheater asserts any right to privacy while striving to reestablish their credibility is beyond me. Any attempt at secrecy or privacy is typically viewed with varying degrees of suspicion. As I said, reconciling is difficult if not impossible for many people.
TSA, you have no idea how normal this all is. I hope Dan gave you some relief on this topic. Your partner is already in love with and I don’t think this information will send him running.
TSA
Fiance has a right to know something, but maybe not the details of exactly who was involved. What does he need to know exactly? That you had a deeply tragic experience in your teen years that caused a serious breach within your family, and he may end up dealing with after-effects. I would include not only the pregnancy and how it ended (I think TSA did succeed in getting an abortion), but also a hint that “you may hear other versions of this story”. I would share with him your complicated feelings – you blamed yourself for years, etc.
If he asks to know more, say, “I would prefer not to go into more detail – but I’ll listen to your thoughts, feelings, and concerns”. Fiance might want to know if the person who fathered that child is still in your life (and yes he might have a right to know that) so he may need reassurance that you’re not currently involved, voluntarily or coerced, in any clandestine relationships.
A therapist might help you formulate what needs to be shared and what does not.
I would also advise any family members that you’re still on speaking terms with exactly what you do end up telling your fiance, including that you didn’t reveal the identity of the father.
If I married someone who had a big family secret like that, and I found out after marriage, I’d likely stick with them but it would be a shock. Fiance will have to deal with some of these family members and he’s going to feel strange esp if he was kept in the dark the whole time and then things come to light later on.
@141: Sometimes there are no white hats.
Agree the dad is a CPOS, but that doesn’t excuse the mom’s actions. Those actions trigger my toxic “spidey sense,” as they involve narcissism, rage, and physical confrontation. These are the same types of interactions CPAS describes, and everyone (rightly) tells him to DTMFA.
If mom’s reaction was out of character, then maybe TSA should think about giving her another chance. But I’m betting it wasn’t.
@142 – Moving on is hard, but it doesn’t have to be as hard as that. If the cheater has a long history of being honest, and this is a one-time fuck-up, and they give up their online/phone privacy for a few months… yes, you can rebuild the trust. Expunging the other person does not seem as crucial as convincing both spouses that there is still a wealth of love, respect, and passion in the marriage.
142 I do know about family scandals, have one similar to this one actually in my family tree. Very similar. It just simply isn’t talked about. In my particular case, the toxic mother who wanted to turn it into her drama and punish those involved to get back for crimes committed against *her* was banished from the family, much like TSA’s mom. In our case, the mother had been brutally and violently raped as a child by relatives and when she found her children and stepchildren playing extensive doctor she flipped out as TSA’s mom did even exaggerating and lying to police instead of listening to guidance of social workers and Child Protective Services who felt those actions were unnecessary and inappropriate for this case. You bet your ass no one talks to her anymore. She made it allllll about her and wasn’t listening to her child or stepchildren at ALL.
Again in our case, the children and stepchildren got therapy to find out why it happened, why it was inappropriate, learned appropriate boundaries, grew up and became normal and responsible citizens. They did not see any reason their spouses needed to know this information as on the few occasions they felt it necessary out of some misguided sense of all or nothing honestly, the lover/potential spouse reacted by being appalled the siblings/stepsiblings still were in contact, wanting to go beat up the perceived instigator, and basically not allowing any sort of agency for the “victim” at all.
I am predicting, should TSA tell her fiancee, it’s very likely he will want to go kick the shit out of brother and ban him from the family blah blah blah. Insist he’s never to be around their children, that sort of thing. Or decide she’s some sort of depraved slut. People who read Dan’s columns are generally more open minded and look how many people here feel sorry for the MOTHER who decided all on her own how this would be handled (any woman who tried to force her 14 year old daughter to give birth to her half brother’s baby while simultaneously trying to have him arrested has a fucking screw loose, period, no matter her feelings on abortion).
It is quite likely mom was a bitch and a half outside of this. I mean let’s look at fact here, her husband has a child with another woman and she insists they’re to have no contact. What the hell kind of woman does that? Okay let’s assume they had no contact by the dad’s choice. What the hell kind of woman builds a family with a man who abandons his first born son? Fucked up.
I hope the kids had therapy about this like we had in my family. If not they need to get it. If they have, they, or at least TSA, needs more. People who have been through this and had therapy don’t talk about it. There’s just no need to. And we’ve discovered most people just don’t fucking get it how yes, we’re normal people who might have made a mistake or been involved in something that does not need either current white knighting nor armchair mental health lessons from people who don’t know wtf they are on about.
Oh and as for exes, I was talking about EXES not affair situations. Yeah I am with cutting out the affair lover. Continuing contact is a nice way of letting the spouse know where your loyalties lie :-/
That said, I do know some people who had an affair, realize that was a dumb thing to do, or ended it for whatever reason, who just move on and say nothing but still see one another socially and just pretend it never happened. That can work too.
Men get stuck in abusive relationships too. And it’s not just because their partner is “out of their league.” It could be in some cases, it could also be they are just literally beaten down.
It’s not just an ego/pride thing.
Married in MA, I too sympathize with TSA’s mother, though we may not know the full story or all the reasons why TSA is upset with her. Regardless, it’s a huge deal to cut a parent completely out of your life, with lifelong repercussions that can be hard to predict. For TSA’s own sake, I hope they can reconnect, even if it’s in a limited way.
wendykh, you make an important point that people who were once victimized can have problems understanding similar situations without putting it in terms of their own experience. However, why are we expecting perfect reactions from people who have been through serious traumas? And why expect people to behave rationally when reacting to potential (or real) harm to their own children? For most people, those issues also come with a lot of self-blame, which will be even more difficult for someone who survived abuse and thinks s/he failed to protect the children. No, TSA’s mom should not have foisted an unwelcome role of victim on TSA, but wouldn’t most parents react that way? How many would back off from blaming the half-brother without the benefit of, say, a therapist’s help?
FatherLeeds (131), your position doesn’t seem consistent to me. First, you’re saying TSA did something she knew at 14 was wrong and sick, she’s fully responsible for that, it says “a lot about her as a person” today, she has terrible “baggage” from it, her values today are in question, her relationship with her fiance is hopelessly screwed up, and he may well not want to marry her. But then, you want to say that she shouldn’t be ashamed of what she did and it was merely a mistake, of the sort we all might make? No, I don’t see how you can hold both of those positions at once.
I don’t think any 14 year olds should ever be having sex, so in that sense, yeah, it’s “wrong”. However, the very reason I think 14 is too young for sex is the same reason I don’t assign blame to the ones who do it–or at least, not in the way you do. There’s a difference between taking responsibility and deserving blame, and that’s true at 4, 14, or any other age.
I do agree with you that she needs to tell the fiance, though. If my husband suddenly came out with a story like this today, I would not be terribly upset with him for having kept it a secret. However, it would be better to have told it earlier. Not only is it better for the fiance to know the truth, but it’s better for TSA to enter the marriage knowing she has disclosed everything important to the man she wants to trust and love forever. Secrets can wear terribly on people, even if nobody else ever finds out. And in this case, for purely practical reasons, she has to tell because there are lots of other people who know what happened! The fiance cannot find out from someone else, period. It has to come from her.
What ever TSA’s reasons for not wanting her mother in her life, if she doesn’t she doesn’t.
Sure, it’s great when families all can get along, but this idea that somehow TSA not having anything to do with her mother is inherently bad for TSA doesn’t make sense. She mentioned it, but she clearly didn’t portray it as some big issue in her life that she doesn’t speak to her mother, and those reading more into it are clearly injecting their own issues.
When I met my partner he wasn’t speaking to his mother. When he explained why I didn’t think she sounded all that bad and I encouraged him to re-establish contact with her.
What a mistake. He eventually did and what a mistake. Encouraging him to do that is what I consider my one true mistake in our relationship. They reconnected and it lasted about a year before he wrote her off again, and this time, having seen and experienced her for myself, I was glad he did. How much I regret pushing him to speak to her again, and as a result putting him through all that crap, which I didn’t understand, all over again.
We don’t know the whole story behind why TSA doesn’t speak to her mother. And from her letter that doesn’t seem to be a particular issue for her anyway. Trying to make it into one is missing the mark.
What I do know is that the idea that staying on good terms with parents is somehow inherently, vitally important, is B.S.. TSA isn’t a little girl anymore. If she has decided that not being in touch with her mother is what she needs why not accept that she understand her situation better than any of us?
Quoth @150:
I don’t necessarily expect people to behave rationally when reacting to harm to their kids; I expect them to behave rationally when interacting with their kids. Being emotionally out of control when dealing with your kids is a formula for hurting them, as TSA’s mom demonstrated.
Give yourself a time out, go to another room, have a drink, whatever, but never interact with your kids when you’re furious.
153, I’m not sure what TSA means by physically prevent from having an abortion, so I can’t speak to that. However, calling the police when someone has sex with your 14 year old daughter is not necessarily an irrational response. It might be just the right response, in many cases. I have no idea if it was the right one in this case; I simply understand why it bothered TSA.
152, that’s exactly why I wonder if TSA should try to resolve some issues with her mother. She could have many excellent reasons for never speaking to the mother again. However, if one of the most important reasons is that the mother tried to call the cops on big brother, and generally reacted poorly to finding out that her 14 year old was having incestuous sex, well… I cut that mom some slack for the poor reaction. Few people would handle that situation with impeccable grace and ease. If someone just said, hey, I’m not speaking to my mom for good reason, that would be one thing. In this case, though, we seem to be hearing a crucial reason, which is why I’d advise caution. I’m very happy with my parents, thanks, so no projecting my own issues here, but I’ve seen other cases close up and personal where family ties are severed, and people really, really suffer. Like I say, it’s very hard to predict all the fallout that will happen, and how much it will hurt the person who decides to do the cutting-off.
@154: But it wasn’t just “someone” who had sex with TSA; it was her half-brother, who was living in the house. It’s not like he was going anywhere. That decision had to have pissed off TSA, her dad, and her brother. Further, I got the impression that the sex was not discovered until TSA got pregnant. So there’s no need to haul brother off– TSA was already pregnant. Damage done.
Obviously we don’t have complete information, but the information we do have suggests that the call was motivated by malice, not protection. By anger, not by concern.
I agree that “calling the police when someone has sex with your 14 year old daughter is not necessarily an irrational response.” But we’re not faced with that general scenario; here the daughter is already pregnant, and the guy who knocked her up is her brother, your husband’s son, and (I’m assuming) your step-son. And in that scenario, bringing all that family drama into the public sphere serves no rational purpose.
Suzy,
I don’t know if we have any real crucial facts at all. She mentioned what her mother did, and then that she no longer had contact with her. She didn’t say those were the specific, or only reasons, or if such behavior was a one time aberration or an on going pattern. Also what stood out to me wasn’t the calling of the cops, which you seem to be focusing on, but the attempt to force TSA to bear a child conceived in incest. Even many right to lifers accept incest as a reasonable exception to their no abortion stance.
Trying to force a child to carry a baby conceived in incest to term is really extreme in my opinion. And if this was not an aberration in her mother’s behavior then not only does she have reason to cut off contact, she would be foolish not to.
I know a lot of gay people who have had to cut off their parents due to the way their parents treated them, and most of them have done just fine. Almost all of us lose contact with our parents eventually when they die, and most people manage to go on and not suffer for it. It is the natural order of things. If someone feels their relationship with their parent is toxic and wish to end contact before the parent dies there is no reason to expect worse repercussions.
Sure, for some people there may be issues if they did that, just as some few people never manage to get over the death of a parent, but there is no reason to think it is inherently so. And no reason to assume so in TSA,s case based on what she has revealed.
I’m all for children keeping in contact with a parent when reasonable. I just don’t buy the expectation of dire consequences when they don’t, and have learned not to second guess the decissions of those who make such a choice for themselves. At least not without knowing a lot more details about the circumstances than we do about TSA and her mother.
You know, FatherLeeds, I’m pretty sure that what you did at fourteen only says a lot about you as an adult if you haven’t actually changed since then. If you haven’t grown up and developed empathy, for example. Or recognized your own imperfections and insecurities. Or even learned that prefacing statements with “LOLImgonnabealljudgmentalhaha” does not in fact negate any subsequent douchebaggery you spew.
@147,
I’m truly sorry for the pain your family has endured. I am also very sorry for the pain that my family has endured, especially my own pain. I wasn’t penetrated, but I was fondled and grabbed and stalked in my own home by family. I assure you that anything smelling of abuse around my children would Send. Me. Off. And, I assure you it would be all about me and my wild feelings of rage and protection.
I could come up with a counter argument disparaging TSA’s teenage behavior, but w/o support what good would it do? I think TSA, her mother, her brother and his dead mother are all victims of the CPOS father. That doesn’t help her with her problem of informing her fiancee. I also think she should consider trusting her future husband with who she is.
Peace.
@147 Interesting response, so unlike the attitudes usually posted here towards rape victims. From your post I’m guessing the mother got raped maybe forty years ago. The victim got bansihed from the family, what about the abusers. How much help, sympathy, and support did the mother get or was she just blamed and ostracized for the scandal. You appear to consider over reaction by a child victim who was brutally and violently (gang?)raped by relatives to be extreme. In most instances, even with extensive long term therapy, the victim is permanently damaged. I take it that you were one of the step children involved, which would explain your hostility towards both mothers. You are jumping to a whole lot derogatory and speculative conclusions about behavior, motives, personality based on absolutely no supporting information. Not that you are necessarily wrong. but I think you are guilty of projection.
I used the example of the drunken friend or family member at a family gathering because that was how the younger generations in my family found about such things. So much for honest, open communication. It set us such wonderful examples of what being normal, responsible adults was all about.
Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, the only true victim in your family was the mother. Your response sounds a lot like that of a guilty, self absorbed teenager who still has a lot of growing up to do. You really need to educate yourself on post traumatic stress disorder. As bad as your experiences were they don’t even come close to the horrific experiences of the mother in your family. You complain about people being judgmental and not understanding your situation, but you display the same things towards your step mother.
@147,@160,
Shame and guilt are disabling experiences. They are also very powerful weapons. Weapons that play leading roles in the classic family games of “Blame The Victim (Shame The Victin)” and “Do What You’re Told”. Oh yeah, and “Keep It A Secret (Don’t Dishonor Our Family)”. Of course these games are also used within other games: KIAS with the combined DWYT/BTV defense strategy (the best defense is a good offense); this is my presumption for the game that was played in wendykh’s family. Our family was a pretty straight DWYT with the “It Never Happened” offense (You have to sleep in the same room with blind drunk “Uncle Ernie” because nothing ever happened to him to make him this way). Actually “Ernie” was a step uncle, and it was my step mother that forced the issue despite my pleading to sleep with my sibs, so for my family as a whole it wasn’t that bad (just for me).
Wendykh, I find talking about what happened, initially in the safety of Therapy and later with your loved ones, absolutely essential to overcoming the damage. In fact I have to thank you for forcing me to confront my experiences outside of my victim perspective. You aren’t alone, you and your family are not the only ones to have experienced shameful tragedy, and most importantly it’s not your fault that you are a victim. If you can’t be open about your whole life with your SO, then I suggest your therapy needs aren’t over.
Peace.
@154 It’s called statutory rape, it happens all the time, and it gets the perpetrator put on a sexual offender list. In fact, getting a daughter pregnant makes the latter more likely.
Sorry that should have been @155
Furthermore, it wasn’t just incest, it was incest with her husband’s adulterous bastard. Is anyone really surprised that the mom went ballistic.
Suzy:
I don’t assign blame for TSA having sex at 14. I too think that 14 is to young and I think it would be better for children to wait until they are older.
But I do think that a 14 year old girl sleeping with her 16 year old half brother is wrong. It’s incest. For me there is no grey area on this aspect of the scenario. They were both wrong to do this.
BTW, I never said this was the type of mistake we all make. And I disgree with Debra Lieberman saying “this could happen to anyone”. Crashing your car, drinking and driving, getting in a fight, cheating on a lover, getting drunk at a party and making a fool of yourself, etc can happen to anyone. I would never put sleeping with a family member in this category (ie could happen to anyone). What I did say (or at least try to say), is that we all make mistakes, that we need to own up to them, accept them and pick ourselves back up and move on from them. No matter how big or small. Whether it’s crashing a car, and yes, even sleeping with your sibling. In short, taking personal responsibility for our actions.
As for the shame. I am sure she felt ashamed after the fact. And it appears she still does because she gets panic attacks when she thinks about telling her fiance about it. Once she truely accepts it and owns it, she should no longer feel shame about it. This is not to say that she should not be sorry it happened (ie or regret having done it). I think all of us here on this board have done things that we were ashamed about, but then we put it behind us and were able to say “damn that’s something I regret having done”. We are not proud of it, we accept it, but we no longer feel ashamed about it.
BeenThereDoneThat
Depending on where TSA lived it was not statutory rape. While each state has different limatations on this, most accept that if both are minors and the difference in age is less than 2 to 3 years (depending on state), and the younger one has reached a minimum age (14 is pretty typical, althought there are some with lower, even down to 10), then it’s not statutory rape.
In New York and California it is statutory rape as both parties must be at least 18. Which, while I do not think it is wise to be having sex at 14, 15, 16…I think it is stupid for these states to have laws making it illegal for say two 16 years olds or two 17 years having sex.
TSA doesn’t say how old she was when she got pregnant or how long after the boy moved in before they started having sex. I doubt very much that the mother considered him a step son, which infers a form of commitment not in evidence. Nor does TSA say when her mother found about the affair or her husband’s son or how long they were married before he had the affair(s?) The ex-husband must be one real piece of work. The mother got dumped on by her cheating husband and her darling daughter. The daughter may have been too young to make an appropriate decision, but the boy wasn’t. TSA says that she was informed at 14 that she had a half brother, but not how old she was when he moved in with them. Was his mother dying or had she already died. Presumably his mother had parents or other living relatives (most people do) with whom he should have had long standing relationships. TSA doesn’t explain why the boy moved in with them.
I not sure if the age exemption to statutory rape exists when incest occurs.
@170 porn is fantasy. Are you suggesting that people who have rape fantasies or people who are into BDSM are in favor of actual rape or violence towards women. Although I guess actual pedophiles don’t understand the difference between fantasy and reality.
@171 this was not puppy love (ok, may be the daughter developed a crush, but for a 16 year old boy it is more likely to be a case of taking advantage of an opportunity) I doubt if he even considered her, a relative stranger at that time, to actually be his sister. That doesn’t happen over night as most members of any blended family will tell you, there is more likely to be resentment rather affection at the beginning. So some lenth of time passed before they started, if only long enough for the mother to let down her guard. I think TSA was more likely to be 15 or 16 and the boy 17, 18, or even maybe 19. TSA doesn’t say whether this was her first sexual encounter or his. Somehow I kind of doubt it, particularly for the boy
Re comment number 2: Using Welsh pronunciation, “slyt” would indeed be pronounced slut. But I think slwt looks better on the page. It would sound more like “sloot” and that helps differentiate it when you’re speaking, too. Let’s have slwtwalks, not slutwalks.
FatherLeeds, I agree with you that it’s wrong for half-siblings of 14 and 16 to have sex. But if you’re not blaming the 14 year old personally for having made a deliberate decision to do this, then what’s the point of insisting that it’s wrong? I don’t think 14 year olds are capable of grasping the full implications of consenting to have sex with someone–obviously 14 year old TSA didn’t, either, because then she experienced the ugly fallout of what may initially have seemed like a good thing.
Your comment that “we all make mistakes” did imply that this was the sort of thing that might happen to anyone. And indeed, it would be more likely to happen to me than your example of drinking and driving would, since I know the odds that I’m going to kill someone else or myself after making that decision–one where any 16-or-older driver is fully cognizant of the implications.
In short, I don’t understand your complaints about TSA–her values, her current relationship prospects, and so on. What makes you think she did not “take responsibility” for what she did? She had an abortion and has suffered through the condemnation of her family and others who found out about her actions. Most people who have incestuous affairs never even go through that. She has a difficult conversation to have with her fiance, and you and I agree she is obligated to tell him. Failure to do so would be irresponsible, yes, since it’s unfair to leave him in the dark while the rest of the family knows something so significant in her history.
Re TSA,
I can understand why some are talking about statutory rape, what with her being 14, and the half-bro being 16. However, in her letter, she clearly stated “He didn’t rape me; I wanted to have sex with him”. Judge as you feel you must, but please, stop throwing the word “rape” around.
173, cockyballsup, I totally agree with you. There’s no reason to assume that either the 14 or 16 year old was the more active or responsible agent in that situation. I’ve certainly seen 14 year old girls who were taken advantage of cruelly by 16 year old boys who knew darn well what they were doing, and I’ve also seen 14 year old girls who by far had the advantage over more innocent or vulnerable 16 year old boys. That’s usually why statutory rape laws require a larger age gap between the parties.
And the half-sibling sex is not shocking to me, as you say, any more than cousins having sexual encounters is shocking. I’m sure it happens all the time. Heck, there was a time in the not-terribly-distant past when a cousin would have made for a likely marriage prospect, keeping the money in the family and all.
RE statutory rape,
The law deems minors incompetent to judge whether sex is consensual. (And, in my opinion, in this case that supposition was proved correct.)
Depending upon the state, a 16 year old is considered capable of understanding their own consent, and the consent of the partner(s) when engaging in sexual acts. So in the eyes of the law, a crime was committed, and the crime was rape. The two are fortunate to not have been in a country where penalties exist for incest.
Peace.
CPAS,
You could end up in jail or prison, because your girlfriend was yelling at YOU. That means it is usually the male who gets arrested.
The “Domestic Violence” laws include yelling. If the neighbors hear the yelling and call the cops, guess who goes to jail…?
Dan’s advice is correct, you need to “DTBA” or Dump This Bitch Already.
@2, Dan is into the Germans, or maybe in them, so in that vein, how about slüt?
@2, 50, 174, 180 I’m impressed with the multilingual suggestions, but isn’t the point to own the word itself? Would activism by queers & dykes feel the same if they called themselves “kweers” and “dikes”?
So to all the people going “Looks have nothing to do with being abused WAAAH”, I am pretty sure that is not what Mr. Savage was getting at. Obviously, good looking people can be abused, however, the abuse in this case is quite different. I agree that it probably is that this girl ought to be way out of this guy’s league. I’ve been in the same boat. An ex-girlfriend of mine – who is smart, independent, and attractive – seeks out loser nerd types such as myself because she knows she can walk all over them and they won’t break up with her and they’ll pay for basically everything and even carry things for her. And yeah, she yelled at me for everything, including not properly appreciating her piano playing. I’m not the only person she has done this to, either. She just got to be in control of the relationship because if anyone of us complains, she’ll just dump us and move on to a new guy who’ll do everything for her, while we find it significantly more difficult to get a smart, independent, attractive woman. Trust me.
CPAS-The (admittedly untutored) diagnoses here of Borderline Personality Disorder for your soon-to-be-ex sound spot-on to me too, having lived in a terrible situation with a BPD spouse for years.
She is broken inside, maybe irreparably. It’s not your job to fix her even if you could. Staying will only hurt you more, and worse. Get out ASAP and go far away. Cut this cancer out of your life forever and WORK ON REBUILDING YOUR SELF-ESTEEM. You probably don’t sense it yet but you’ve suffered a lot of damage as a result of your time with this person. Now is the time to remind yourself of all the reasons you’re great, and believe it.
Good luck, man. I feel for you.
I find something absurd about all the people saying “hey half siblings getting it on is not shocking – it’s only as shocking as cousins hooking up!”
Cousins getting together isn’t a squick overload? Since when?
I mean it’s objectively/genetically sort of whatever. But emotionally? Uggghhhh *shudder*.
I met a group of my cousins when I was 18. One of them apparently experienced this lack-of-Westermark upon meeting me. I was lucky enough to not feel the same way. I feel sorry for people who fall through those inbreeding-protection loopholes and find themselves attracted to people who they shouldn’t.
Married in MA:
I would like to clarify a few things regarding your post saying that it was rape (ie statutory).
Many states (in fact more than half the states) have what’s called a “close in age exception”. In some states with this exception it is still a crime, but it makes the crime a misdemeanor, not a felony. In other states it makes it totally legal for minors to engage in sex as long as gap between their ages is not more a certain number of years. This gap can be as low as 2 years and as much as 5 years. Here in NJ the gap is 4 years. As such, if TSA lived in NJ then what happened between TSA and her brother did would not be rape. Minor note, most states also include a minimum age with the “close in age exception”. That is, the younger party has to be at least a certain age for the exception to apply. Here in NJ the minimum age is 13 (way to young if you ask me). So a 17 year can sleep with a 13 year as long as the 17 year old is less than 4 years older. So if the younger party is 13 years and 4 months, the older party can be 17 years and 3 months.
Personally, why I do not think it is wise for children at this age to be having sex, it’s going to happen so I think it makes total sense for the laws to account for this. Why? Because hell hath no fury like a lover scorned. Without this law, all the jilted lover has to do is say they had sex with the other party. They don’t have to claim it was forced, they just have to admit they had sex with the other party. Or worse, as in the case with TSA, one of the parents finds out that you were having sex with your older boyfriend/girlfriend, they can go to the police to file a complaint. In either case, the police have to investigate. In the case of TSA, I am inclined to think that they lived in one of the states that has the “close in age exception” because it seems like they could have easily proved that they slept together (she was pregnant).
Key point is that each state is different and it would be wise to check the laws for your state before jumping to the conclusion that it is statutory rape for a child under 18 to have sex. It would also be wise for parents of teenage kids to check them to make sure they know what their kids can and can’t do legally.
PS and interesting read about a man that landed on the sex offenders list for sleeping with his wife. -> http://www.woai.com/content/news/newslin…
Suzy:
I think we will have to agree to disagree with regards to me saying “that we all make mistakes” implying that “it can happen to anyone”.
Everyone makes mistakes as there are no perfect people. So yes, mistakes can happen to anyone. But I think when we start talking about the “types of mistakes” that we can filter down the list from “happening to anyone”. For me I think my thought process is tied to the fact that when we say “it can happen to anyone” we are usually doing it to 1) make a person feel better about something they did because it happens to a lot of people. Or 2) we say it to someone that was the “victim” of something that happened to them that was outside their control, like being mugged, getting fired / laid off, etc. But TSA and her brother are not victims in this situation, and as such I will stick to the first usage (ie make someone feel better about something they did). I don’t ever see myself saying something like this to a murderer, a child molestor, etc. I am not saying that what transpired between TSA and her half-brother is anything like these two crimes I just mentioned, just trying to make a point on the types of things that I would never tell the wrong doer that “it could happen to anyone”. Right or wrong, I guess for me there is no grey area when it comes to incest. Maybe it’s my religious upbringing that has me not seeing grey areas with regards to incest. While I can totally understand how any normal teenager gives into their emotions and sexual urges and sleeps with someone, guess I just can’t understand how those feelings where so strong that they could ignore the fact that it was their sibling, that it was incest. And as such, I am not one who thinks sleeping with a sibling “could happen to anyone”.
Quibbling
I doubt if the age exemption for statutory rape applies to incest, since incest is still a crime in all States
truth? and it’s consequences
I don’t view it as quibbling……AS with statutory rape….laws for incest are different in each state. In some states they only target / penalize parental figures for sleeping with their underage childrem, in some states if both parties are over 18 there is no penalty (ie crime), so a son/daughter 18 or older can sleep with their biological parent with out any repercussions as far as the law is concerned. Of course the recent news last year about the Columbia professor having a 3 year affair with his daughter was interting in that even though the daughter was over 18, and consented, unlike her father she did not get charged with a crime.
Anyway, there is right and wrong, then there are the laws, and then there is how the prosecutors choose to apply them. So I don’t think it’s quibbling because it varies so much between each state / jurisdiction.
Now I don’t have to worry so much about being attracted to my cousins at the reunion! Thanks Dan!
I agree with both you (gayBoiNYC) and Dan that he should dump the mean woman. However I believe Dan pointed it out because he probably thinks it’s the reason WHY he’s putting up with the crap from her. Having been on both ends of this equation I agree with that assessment.
#37 and #185 are spot on about CPAS’s situation.
I have been there myself and thanks to Dan’s advice, I was able to DTMFA. I have a long way to go before life will be somewhat normal again, but I am grateful for the courage I got from SLOG to go through with what would have been unthinkable after a 20 year relationship, even if it was filled with torture. Heed the message, CPAS, you are worth it.
@120: If the Holy Bible said to jump off a cliff would you do it?
CPAS – seriously. DTMFBA (Dump the MF b*ch already). Don’t waste a decade of your life like I did. I’ll post my lawyer’s contact if you need it. It gets better – really.
You’ll find women who value you for who you are rather than finding a scratching post for the fire-ants in their brains based on what you’re not. You’ll find women who want to get naked and tactical with you just because they dig you. You’ll find a proud face in the mirror and never go back.
S
“Cousins getting together isn’t a squick overload? Since when?”
It doesn’t disturb me all that much, really. Marriage to cousins was quite common in the past, and is still fairly common in some parts of the world, like the middle east. I think the U.S. and Korea are two places that specially frown on cousin marriages, so maybe that’s why it seems like more of a “squick” factor here.
@186: It may be a squick overload for you, and make you emotionally shudder, but that’s not universal. It doesn’t bother me at all. And just because it squicks you doesn’t mean that cousins shouldn’t be attracted to each other or hook up. There’s nothing wrong with it and there is no reason to feel sorry for people who experience that. That’s like someone being squicked by gay sex and saying they feel sorry for gay people.
By the way, the Westermarck effect only applies to people you grew up in the same household with as a young child. Which in many cases does not include cousins.
Wow… I feel like both of you read the first thing I wrote and not the rest of it.
The fact that in America (and many other western, English speaking countries.. ie. the readership of this column) it is considered “gross” is exactly my point.
I was pointing out that it was weird for someone to use it as a metric for normalcy/acceptace when really, it’s IS pretty frowned upon (whether or not it’s taboo status is valid is up for debate and I actually argued myself that it WASN’T valid)
I must have been really unclear so…
1. I didn’t argue that cousins shouldn’t be attracted to eachother, or not hook up.
2. I didn’t say anything was wrong with it, I said that it personally grossed me out. Not unlike how scat grosses some people out.
3. I’m aware of how Westermark works, the example I gave was an absence of it… so… yeah.
Finally… I think it’s actually pretty ludicrous to compare homophobia with a fairly common revulsion towards the thought of fucking one’s cousin. Not really fair at all. If someone lives in a culture that’s okay with it, then I wouldn’t feel bad for them, but where I live? (Large, North American city) I imagine attraction to one’s cousin would bring up a lot of unpleasant shame/guilt stuff, and stigma if it was followed through on and etc. And I would feel bad that the mechanisms that prevent that kind of attraction didn’t kick in or weren’t triggered for WHATEVER resaon, because it would’ve saved them a lot of trouble.
@202: I think you’re wrong when you state that cousin relationships are “considered gross,” “frowned upon,” and “a fairly common revulsion” in the US. I think you’re confusing your own squick with common opinion.
And again, I don’t see how this is different than homophobia, or why it’s ludicrous to compare cousin marriage to someone who lived in a very homophobic area and grew up with a lot of shame and guilt around being gay.
You wrote: I feel sorry for people who fall through those inbreeding-protection loopholes and find themselves attracted to people who they shouldn’t. I misread that and thought you were referring to cousins. I realize now that you meant you think brothers and sisters shouldn’t be attracted.
I apologize for misreading, though I still don’t agree that people “shouldn’t” be attracted to siblings. They usually aren’t, and there are slightly increased genetic risks for any offspring they might have in some cases, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be attracted. There’s nothing objectively wrong with the attraction or having sex with a sibling. You could argue having kids might be wrong because of the genetic risks, though that’s true for a lot of unrelated couples as well (if both people have mental illness in their family, for instance).
Also, I don’t know what you mean about the mechanisms that prevent cousin attraction. As far as I know there aren’t any such mechanisms.
Man. I say one thing and everyone seems to hear another… so it’s probably my bad.
Okay, I used the word “shouldn’t” but I thought in the context of my post (which started off with what I thought was a clear statement that there’s nothing ethically wrong with it) it would be clear that I meant it was a cultural “shouldn’t” not a moral “shouldn’t”.
I guess it wasn’t.
So I’m going to try my first post again and hopefully it will be clearer.
1. I expressed surprise that people were using cousin hookups as a standard of normal, non-taboo sexuality.
Here are some cultural examples of cousin-mating being considered taboo/unnatural/gross/frowned-upon in popular/mainstream/western/modern culture:
-using “cousin fucking” as shorthand for hillbilly
-People making fun of royalty for being inbred.
– Ever watch Arrested Development? There was a huge, lengthy plotline centering around George Micheal’s attraction to Maebe and emphasising how taboo it is.
– a few weeks ago on the Daily Show, look up the clip with the disapproving man!
those are the first few that came to mind. I’m certain there’s more. In my personal experience, I only told a few select people about my cousin – all of them were HUGELY shocked and mortified. I did not respond that way to him. I was largely indifferent to the fact that he wanted to sleep with me. BUT if you asked me to envision having sex with a relative? I’d probably throw up in my mouth a little. Anyway, him and I are buds now.
2. I pointed out that it was not actually morally wrong, and that genetics suggest it’s not even wrong in the context of having children. And then mentioned, (I thought as an aside) that I personally found it really gross on a visceral level.
3. I then told a personal story where I had a first cousin express attraction towards me.
4. I said I felt sorry for people who slipoped through those loopholes. For example, adopted children who go on to have sexual relationships with their birth parents. I feel sorry for lots of circumstances – that doesn’t mean I think that person is “wrong” in some way. I feel bad if someone gets murdered or attacked for being gay. I feel bad for someone who ends up feeling attracted to someone because of circumstance and is perceived negatively for it.
Oh well.
Interesting that most people here assume CPAS is a guy.
@just noticing
oftentimes Dan gets more info in his emails than he shows in the versions he presents to us. The fact that he says “you fall somewhere between “Ron Jeremy” and “unconventionally attractive” on the male beauty spectrum.” suggests that he had some reason to believe the mailer was… male. 🙂
Cheers
@205: Thanks for explaining and clearing up my confusion. That makes sense now.
I understand what you mean about feeling sorry for the circumstances. I feel upset that there are idiots who stigmatize consensual incest, as well as idiots who stigmatize being LGBT. But I don’t feel bad that people have attractions to close relatives, any more than I feel bad for people for being gay. And I don’t think of it as a ‘loophole,’ because that view presupposes that there’s some sort of law or obstacle preventing genetic attraction that a few people can escape somehow. Hope you can understand my point of view.
You may be right that there are stereotypes about cousin sex in pop culture, unfortunately.
@Blackrose.
I agree that the attraction we have for someone is outside our control, whether it’s a brother, sister, cousin, parent, another person of the same sex, farm animal :-), inanimate object, etc, and that laws can not prevent who/what we are attracted to. Where my opinion differs from yours is how we choose to act on our attractions. Obviosuly for me, consensual incest is something that I find offensive/taboo, and yes, even disguisting. And yes, I think to act on this attraction is wrong, both morally and depending on the circumstance, legally. Again, I don’t think the fact that someone has this attaction is wrong. But what we feel and how we act on our feelings are two different things.
@209: Agreed we can’t control our attractions, but we can control what we do about them. And we have a duty to act in ethical ways. But that doesn’t mean acting in ways that people don’t find disgusting.
My problem is when people confuse what they find disgusting with what is actually morally wrong. Everyone’s got things that appeal to them or disgust them. But if you actually look at consensual incest, as much as it might disgust you, it’s not actually wrong. There’s no reason for it to be, unlike everything that is actually wrong like murder, theft, or rape. It doesn’t violate anyone’s rights and it doesn’t unfairly hurt anyone.
@Blackrose
I think it depends on the connotation you lend to “feel bad for”. I don’t pity the trait in and of itself, I feel bad for the circumstances surrounding it. And therefore, the person under those circumstances?
In terms of what I meant by loophole… I think under most “normal” circumstances, siblings aren’t attracted to eachother. Though it’s not “bad” for a sibling to be attracted to another (although I think you can agree that this CAN help lead to VERY bad situations which is suggested by your repeated emphasis on ‘consensual’) but it typically doesn’t happen when siblings grow up together. As is my understanding, anyway. Maybe that wasn’t the cleareset word either. Perhaps ‘hiccup’ would be more descriptive? I really don’t know. :/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngWI9-n9V…
@Blackrose
Yes, I agree that consensual incest is nothing like murder, theft, rape, child molestation. And yes, I find incest disguisting, but I also find it morally wrong, and I am not confusing the two.
@mydriasis
I can’t speak for blackrose, but for me the emphasis on saying “consensual incest” is so that it is clear I am talking about two people that “freely and willing agree” to engage in the sexual activity. Primarily so that it does not get confused or lumped in with the type of incest where the older sibling or parent forces it (rape) or does it when the second party is too young(child molestation / statutory rape)
@212 – why is it morally wrong? Who is it hurting?
@212
That is what I was implying, yes.
how about slutte?
Thanks for adding “Westermarck effect” to my vocabulary, but no one seems to have mentioned its most widespread occurrence.
The intensely socialist kibbutzim of Israel raised all the kids together, so they all were brothers and sisters. This was a problem when they reached pairing-off age. The solution was that the kibbutzim all sent their kids to the same beach in the summer (Eilat), and let nature take its course.
Thanks for adding “Westermarck effect” to my vocabulary, but no one seems to have mentioned its most widespread occurrence.
The intensely socialist kibbutzim of Israel raised all the kids together, so they all were brothers and sisters. This was a problem when they reached pairing-off age. The solution was that the kibbutzim all sent their kids to the same beach in the summer (Eilat), and let nature take its course.