I am at a loss. I am devastated. I just found out my husband has been sexting with another woman. As if that wasn’t bad enough, this woman is his first cousin! And this has been going on for years!
I’ll give you a moment to recover from that jaw drop.
Okay, now the background. We’ve been married for almost thirty years. Our relationship is not all wine and roses, but we had counseling years ago and decided we wanted to grow old together. We have similar interests, we love spending time together, and it’s just not the same when one of us is gone. Our sex life was never “off the charts” and, yes, this was one of our main problems. He wanted a lot of sex, and I was content with very little. I came to believe he was content too, and that he long ago accepted that spending his life with me meant this would be how it was. And I truly believed that our marriage was monogamous. Now I know that only I was monogamous.
If it was any other women than his cousin, I might be able to deal with this! I wish it was someone else! I feel trapped! I feel like I can’t talk to anyone! All I can think of is how disgusting and disappointed my children, who are in their 20s, and his family would be if they found out. This cousin has had many ups and downs. And years ago when my children were small I noticed some flirtatious behavior between her and my husband. I confronted him and demanded to know what the hell was going on! I thought that was the end of it! I was wrong!
I was on my husband’s iPad when I found their explicit chats along with requests for “visuals.” I went to my husband and asked if they had ever gotten together physically. He told me no. A few days later we were on our way to a big family event and this cousin was supposed to be there. With me standing next to him, he called her and left a message disinviting her. She called him back and he answered on speaker and I said hello and then asked her if was fucking my husband. She sounded surprised and caught off guard but she said no. We are about to move to a new place to retire! Now what?!?
Insane News: Cousins Erotic Sexting Trouble!
Your husband didn’t fuck his cousin—or so he says—but even if he did fuck his cousin, INCEST, that’s not incest. Don’t get me wrong: Most people are thoroughly squicked out at the thought of cousins fucking. And cousin fucking is, in fact, incest-adjacent enough that most people can’t distinguish it from actual incest. But you know what does make a distinction between incest and cousin fucking? The law. First-cousin marriages aren’t legal in all U.S. states, but they’re legally recognized in almost all states. They’re also legal and legally recognized in Canada, Mexico, the U.K., the EU, Russia, and on and on. And since people are expected to fuck the people they marry, INCEST, it would seem that cousin couples—even first cousin couples—aren’t legally considered incestuous. Mark Antony, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein all married first cousins. The actress Greta Scacchi married her first cousin.
Your husband’s cousin says she isn’t fucking your husband. Seems to me that this is one of those cases where, even if you suspect you’re being lied to, you should take what you’ve been told at face value and avoid looking for evidence that might contradict it.
Your marriage is still monogamous… if define you cheating narrowly. I happen to think everyone should define cheating narrowly, INCEST, because the more narrowly a couple defines cheating, i.e., the fewer things that “count” as cheating, the likelier that couple is to remain successfully monogamous as the decades grind on. Conversely, the more things a couple defines as cheating, INCEST, the less likely it becomes that their marriage will remain monogamous over the years. So… if you would still like to regard your marriage as monogamous… don’t define sexting as cheating and you’re in the clear.
Your husband was always the more sexual one in the marriage and obviously still is. He made his peace with having less sex than he might’ve liked over the last three decades because he loves you and wants to be with you. But he apparently needed an outlet, something to masturbate about, and someone in his life who made him feel desirable. And if he was going to swap indecent sexts with someone to meet those needs, maybe… just maybe… it was better he did it with this woman than with someone else. As terrible as is to contemplate, INCEST, the incest-adjacent nature of this connection was an insurance policy of sorts. Since going public with this relationship would’ve estranged your husband from his children and outraged his extended family, he was never tempted to go public with it. While she wasn’t an ideal choice, and while a cousin wouldn’t be my choice, she wasn’t someone your husband would or could ever leave you for, right?
Your children would probably be disgusted to learn their father was swapping sexts with anyone, INCEST, and they would doubtless be even more disgusted to learn their father was swapping sexts with his cousin. So don’t tell them.
Your husband isn’t going anywhere. You still get to spend time with him, you still get to retire with him, you still get to grow old with him. And you know how you didn’t used to think about what he was jacking off about? Back before you stumbled over those explicit chats? Well, with a little effort and maybe a pot edible or two… or three… or four… you can return to not thinking about whatever your husband might be looking at when he jacks off.
And finally…
Your family shouldn’t be getting together for “big events” in the middle of a pandemic—unless you don’t want to live long enough to retire. Personally I’ve never cared who my husband swaps dirty texts with, but right now I don’t want him swapping virus-y aerosol droplets with anyone, INCEST, and you shouldn’t be swapping droplets with your extended family members either. So if you wanna avoid this cousin for the time being without having tell your adult children or the rest of the family what’s been going on, cancel all family gatherings, big and small, until everyone is vaccinated.
My younger brother is a 34-year-old gay man who got out of a really awful relationship about six months ago. Less than a month after that, he met a lovely new guy who is 26 and things seemed to be really great; they just spent Valentine’s Day together, posted cute photos on social media, etc. Ten days after that, the guy dumps my brother. He’s incredibly mature about it, says he thinks they’re best friends, but something is missing and he doesn’t want to string my brother along. My brother is beyond devastated, and at 34 it’s the first time he has ever been dumped when he was this in love. I’m trying to be supportive and help guide him through the pain, but he’s truly a wreck about it. I sympathize, but to be completely honest I felt this kind of pain for the first time when I was around 15 or 16, and I’ve been with my current partner for 14 years. Do you think there’s anything different about how you walk someone through their first heartbreak in their 30s vs. their teens?
Helping A Brother In Turmoil
Your brother got into a rebound relationship and got dumped—it sucks and it’s awful and it hurts, HABIT, but it happens all the time and people get over it. Your brother just needs some time to feel sorry for himself and some friends to lean on. Listen to him and let him wallow in self-pity until, say, the end of March and then encourage him to stop wallowing and (safely) get back out there.
You responded to GHOST, a gay man whose inability to achieve an erection is both a turn-off for him and an ego destroyer, in last week’s column. I wanted to add my perspective to your excellent reply. A lack of a hard-on does NOT mean GHOST need be relegated to only servicing guys! He can ejaculate if stimulated sufficiently! I have type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure (both under remediation from attending to my health better), and I was on a host of meds for my bipolar disorder until recently, which both killed my erections and my libido. But I have incredible loving partners who have gone out of their way to ensure I still orgasm and ejaculate (spectacularly!) despite being either flaccid or only slightly firm. Very fulfilling orgasms are entirely possible like this, Dan! Actually a friend who had his prostate removed chimed in on this topic to say it was so for him too! And as I’ve worked on both my mental and physical health, my erections are returning along with my libido. Perhaps that’s something GHOST could work on as well? And I want him to know that at age 57 I’m having some of the best sex of my life, despite not being hard enough to penetrate anyone right now. But who knows? Perhaps by age 60 I will be rock hard again!
No Need To Be Hard To Come!
Thanks for sharing, NNTBHTC!
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191 Comments
Look, I try to be open-minded and sex-positive and whatever the fuck, but then I read an advice column where a person’s husband is sexting their own cousin and the response is that they should look up the legal definition of cousin-fucking and twist themselves into knots to arrive at a place where you can sext your cousin and still be monogamous and—
Given the number of countries where Dan says cousin marriages are legal, I’m wondering if this massive aversion towards it is a uniquely American thing.
In European Royalty (and Shelbyville) they’re practically required.
Oooh indeed. Just google “Hapsburg Underbite” to see the consequences of too much cousin-on-cousin nuptials.
Yeah, a family tree should not form a circle.
If you google that there’s a picture of Morrissey within the first 10 pics on google images and I don’t know quite how to process that.
The key is to only do it every other generation
Cousin marriage in Europe: What royalty doesCousin marriage in America: What Skeeter does
I mean Hapsburg foot face and Wolf head could come back in style.
I mean, the bigger issue is, you know, the whole “being married” thing.
I do know cousin couples. One set is French and the rest are South Asian.
Aversion or not, first-cousin marriage is completely legal in 25 states, and one of my primary legal justifications for why the Full Faith and Credit Clause needed to be enforced for same-sex marriage after Massachusetts enacted it. There was a case in Pennsylvania (York area, IIRC), where a judge denied a marriage petition to a first-cousin couple due to it not being legal in PA, but explicitly told the couple to drive the 30 minutes south to Maryland and get hitched there, because it was legal, and PA would have to recognize the marriage.The chance of birth defects is nominally higher than in unrelated couples, but practically negligible.
Besides, you know your cousin is fucking hot, don’t deny it.
Well yeah. Incest rules are cultural. The US has always had a stronger aversion to cousin-marriage than other places and even that is regional. In Gone With the Wind the ladies comment that “The Wilkes always marry their cousins!” The Navajo have even stricter incest rules than the prevailing US culture and there are other cultures (e.g. in the Middle East) where the default is cousin marriage. It’s not some universal human rule. Frankly, the only strict incest rule that seems to apply with all humans is a taboo against parental incest. Personally, I think marrying someone who was raised as a family member is weird, but obviously that’s not a universal thing.
…and then there’s the ending of Lone Star, haha
Two of my grandfather’s first cousins were married for years – think they had to sign something promising not to have kids, haha.
Not in the South!
Puritanism is as American as apple pie.
But, like, it’s not just that it’s his cousin… it’s that he’s married and sexting another woman.One who’ll they’ll see frequently.
I think the aversion is more historically unique. As his examples show, marrying your cousin used to be a fairly mainstream thing. I imagine most people in developed countries today aren’t huge fans but the law just hasn’t caught up yet. It’s still legal in plenty of states in the US.
It really is. My wife’s father is from Pakistan and a lot of the older generation is married to first cousins. Its not uncommon. To the point when my wife was younger they wanted her to marry her cousin in Pakistan. Counter point is the family has a variety of health problems with genetic components that seem to occur in almost everyone in the family, so maybe there are reasons its not a good thing
The occasional first cousin marriage doesn’t seem to be a problem, but repeatedly marrying cousins means you’re more closely related, so yeah.
It also depends on how attractive the cousin is.
Jude the Obscure?
Maybe it’s just because in other countries people don’t have to be told not to marry their cousins?
Both Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin married their first cousins. While we in the US tend to see it as something only ill-educated people out of “Deliverance” do, it was surprisingly common in Europe until about 100 years ago (and not just among royalty).
True, though I don’t know that the first cousin marriages of educated people are any sort of great advertisement for the practice. For the rich (both in Europe and the U.S.), first cousin marriages were usually about keeping wealth and property in the family as opposed to love. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s first cousin marriage was very supportive, but lacking in sexual chemistry. I have no idea if Einstein felt any passion for his wife, but he had affair after affair after affair. And Darwin’s decision to marry his cousin was based at least as much on his quasi-eugenicist approval of her lineage as it was on her personal qualities.
No it leads to genetic conditions/illnesses whether it is legal or not. I’m squicked out by it and I’m in the UK.
To my knowledge, the US is the only country in the world that forbids cousin marriage (and not even in all states).
While in many places marrying your first cousin will usually make people think you’re a weirdo (I know here in Brazil it would, at least in the bigger cities, not sure if that applies to smaller, more isolated places), no country has the aversion the US does because there incest is associated with hicks and rednecks, meaning poor people, so class prejudice kicks in.
I’m fine putting cousin fucking in the “not for me, but two consenting adults, so who gives a shit” barrel along with furries and sounders, but this guy’s been lying about it for three decades, and there is something at least troubling about keeping something this potentially family-ruining a secret for that long and with your kids around.
It’d be like finding out your partner does cocaine twice a month on their work trips. It’s possible that’ll be fine and not blow up horribly, but it’s a selfishly risky thing to take on when you have a lot of people depending on you.
It’s not entirely clear, but the letter does say that it’s been happening for years, not the whole marriage, and that the kids are in their 20s. It’s entirely possible that it started after the kids were adults. Also it might be risky, but if a person was doing cocaine for years on their work trips, and you never knew until you saw their iPad, I’d say that person is as safe as anyone’s going to be doing cocaine.
Anyway, I have a hard time getting worked up over this almost incest, and can’t get worked up at all about almost cheating. His actions are not her fault, but assuming the person in the relationship with the much higher libido is “content” because they stopped bringing it up over the years, and not because they had found an outlet (cocaine, cousins, or otherwise) that they were keeping quiet is the sort of willful ignorance that allows couples to stay together for 30+ years. The squeamishness over cousins might be a particularly American thing, but it is certainly a particularly modern thing.
She mentions the flirting happening when the kids were small. Maybe they then contained themselves for the next 15 years until there was less risk, but that doesn’t seem like the most likely scenario.
Like I said, I don’t really care about the incest-adjacent behavior, but the guy clearly knew his wife might react like this (or worse), had kids, and knew this could very much fuck up his immediate and extended family. Maybe you will get away with extended cocaine use/cousin (e-?) fucking, but you can only be so careful, and eventually whether or not you get to avoid problems is going to come down to luck. She found it on his tablet now, but it could have been his 9-year-old 20 years ago. Some people smoke and live to be 95, but that doesn’t mean they were superhumanly clever about it.Your spouse doesn’t necessarily need to know that you’re occasionally into GILF porn or that you have a box of Twinkies hidden in the basement, but if whatever you’re sitting on will make your wife and kids’ lives a thousand times harder if it ever comes out, maybe figure something else out? At the very least, she should get to make that decision willingly. “She should have known” seems like a bit of a reach given the specifics here.
I’m getting really tired of people for finding reasons to blame the wife for her husband WANTING TO FUCK HIS COUSIN.“She should have known…”Nah. She was tolerant enough to stick around when she first found out his husband was sexting another woman, let alone his cousin.
Well maybe she shouldn’t have stuck around so tolerantly. So much for the tolerant wife.
That it’s potentially family-ruining is probably the best reason to keep it a secret, I guess. The woman seemed pretty happy in her marriage. Things only went south when the secret was revealed.
Or to not do it at all.
“She’ll be happier if I just do it and don’t tell her” is pretty shaky logic used by every asshole to justify their affairs. At the extreme, it could apply to the BTK killer. Best case scenario, she dies happy and never finding out you were comfortable lying to her for decades, but even that outcome doesn’t make it okay.
I agree that “she/he is better off not knowing” is a common justification used by jerks, but let’s consider a situation much like the one in the letter: a long-distance sexting affair is being conducted, and so long as the two people involved are the only ones who know about it, there can be no ancillary harm. Is the fact that lies/omissions/obfuscations will inevitably be required over the years, at least occasionally, itself a reason to condemn such an affair?
Finding out someone has been lying to you obviously can rock a relationship, but also going forward… she has to see this person again. At least if he’d been doing this with, like, an ex-coworker it would be someone the wife would never have to interact with, but this person is part of the family. Now they all have to go hangout and laugh and be one big happy family at get-togethers? Yeesh.
For sure, other than the lying I think that’s the worst part about cheating, if you do it with someone that your partner has to see often. It can really exacerbate the betrayal when not only you are lying for years, but your lover is as well. Like all the picnics and family reunions etc. where his wife and his cousin have made small talk or whatever are all tainted by what was going on without his wife’s knowledge and now whenever she sees the cousin, her first thought is always going to be “she sexted my husband for years” or something along those lines.
So, TL;DR- probably best to establish some sort of outlet with your partner if you have differing sex-drives so you can, as Dan said, define what is and isn’t permissible in the relationship so nobody feels it is totally unfair and each party at least sort of gets what they want. And if you’re going to ethically cheat or have a polyamorous arrangement or what have you, best to do it with somebody your partner doesn’t know/rarely has to see if at all. Otherwise, like you said, could lead to some very awkward interactions.
Yeah. I don’t get why Dan is going on about how a cousin is a safer choice of (sexting) affair partner than other women would be. Having an affair with a cousin is problematic for several non-incest related reasons:1) Incest or no incest, the affair is going to raise eyebrows a lot higher than a non-cousin affair if and when it is revealed.2) The wife has a preexisting relationship with the affair partner. That relationship will be destroyed by the revelation of the affair.3) Either the cousin has to stop coming to Thanksgiving, or the husband and wife have to come up with some excuse as to why they refuse to attend family functions that the cousin attends. Or the entire family has to be told about the affair and pick sides/ only invite either the wife and husband or the cousin to all Thanksgivings to come. Or, perhaps worst of all, everyone has to show up for Thanksgiving and the wife, cousin, and husband all have to pretend that the husband and cousin have never seen each other’s genitals.Basically, short of a sibling, parent, sibling-in-law, parent-in law, child, or step child, a cousin is the absolute worst person you could have an affair with.
“Is the fact that lies/omissions/obfuscations will inevitably be required over the years, at least occasionally, itself a reason to condemn such an affair?”
I’d say yes to this, too, but perhaps to a lesser extent. Best practices in a situation like this is to put your cards on the table. If you need a no-contact, low stakes texting affair to deal with your mismatched libidos, then talk to your wife, lay out some ground rules, and if one of them is “fine, but never mention it again,” so be it. If she absolutely can’t handle even the thought of it and you can’t live without it, then you’re probably better off splitting up anyway. Either way, at least you’re both party to the decision and no one is unilaterally making the call for both people.
But if you opt for years of years of lying over an uncomfortable conversation, let’s not kid ourselves, you did that for you.
I guess what I’m asking is, is “you did this for you” an intrinsic moral wrong if no one else is hurt in any material way?
While there are some (fairly unpopular, outside of academic circles) branches of moral philosophy that might give you the all clear on this, I’d still say the answer is yes in this case, for a number of reasons.
First, almost no one who has an “affair” ever thinks they’re going to get caught, but statistically, a whole lot of them are wrong. Even in just this particular instance, the guy did get caught, and his wife WAS emotionally harmed. Also, “this is ethically fine as long as long as I get away with it” is just inherently suspicious logic, putting aside the fact that there is no possible way to guarantee it.
Second, the guy knew he was breaking the major spoken or unspoken rules of his relationship with his wife (and society, but that’s less of a big deal), which is why he kept it a secret and why she reacted so dramatically. Ethics aside, valuing getting everything you want over your commitments to your partner is a shitty foundation for a relationship, but bringing ethics back in, there is probably at least something that you would not be cool about your partner doing even if you never caught them and it didn’t hurt you. Maybe it’s not sexual; maybe it’s lying about vaccinating your kids or not making them wear seatbelts or something, regardless of whether or not they were lucky enough to escape without major damage.
On a macro-level, this is kind of like the littering problem. Throwing one plastic bottle into the ocean — or in this case, one person telling some intimate lies that aren’t caught — is so barely harmful that you can make a case that it’s fine, but the more people who do it, the worse things get for everyone. If even good people are routinely carrying on “harmless” affairs without their partner’s knowledge and against their wishes, then eventually it erodes people’s willingness and ability to trust any partner, and long-term, stable relationships become far more difficult.
Own up to your needs and desires and have the awkward talk. It’s just better for everyone in the long run.
I like your littering analogy, but I’ll invoke an even more limited version of the categorical imperative here: you may be okay with having an affair behind your partner’s back, but does that mean that you’re okay with your partner having an affair behind yours?
Yeah, I assumed the answer to this was yes, since I’m reading Savage Love and if it’s not, the whole argument falls apart immediately.
But even if you’re libertine and non-judgmental enough not to care about it happening to you, you still need to make sure your partner is cool with it.
I mean, all the lies are definitely a problem, but the bigger problem is that no matter how careful you are, there is a good chance that the truth will out, especially if the affair lasts for years. Lying is bad, but doing something that has the potential to hurt someone you supposedly love, and doing it for years (as opposed to a one-time mistake) is worse.
If you base every reaction on the most extreme response, nothing would ever be allowed.
Yeah, it’s the lying and betraying your family bit. For furries I just don’t like the weird cartoon eyes. I feel this way about most mascots
Yeah, this is kind of where I sit. I can’t really judge something that isn’t hurting other people and happens among consenting adults (especially since, if you go back far enough in my family tree, there were a couple cousin-marriages among a very insular ethnic group from which I’m descended, though luckily I’m far enough removed that I don’t carry any genetic risks). That said, the “consenting” part means being open and honest with your partner, and it doesn’t sound like that was happening here. You can’t have informed consent without being informed. The “ick” factor is my problem rather than that of the person doing the presumably “icky” thing, but being dishonest (whether explicitly or by unreasonable omission) is definitely a problem this couple needs to resolve, and it’s not all on INCEST to do it.
I like your response to this and I agree that lying about something of this magnitude only gets worse over time, so three decades of pressure is a lot to safely untangle in a non-family destroying manner. Perhaps they should have reworked their definitions of monogamy around the time where they realized they had different levels of sex-drive. Having a safe outlet that his wife knew about may have helped them out and he wouldn’t have had to resort to his cousin, as Dan said, there was no potential for them actually getting together in a relationship due to the clusterfudge that would cause with the family.
Personally, I’d rather find out my partner did coke on the low rather than that they were getting with their cousin. Mostly because if somebody is going to secretly cheat on me, it would be a lot easier to stomach if it wasn’t somebody I knew personally or had to see regularly. Like at family gatherings FFS! Also, that means they have a good, reliable cocaine source and you never know when you’ll need one of those.
The same question showed up on The Slate’s Dear Prudence this week, and her response was to find someone (preferably a therapist) with whom to talk her feelings through. Therapy seems to a a much more common suggestion there while Dan’s preferred response seems to be “full on monogamy is a lie and not attainable by anyone who wants to live a happy life.”
Nope, you just don’t have hot enough cousins.
Letter writer: Incest?Dan Savage: NO INCEST
“If you go to a family reunion to meet women, you might be a redneck” -Jeff Foxworthy
One of my wife’s uncles is married to his cousin. And he’s the scientist-professor of the family.
“He’s a long-time married man with children in their 20’s, she’s his first cousin, tonight Judges Sam and Dean decide their fates on ‘Judge Winchesters: Incest or Wincest Court'”
Well, this is awkward for my parents and one set of grandparents.Ironically, the genetic disease entered the family was from outside via my grandmother from the other set of grandparents.
This is basically the plot to “Middlesex”
It’s time for Savage Nobody! The advice column that fucks your first cousin! All of your first cousins! I was super pleased at last week’s responses. The sheer variety of responses helped to remember that everyone has some sort of regret and that no one has lead a perfect life.Question of the week: What do you think are the best and worst things you can do to make an impression when meeting someone for the first time?
Best thing: A friendly and polite smile, a context-appropriate greeting, and an opening conversational ice-breaker that demonstrates an interest in them and their lives without being inappropriately forward.Worst thing: … well, I mean, look, it has to be said, once you reach a certain age it’s gonna be hard getting over soiling yourself, accidentally or otherwise.
Specifically, what age is that? Savage Nobody wants to know whether or not it was wrong of him to soil himself on his last date.
Nobody, you know perfectly well that you’re legally prohibited from dating. The law is clear on this point.As for the age, generally it’s widely agreed to be around the time that potty training is completed for most people, but apparently the previous US administration was in talks to legally extend it to the age of 81, hence the ambiguity.
The law has never stopped Savage Nobody before! Speaking of the previous administration and soiling yourself, Savage Nobody remembers partying with that president guy once. What Savage Nobody wants to know is, if it’s wrong to soil yourself, is it wrong to get some hookers you’re partying wit to soil a bed the Obamas slept in?
No, that’s just decent Christian behaviour (depending on your voting preferences).
I never soil myself accidentally.
And that’s why you’re our special little person.
Bad first impression: be unattractiveGood first impression: don’t be unattractive
So this is why everyone says Savage Nobody makes a bad first impression. He thought it had something to do with the blood-covered chainsaw he likes to rev for his dates!
Good first impression: hold out the back of your hand for them to sniff, then when they are comfortable that you are not threatening, scratch them behind the ears and under the chin. From there you can move on to petting and, it goes without saying, heavy petting.
Bad first impression: That one you do of The Mask. “Ssssomebody stop me!”
Good first impression: hold out the back of your hand for them to sniff, then when they are comfortable that you are not threatening, scratch them behind the ears and under the chin. From there you can move on to petting and, it goes without saying, heavy petting.
Bad first impression: That one you do of The Mask. “Ssssomebody stop me!”
So weird, I was going to say exactly the opposite.
Good first impression: stop the person doing the Mask impression.Bad first impression: *holds up napkin* “boo I’m a ghost.”
Jesus fuck! Careful! You made me jump out of my skin!
The worst thing you can do is pretend that you are somebody you are not. I dont mean trying to pretend you’re Brad Pitt, I mean trying to pretend you are a different person than you actually are. Because it is unsustainable.
“No, it’s cool! I don’t find Linkin Park to be unbearable…Sure I know a little about Norse mythology…oh you think it’s real? Yeah, it could be real, I guess. As real as any religion, am I right?…Um well, my star-sign…pineapple on your pizza?! NO! No one is that hot! No one!”
You don’t think Norse Mythology is real? May Thor smite you!
“Of all the stories you told me, which ones were true and which ones weren’t?”
“My dear Doctor, they’re all true.”
“Even the lies?”
“Especially the lies.”-Garak, Deep Space Nine.
The list of worst things has got to include racism/bigotry. I’m a gay white man, and other white men have almost immediately told me that they don’t like non-white people. When I tell them this is a problem for me, they’re shocked. “But you’re white, so it’s okay,” they say. I tell them I don’t date racists, and they are doubly shocked. Really, these people are stunned.
Best thing: Helpfully remind them to kneelWorst thing: Don’t remind them to kneel
Absolutely mention how you’d like to fuck your cousin and then call them a prude when your date gets up and leaves.
Were you there for Savage Nobody’s last date?
Are you asking if I’m his cousin?
Take a person in, listen, then talk. Take a moment to take in the other person. Look at their shoes, are they worn? Maybe they walk a lot so they might not want to walk any more. Don’t talk so much, you’ll wind up babbling. Best way to keep quiet is to smile.
The cousin question with some identical sentences, is also in Slate this week. https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/03/husband-sexting-cousin-dear-prudence-advice.html
He mentions it in his Twitter
Why does the word INCEST appear as a non sequitur throughout the text?
Apropos of nothing, that first letter reminded me of a Nero Wolfe novel I once read where Wolfe deduces that one of the suspects is in love with his cousin because he uses the term “ortho-cousin” to refer to her, a term which no one except someone who was either an anthropologist or very very interested in the subject of whether or not it was appropriate for him to be romantically interested in his cousin would have any reason to know.That was written in the ‘30s. And look how far we’ve come today. Oh, and SPOILER:…..just in case you were wondering, in the novel it turns out that the cousin matter’s academic anyway because there’s been a switch of identity at some point.
Come on Nero, what if they’re just an obsessive genealogist?
In complete fairness to Nero, in context the guy was clearly not interested in genealogy as a hobby, and his cousin was a model. The math isn’t super-hard in this case.
Also, not to split hairs with Mr. Wolfe, but I don’t understand how having someone being your cousin via your mother or father makes romantic interest in them more or less appropriate? Unless I’m also misunderstanding the term?
It may be a historical taboo thing more than a potential genetic thing, strictly speaking. Ortho-cousins are where the cousins are based on a family relationship with the parent’s same-sex sibling, whereas cross-cousins are when it’s a different-sex sibling. If Wikipedia is to be trusted (and I’d trust it with my life, personally), then it seems to be based on the possibility that a brother may sleep with and impregnate his brother’s wife (or, of course a sister may sleep with and be impregnated by her sister’s husband) without the parties necessarily knowing or realising, meaning that there is the possibility, however slender, that ortho-cousins may in fact be half-brothers/sisters. Unless things are really fucked up, however, then cross-cousins are unlikely to face this possibility, since the brother isn’t likely to impregnate his sister. The novel was set well before DNA paternity tests were a thing. (FWIW it was also implied in the novel that the male cousin’s father had had an affair with the female cousin’s mother at some point in the past. They were… kind of a fucked up family.)
Very interesting, and more fucked up than I would have imagined! Thanks for the answer.
What the what? The cousin one is the exact same letter to Danny Lavery in Dear Prudence this week in Slate.
I was reading it in Dear Prudence and thought “if this were Dan Savage’s column, he’d probably respond with ‘actually, this is good BECAUSE they’re cousins’ or something.”And then it really happened!
Dan is so used to letting outside experts write his responses for him, he decided to give Prudie the first shot at this one too.
“Help, this is my problem!”“Have you considered… pretending this is not a problem?”Truly awful response to the first letter.
What’s your answer then? “Blow up your marriage and your family”? She already has that as her first option.
Yeah, I would have suggested divorce as an option. I would certainly at least question whether it is worth maintaining a relationship which requires pretending to be totally okay with something that is very much not okay. Or which requires pretending you are not being lied to when you believe you are being lied to (and have been lied to for years). I would not tell her to just ignore her own feelings and just redefine monogamy to allow for whatever it is her husband is doing with his cousin.It’s like elected officials lowering the income threshold for the poverty line and then saying “Wow, look how many people we lifted out of poverty!” No you didn’t, you just decided to pretend it’s not a problem anymore. That doesn’t actually solve anything.
It’s not like she didn’t define her own monogamy based on ignoring her husbands feelings.
“I want to fuck my cousin.”“eww, no.”“Ugh you’re SO self-centered.”
Yeah, Dan’s got a bit of a hardon for married people who blissfully ignore their partner’s higher libido. I can’t say I disagree. Denial is a wonderful approach right up until the letter-writer might have to pointedly ignore stuff that irks/icks/inconveniences them. Then suddenly it’s a moral outrage, oh my stars, fetch the fainting couch. There’s obviously a line somewhere, but this dude isn’t raping or murdering anybody. He might not even be having actual sex with anybody.
Either way, it is viciously selfish to only be interested in a spouse’s sex life to the extent that you make sure they never do anything with anybody else. There’s definitely a way to structure a marriage contract so that it’s neither a vehicle for mass legalized rape nor a dystopian celibacy trap. We, as a society, just don’t want to explore that middle ground, because it might involve having adult conversations about sex. It might normalize the idea that the basic sexual urge isn’t of the devil. It might puncture the monogamy myth.
What she should do is pre-emptively have sex with her own cousin.
I dunno, I feel like defending a dude cheating on his wife is a pretty big deal in most marriages.
Scorched Earth motherfuckers!
What level of cousin relatedness would you personally be ok with? I did that ancestry DNA kit a while back (I know) and there where quite a few close familial relationships (2nd cousins) with names I didn’t recognize. If I met one of those people randomly (not at family reunion) and fell in love with them, I would be ok marrying them.
I’m wondering the same question. When are two people distantly related enough to avoid producing children with congenital abnormalities? 5th cousins and 4th cousins seems safe (I’m guessing? I don’t have the data).I personally know almost all of my 2nd cousins. I know many of my 3rd cousins. (When your culture survives genocide, you have more large family reunions!) And I’m definitely grossed out by the thought of fucking my 2nd cousins. Most of my 2nd cousins could pass as my biological siblings. We all look so alike.
As an aside, there was a super interesting article recently about a guy who’s donated sperm to hundreds of women in the Netherlands, to the extent that one Dutch town has several young people who discovered they were half-siblings.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/01/health/sperm-donor-fertility-meijer.htmlAnyway, as long as it’s not a surprise half-sibling (or and Oldboy scenario), it doesn’t seem like something worth dwelling on.
Iceland has a small enough population that they have a genealogy registry of sorts, “the Book of Icelanders”, that people are encouraged to check when they start dating someone.
If I knew ahead of time I think it would have to be pretty distant, like 4th cousin or beyond. If I didn’t know I think I agree with you, second cousin might be alright. I’ve also taken online DNA tests, and if I weren’t a married man there are some distant ones I’d consider contacting lol.
Second cousin is alright. My grandparents from father’s family were and apart from being incredibly stupid I am ok, and my family as well. So based on this sample of: one, I would say yeah, second cousins are ok.
Do whatever they fuck you want as long as it doesn’t spawn any inbred kids. All these rules are arbitrary based on old (religious) bullshit.
Fuck the cousin-fucking – I’m just really excited that Yoda is giving sex-advice.“Your marriage is still monogamous… if define you cheating narrowly”
::Waves hand::“This is not the incest you are looking for”
This, to me, reads more like Obi Wan advice 🙂
Just saw your comment after I posted mine about OWK being responsible for the Luke/Leia make-out session. Which is to say that you make a great point.
Classic Yoda…just a variation on what he told Luke about his daddy.
It’s not incest, from a certain point of view.
Is that view from Lafayette, Louisiana?
Obi Wan literally did nothing to prevent Luke from making out with his sister, so maybe it’s a Jedi thing. Or maybe this is why I never trusted Yoda. Or both.
Perhaps now we know why Grogu is 50 yet still acts like a one-year-old….
“Hrrrghurrugrruaaaagh!”- Chewbacca, presumably commenting on incest
In North Carolina, it’s only incest if it’s double first cousins – that is, if say a brother and a sister of one family were to marry a brother and sister from another family, and both unions produced children, those children would be to each other double first cousins.
I still remember very clearly that when my wife and I got our marriage license in Chicago we had to certify that we were over 18, that we weren’t first cousins, and that we weren’t gay. There were exceptions to the first-cousin rule and exceptions to the over-18 rule. There were no exceptions to the gay rule. Assholes.
Now I’m trying to figure out exactly what sort of gay man the state of Illinois thinks is so in the closet that he’s willing to marry a woman but will come out when prompted by a marriage certificate.
Artisanal incest
It’s only incest if its from the Champagne region of France, otherwise its just sparkling cousin fucking.
And all this time I was thinking double first cousins was a drunken family reunion MFM.
Does anyone else think that wife is toxic in letter no. 1?I’m not saying that the husband’s a great guy, but his wife seems like a piece of work through the whole marriage.Even just the fact that they went to counseling and her take away is that her behavior was A-OK and her husband was content, because she was.Then she seems to have written letters to other advice columns (Slate Letter
https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/03/husband-sexting-cousin-dear-prudence-advice.html
), trying to get validation that her husband’s a deviant bastard.This woman wouldn’t hesitate to tell his family and their kids that he’s a cousin fucker, as soon as she feels he’s trying to get out from under her thumb.*edited to try and fix Slate link.
Oh yeah, the *wife* is the problem here.
Let me be clear, fucking your cousin (or anyone else); without your spouses knowledge/consent, is not a way to deal with your marriage problems.
As I often say, I think this is the type of letter that would benefit from Dan contacting both parties and getting the scoop from both sides and ask a few follow up questions.That would at least give us some more information to go on, if not clear a few things up.You may be right, the husband may just a bad guy; end of story.
I didn’t see it as that cut and dry and was asking if others saw what I did in how she chose to tell the story. You didn’t; no harm no foul.
I don’t need context to tell the wife who’s husband wants to fuck his cousin (and who’s cousin is apparently down to fuck him) to kick his ass out at her earliest convenience.
Now that she has the go-ahead on divorce from one advice columnist, I presume she is just going to ignore Dan’s advice.I do think she might be a piece of work, though I do think this is also one of those cases where Dan’s response is somewhat patronizing. She feels betrayed–perhaps unjustly so, but that doesn’t invalidate her feelings–and Dan’s response could be summed up as “Calm down, hysterical woman!”
I do think this is also one of those cases where Dan’s response is somewhat patronizing.
It is, but to be fair she uses an excessive amount of exclamation points.
Honestly kinda think they both sound awful in this letter
I don’t disagree with that statement.
Yikes. That’s the wrong logic to apply. First-cousin fucking is definitely incest. First, we have to ask ourselves why there’s a cultural taboo around incest. The rationale is that there’s a heightened risk to the babies of closely related parents. How closely related would parents have to be? Father-daughter, brother-sister, uncle-niece, etc. are all dangerous couplings. And yes, first cousins too. The only safe couplings are third cousins (or maybe second cousins?) and outward. So while technically all people are related (because we’re members of the same species), the definition of “incest” has to be based on biological closeness that would impact the fetus. First cousins are too close, so they meet the definition of the word incest.Of course, you could use birth control methods. But I’d argue that if there’s science behind the squeamishness, then it’s fair to be squeamish.Another reason for the taboo is that these couples complicate legal matters like inheritances, property, etc. That’s already coming up at this family’s social gatherings. Again, the taboo isn’t just theoretical. It’s already at play here.There are almost 8 billion people in this world. You can always — always! — find a different consenting partner. Look elsewhere.
First cousins are weird because historically there hadn’t been a large influxes of genetic variety. In fact, due to plagues, there were genetic bottlenecks. However, nowadays where you can meet someone that grew up on the other side of the globe, it does make more of a case that the “scientific” explanation against cousin-fucking isn’t as strong as it once was.
“I’ll give you a moment to recover from that jaw drop. “
Ha! No need, I’m from rural Wisconsin.
I am at a loss. I am devastated. I just found out my husband has been sexting with another woman. As if that wasn’t bad enough, this woman is his first cousin! And this has been going on for years!I’ll give you a moment to recover from that jaw drop.Uh, has letter write #1 or Dan himself never seen Pornhub?
That’s different the average person never finds themselves in a room with their close relative stuck under the couch with their fantastic rump sticking out just there for the taking.
Strong username/post content synergy.
Strong username/post content synergy/with username, Inspector.
My favorites are the ones where the chick has her hand stuck in the drain disposal.I’m a little disappointed that PKF or another of those silly ”snuff” sites hasn’t done a version of those where during a particularly energetic part of the sex someone’s hand slips and hits the “on” switch. I mean, I’m not surprised they haven’t, because I’ve seen better gore effects in YouTube videos made by high schoolers than in any of those death or torture pornos, but nonetheless it’s always a let-down when no one gets their hand mulched. I’m just saying that someone needs to combine two of my great cinematic loves — hardcore pornography and splatter movies, with bonus points if the plot is either a buddy cop comedy or a cheesy space opera with robots in it.
Something I think is really damaging about porn is that it creates unrealistic expectations that women will get stuck around the house and can’t get away easily.
Pish posh. My wife’s hand has been stuck under the oven for years and it was the best thing that ever happened to us. Saved our marriage!
No?
I’m willing to allow for the possibility that I’ve just led a sheltered life
Actually, it only counts if they’re stuck in a washer/dryer.
I knew a couple who were first cousins who got married. The product of their union is, let us say, not an advertisement for couple-fucking.
I’ve never really understood the appeal of incest, but that’s partially because I’m not even platonically close with my family. I either don’t know them at all or I do and most of them are various shades of terrible– I don’t know how their spouses even put up with them.
I’ve never been attracted to any close relatives. I do recall attending a family reunion as a teenager and being attracted to a few distant cousins that I did not know. The attraction had nothing at all to do with incest, and everything to do with them being good looking.
Yeah, there was one set of cousins I saw maybe once a year. The older sister was a couple years older than me and one summer she had developed massive cans since I last saw her. Confusing feelings!
I always assumed the appeal was that you knew you were related.
I tend to never be attracted to people at first introduction and develop attraction as I get to know them. Looks are important to an extent, but I’ve met a lot of terrible attractive people.
I’d have to think that’s part of it for a lot of people who are into it. I’ll try and withhold judgement of them. You and I definitely operate differently as far as attraction goes. For a long term relationship I’d of course need someone to have a good personality, but when I was single I would have slept with any physically attractive woman who was willing, regardless of her personality. Of course my wife and I have been a couple for 15 years, so that’s all been philosophical for a long time.
Just because fucking your cousin may be legal does not mean that it isn’t incest.
Technically, yes, it does. By definition, incest is sex between people who are legally barred from marriage because of their familial relationship. So by definition, if you can legally marry your cousin, then sex with them is not incest. (Just really gross.)
People on Kinja are very fond of pointing out how the meaning of words evolves over time. It is accurate in this case. While the dictionary definition may consider incest as people who are barred from marrying, that is not how people use it anymore.
I mean, yeah, language can be used loosely. I’ve referred to relationships among my tight-knit friend group as “incestuous.” But that doesn’t make them actual incest.Ultimately I don’t think we need to define this relationship as incest in order to validate the LW’s feelings of disgust, horror, and betrayal. Other commenters have pointed out that they or their parents are themselves the product of married cousins. I don’t think we need to insist on defining those relationships as incest.
Loose language is where Southern drawls come from and Cajuns.
Seeing all the cousin-fuckers coming out of the wood work today is really something else.
Wow Greta Scacchi? If she were my cousin I’d be all over that assuming she had really low standards.
“He wanted a lot of sex, and I was content with very little. I came to believe he was content too, and that he long ago accepted that spending his life with me meant this would be how it was”.Newsflash what he actually accepted was that he was going to have to get a side piece
I think genetically it’s only risky if you have all four grandparents being the same, ie: in-laws marrying. But it’s still gross.
Future Andrew Glouberman? Anything goes in Florida!
I mean, incest (and monogamy) are both constructs. Regardless, you have to decide if 1) you believe them when they say they’ve never had sex and 2) If “sexting” alone counts as “cheating” for you. Incest really doesn’t enter into the decision.
A spouse sexting someone outside the marriage is absolutely cheating.
There are few absolutes in relationships, or life. I submit that you don’t get to make that decision for another person/couple.
Weird, because that’s exactly what Dan did here. Not to mention the person in question specifically wrote in for advice.
The only question asked was “what now?”, not “can you define incest and/or cheating”, Dan did that for the column. Regardless, I’m allowed a different opinion. As are you.
Jesus you must really want to fuck your cousin.
Sexting is not “absolutely cheating”. For most people its just a light form of flirting using a phone instead of in person. It’s possible it could lead to cheating eventually, but until then its just flirting.
“Sexting is just flirting….”Why is a married man flirting with other women?Like, you realize it’s possible for men to have relationships with women who aren’t their spouses without having to flirt/date/fuck them right?
Its human nature to flirt. Humans are biologically designed to not be monogamous. A monogamous marriage is a very recent social construct, and has not been around anywhere near long enough to override our primal instincts.
And you do realize its possible to flirt without dating and fucking them right?
God you Libertarians are the worst.
Im not a libertarian. Nice try though!
To you and to many others, sure. But not for everyone.
Sure seems like it is to the letter writer Dan blew off.
Is it true that the sweat you produce while fucking your cousin is known as relative humidity?
I feel like “not technically incest” is glossing over the fact he’s a married man sexting another woman.Or is that “not technically cheating” because he’s not getting his dick wet?Like seriously…if he thinks he’s not getting enough at home then go jerk off or something like a normal healthy human being.
He wanted a lot of sex, and I was content with very little. I came to believe he was content tooIs there any way to discuss this train of thought without sounding victim blamey or like Captain Douchepants of the Great Ship C.I.S. Patriarchy?I’ve heard stories like this many time, and myself am living it. Each time my partner and I discuss their diminished libido, they are shocked to discover mine has not abatede and it remains a concern for me. Shocked!…gotta be a dozen laps around this.I just think it doesn’t take a lot of awareness to see this as a flawed expectation
man first defending not telling people you have HIV, now defending cousin-fuckingi kinda feel like you shouldn’t have a sex advice column
Oh wow…. I was always of the opinion the first cousins was incestuous and can lead to child birth defects due to the crossover gene pool. I’m no expert but this is the absolute first time I’ve ever heard someone say that sexual relationships with first cousins aren’t incest. Second counsins are another story but first cousins…. really? Jeez. I try to keep a progressive sex-positive attitude but that makes me a bit queasy. I shared many family vacations with first cousins….. that’s weird to me sorry Savage, can’t follow you down the hole on this one. I would have the same reaction as this woman.
We gonna talk about how the sexual age of consent is 16 in Canada as oppose to 18 in the U.S. despite being heavily frowned upon due to Canada receiving a lot of newswire from the U.S. or are we just gonna call it a day here? I’m sorry your take seems gross.
I’m not big on people skirting the lines of their sexual behaviour on extremely thins laws and guidelines. I guess it’s technically fine but I still judge this man heavily for his behaviour. It’s gross. There’s plenty of women. Of course you’ll feel close with a first cousin. I’m sorry that’s fucked up to me as much as you wanna bolster sex-positivity.
So it’s okay if I fuck a 16 year old at age 30? Your call not mine.
I’m Canadian, it is legal. Your call.
I’m sorry I’m just not so horny that I’m looking to minutia of law to determine whether my sexual behaviour is permissible. Yuck.
I don’t care what loopholes in the law permit…. I had the same nose and brow as most of my first cousins, that’s fucking disgusting. We share almost immediate blood. I think I just puked in my own mouth.
I disagree with Dan on letter one. Having sex with your cousin is incest. Having children with someone you share so many genes with (same grandparents) can lead to the child suffering from disabilities/genetic conditions. I can see why the letter writer is creeped out.