You’re Even Hotter Than Your Sister

Who just happens to be my wife. But, hey, don’t let that put you off! Anne Sexton reflects on what happens when people keep it in the family – to too great an extent!

Anne Sexton, 21 Jun 2012

About halfway through the evening I realised it was a date. The first inkling came after the film. Gerry suggested something to eat. I thought he’d meant pizza or pub grub or something equally casual, but he took me to a restaurant. At the restaurant he was polite, overly so considering we were just friends – he pulled out my chair, deferred to my choices and when the bill came he wanted to pay the whole amount.

I insisted on splitting and this minor disagreement left us both awkward and uncomfortable. It was a rejection, a subtle one, but a rejection nonetheless. It wasn’t that Gerry wasn’t attractive – he was – and he was smart and charming too. When I first met him I was bowled over by him, but that was five or more years ago. The problem was that in the intervening time I had also met his brother and his brother was the one I loved.

For years we’d had an on-again, off-again relationship and while it was most definitely off at the moment, and had been for some time, I wasn’t sure that this relationship was firmly in the past.

Could I sleep with one brother and then the other? No, I couldn’t do that. The whole idea of having sex with brothers felt wrong – not exactly incestuous but certainly a little too close for comfort.

Certain sexual relationships strike us as off-limits. Sometimes there is a good reason for these rules, such as blood ties; other times it is merely social convention.

Almost every society has a taboo against incest. In the modern world we know that there is a greater risk of physical or intellectual health issues for children whose parents are closely related, but the strictures against incest are far older than modern medical science.

Most of us don’t need to be told that we shouldn’t have sex with our brothers or sisters – we wouldn’t want to. Nor do most parents have sexual desires for their children. We find incest shocking because we have a deep-seated knowledge that certain relationships should not be sexual.

But what about family relationships where there are no blood ties? Almost all of us have family members by marriage – sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law, cousin’s husbands and wives. Second marriages in particular can result in a number of complicated family relationships. I have friends with stepbrothers and stepsisters around the same age, and after his father’s third marriage, my friend John found himself with a stepmother younger than him.

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