Dear Sasha: I’m a 28-year-old, fit, attractive guy. In my late teens and early 20s, I had no problem finding girls to date, and I’ve had some great relationships. My problem is that for the last five years, I’ve been totally dry. I’ve tried to go out to bars, enrolled in some courses I was interested in, but all to no avail. Thinking I was gay, I had a few flings with boys from work or online—but it wasn’t to be. I can’t get interested in anyone I meet anymore. And here’s the kicker: I think I might be fawning over my cousin. Yep. She’s 23, fit, attractive, and we get along famously. We chat on the phone, go out to shows, chat online—and I flirt during all of these. And so, plagued, I guess, with this constant “there’s no one better than she” notion, I feel I might be doomed to live as fifth-business until I die. I’ve wanted to tell her, but the repercussions would be immeasurable. It might be some sort of warped Oedipus complex (maybe closer to Haemon’s love of Antigone, Oedipus’s daughter), but it’s really got me stagnated—to the point where I haven’t shared intimacy with anyone in over two years. I feel horrible for having these thoughts, but I can’t shake them. She chats with me totally unaware that I’m practically scheming the whole time. Should I seek help? Is this common? Please, tell me something, anything. — Cousin Lover

Dear Cousin,
Cousin love wasn’t always so frowned upon, although as author Deborah Blum points out in Sex on the Brain, medieval Christians considered mating even with your 32nd cousin a sin (apparently it was fine, though, to set a woman on fire for not marrying at all), so notions have flip-flopped wildly. World-wide, it’s still a lot more common than you may know.

So why the present stigma, particularly in North America? Birth defects are not the issue everyone believed them to be (like, maybe a few per cents higher than any other couple), but many of these concepts predate genetic research anyway. Is it bad press generated by snaggle-toothed hillbilly films? Vestigial ’50s mutant panic?

The world is a wacky place, Cousin Lover. Why, just a few hundred years ago fat women were considered gorgeous and now look at us. We’re despised. Meanwhile, girls trying to keep up with spindly beauty standards lose contracts doing the very drug that keeps them so. (Lately I’ve been pondering the Renaissance headline version of this blatant hypocrisy: Rubens model caught gorging in beer hall, dropped from contract by Brueghel as well). It’s hard to keep up with the whimsical ebb and flow of tastes and customs, but let’s get a few things straight: while it’s perfectly legal to marry your cousin in our country and many others, it’s not okay to let it control your life. Your cousin is not the only one in the world for you. You’ve proven that by your prior dating record, and this kind of ideology, even when not directed towards a family member, is demented and irrational. Look at you! Incestuous Greek tragedy references and flapping around on the sofa like a Harlequin romance novel heroine. Never think you’re going to find love again? Oh please. As of Sept. 29, 2005, the world’s population was at 6,469,543,115. In a healthy male, there are 297 million sperm in a teaspoon—and this is taking into consideration decreasing sperm counts. Population and biology alone put a major crimp in the dramatics, don’t they?

Now if you do choose to go forth and confess, here are some encouraging words from Susanne Gordon, a woman who not only married her cousin, but has a healthy, bright child with him:

“There are a few resources available to him. First one being the Web site www.

cuddleinternational.org and another site, www.cousincouples.com. He can go to chat rooms, post questions and read responses and bounce his theories off many, many members. Please stress to your reader for him not to feel shame in his feelings. Being with a cousin is not an incestuous act, nor is it illegal. He needs to realize that his only hurdle that is different from any other relationship is if he ticks off his in-laws he has ticked off his whole family!”

Got any questions for Sasha? Write her at
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e-mail: pouledeluxe@yahoo.com