This is interesting to me. Did you grow up seeing your cousins often?
I saw most of my cousins at least once a week growing up, and even went to the same middle and high school as some of them—meaning I spent more time with them than I did my siblings.
As an adult, the idea of being romantic with one of them is as off-putting as the idea of doing it with a sibling. I wonder how much of that is from growing up together.
> The Westermarck effect, also known as reverse sexual imprinting, is a psychological hypothesis that states that people tend not to be attracted to peers with whom they lived with like siblings before the age of six. This hypothesis was first proposed by Finnish anthropologist Edvard Westermarck in his book The History of Human Marriage (1891) as one explanation for the incest taboo.
I saw most of my cousins at least once a week growing up, and even went to the same middle and high school as some of them—meaning I spent more time with them than I did my siblings.
As an adult, the idea of being romantic with one of them is as off-putting as the idea of doing it with a sibling. I wonder how much of that is from growing up together.