"I am in love with my sister, and she reciprocates"

Another Reddit IAmA, from Spain:

I'm a bit over 25, and my sister is about 2 years younger than I am. [...] We're biological siblings and our parents aren't divorced or anything. We lived together. This is unusual in this kind of relationship, but somehow we were attracted to each other despite this.

[...] Two of our friends [...] know about it and agreed to keep [our relationship] secret. They approve of our relationship, they say it fits us and that when we're out in a shopping centre or anywhere else we look like just any other couple, and look to be very in love with each other. We avoid going out to places too close to our home though, in case any neighbour or relative sees us.

When you're out and see other couples hugging and kissing, who knows if they are related? Maybe there are more couples like us, but nobody dares to tell.

[...] We can't be really open about our relationship with regards to others, and cannot talk to our family about it. Sometimes my mother tells me jokingly that she wants me to bring a girlfriend home for once. If she knew I do it every day...

But we don't care. Or rather, we do care, but there's nothing in the world that would make us want to end our relationship. If we have to pretend to be loners to our family, we will. Our very close friends can eventually learn about it, and if we move out to a different city for work, we can live like a regular couple because our neighbours and everyone else don't have to know we're family.

[...] I've found her beautiful since she developed. She has very long brown hair and a slim figure. Her face screams "I'm a good person". I suppose I find her hotter than other guys because I'm in love with her. The hilarious thing is that some of my friends have joked about her looking good enough to be considered, trying to fuck with me because she's my little sister. If they knew about our thing...

[...] It's difficult to tell [what sparked the attraction]. We've been more than friends for a bit less than 5 years, but I remember feeling attracted to her before that. We fought a bit when we were little kids and rarely played together, then started to get along fine at around 12 or so, but we didn't do anything out of the ordinary I suppose. We were your average siblings, playing games when we were home, fighting over silly things we would forget about in 5 minutes, and there was some occasional peeking in the bathroom when we started to develop, from both of us.

With time, I started to feel something for her. At first I didn't know what it was, but I just felt funny and wanted to be around her. When I was like 19 I realized I may be feeling something I shouldn't, but since the moment I realized what it was, it grew exponentially. I don't recall any particular events that suddenly changed how I felt towards her.

[...] [Making the first move was] awkward, but what's worse, terribly, terribly scary. I [did] it on Christmas, 4 [and a half years ago]. I had been thinking about making a move for several months, but we had grown a great relationship as siblings who share games and go out for a drink, and was terrified of distancing [myself] from her. However, I felt so attracted to her I knew I had to do something, but I didn't dare to. It was a stressing situation, and I started to get a bit depressed as the Christmas holidays were coming. I took the decision of telling her that month, but was so nervous about it I was stomach sick for several days in a row. I was about to tell her when our holidays started, but I chickened and waited a couple of days, then ended up asking her on December 24. I asked her to come out for a walk, got to a park nearby and told her how I felt, in an incredibly awkward way. I must have sounded [scared]. At first she was serious and kept silent while I talked, which made it even worse for me, then she said she wasn't sure about how she felt, but she did think she felt a bit more than she should for a brother, and would think over it. I told her we could try, and she agreed to, so we have been together since. Months later she said she felt something too, but the thought that it was wrong made her hesitant about it.

[That was] easily the worst December 24 of my life, and the best December 25 of my life, because the next day we went out officially as more than siblings, without telling anyone.

[...] She [was] nearly 20 [when we first had sex]. After going out for many months and seeing everything was fine between us, that our newly found relationship wasn't detrimental to our closeness as siblings nor our family, and that we were really into each other, she agreed to have sex. We have had great sex since.

[...] [C]all [my initial feelings for her] a crush if you want. Either way I'm 10 years older than I was back then, and I feel in love with my [sister]. This is not driven by sex, as I'd feel the same if we didn't have any (though it's a hell of a lot of fun), and I honestly find myself thinking I'd do virtually anything for her, far more than I would for anybody else. I know how I feel when I hold her, or just when I look at her for the first time in a day after waking up while having breakfast, and I call that love. (BTW, it's far stronger than what I felt in school and secondary school.)

[...] I don't need to have a girlfriend other than my current girlfriend [i.e. sister] in order to tell I feel love. We've spent nearly five wonderful years together, and I know we're not in for the sex or just killing time.

[...] Of course we're planning this for the long term, otherwise we wouldn't have started such relationship. [...] ([I]n fact, we didn't have sex for a long time.) [W]e started it because we felt attracted and love each other.

I hope we can find a way for us to live our life as a regular couple (not officially married though), without worrying our family. This probably means we'll have to move elsewhere. There's another way: to tell our family, but this is risky and may make it all worse, so maybe we'll never tell. Or perhaps I'm underestimating them and they'd be capable of understanding our relationship if we approach them correctly and show them that we're serious and responsible about it, and that it's the way we found happiness in life and what we really want to do with our lives.

What we will tell for sure, however, is that we'll live together out of convenience, sharing expenses and all, should we decide to move. That way it'd be far easier for everyone if parents or friends pay us a visit. (Eventually, I suppose our parents will think we are huge single losers if we don't tell them what's up.)

[...] It's not illegal [in Spain], but if it were (and this is something I haven't really considered so I'm just writing the first thing that comes to my mind) I would try to deny everything (and have her do the same), get rid of the legal shit as soon as possible, then move out immediately with her, never talking again to the family member that reported us, and never telling this person where we moved. Thankfully, I'll never have to do that in my country.

[...] Fortunately, that won't happen to us; we live in a country where no kind of consensual sex other than pedophilia (and probably zoophilia) is illegal, and no kind of relationship is illegal. We can't marry (yet), but it's not a big thing for us.

[...] [Our first kiss] was kind of awkward, but not nearly as much as I thought it'd be as she took the initiative. It was right on our first date as a couple, on Christmas day. After talking and holding hands all the time, she said something like if we're going to be sweethearts we might as well kiss, and kissed me.

• [...] It sort of doesn't seem like your sister is into the whole thing as much as you.

[...] Thanks for telling me how my girlfriend of 5 years and sister of over 20 feels like.
Sorry about the excessive sarcasm from my post; I don't really want to be rude, but you can't really tell that without knowing her, and if you did, you'd be surprised about how enthusiastic she's about it. She was indeed reluctant when I first asked her out, because of the default morals inherited from our culture, but later overcame it and, as I mentioned in other post, we decided long ago that our relationship is perfectly fine because it makes us happy and hurts nobody.

She's usually the one to bring up the long-term topics such as children, where to move out and what kind of house would we have, or how would we divide the chores, etc.

[...] I suppose [if we broke up] we could find something that works (like distance), and unless we broke under ugly circumstances, i.e. if it's more of an "okay, this isn't working, let's look for something else" type thing, this shouldn't mean we'd stop talking to each other as siblings, though our relationship would never be the same. That is, of course, if we end up breaking, because things are looking great for us. We barely ever fight, though we do have small arguments over stupid things every now and then, like any couple; the important thing is that we never let that hurt our relationship. The friends who know about us always cheer us up and think we'll continue together because we complement each other well and are both serious.

Still, regardless of what happens, I think it was worth [it] to try. I had such a crush and felt so much for her I couldn't have been happy if I didn't try. If I had chosen to not tell her, I'd be still depressed and in love with her, without moving on with my life. And who knows, maybe she would have asked me out after some time. She said she was into it as much as I was, just doubtful about whether it was a good or a bad thing.

The bottom line is that one has to take calculated risks in order to be happy. In order to be able to win, it's most likely that you need to be able to lose. And so far, both of us have won immensely, because we are immensely happy as a result of our bold relationship.

[...] I can't see it ending, so like I've been saying, we'll move out together to a different city and let [our parents] know we're living together for convenience (in case they visit us), and pretend we're normal siblings at family gatherings. If we can keep this up, fine. If we find we need to tell them, we'd of course tell them and explain [to] them this is what we want, and that we're serious, responsible, and well-informed about it. If that day comes, I hope they'll be supportive and understanding, but we both talked about this and agreed that we'd not let their disapproval break our relationship should they learn from it, whatever it takes.

[...] We have a great relationship with our parents; we're a pretty close family. Moving out won't be too dramatic because we'd be moving to a nearby city, half an hour a drive from this place, so it wouldn't be too different from anyone else moving out.

[...] Well, I seriously hope [our parents] don't know. We're cautious when any relative or friends may be around, and only act like a couple when we're far away from them. Having a car really helps, I can drive anywhere else. Obviously our parents do know we're pretty close, since we often go out together (officially, I drive her to wherever she wants to go as I go out myself), and they sometimes say it's good that we're so close, so they either don't know anything about it, or approve, which would be a huge surprise. I'm almost positive it's the former.

• [...] What about your family and parents? Won't they wonder why either of you never have relationships, and why you're still living together when you're 30?

Living together well after 30 would be a bit weird, but not totally impossible. We, in fact, have a family friend who's single at like 55 and lives with his brother (who divorced IIRC). Still, I admit it'd be far easier to tell them despite the terribly awkward thing that will be, so we may grow tired of it and tell them.

• Will they never be able to come visit your home, will you come visit them very often?

The idea, at least at first, would be that we'd keep no easy references of our relationship at home (and have two double beds in two separate rooms), so if they visit, we act like just siblings. And we can visit as often as we like. We wouldn't move too far anyways. We live in the metropolitan area of a city where I work; we'd simply move to the opposite side of the metropolitan area.

• Do you plan to cut them out of your lives, essentially, in favor of your relationship?

Oh, no, not at all. We will never do that, so it'll only happen if they find out and decide to do that themselves, which I doubt would ever happen. We'd rather tell them and help them understand, or at least accept our love. Of course, if we absolutely had to choose, we'd keep our relationship (we already talked about this), although that'd suck because we love our parents. But knowing them, at worst they'd still highly disapprove but never cut ties with us.

[...] She's on the pill, on top of which we use condoms for vaginal and anal sex. Two anticonceptive methods means it's really really unlikely we'll screw up.

We don't intend to have children. As I said elsewhere, I'm fine with not having kids; she says she's not absolutely sure but if she were to choose between our relationship and having kids she's not even sure she'll really feel the need to, she would take our relationship.

[...] I did know that the risk of genetic problems was grossly exaggerated by the ruling puritan agenda, but before we decide on [having biological children], we'd need to check with a physician. Since it's not illegal in my country, we could do that. Still, there's a chance the doc will be morally biased or simply uninformed about such an unusual topic.

[...] There haven't been any other cases of genetic defects or inbreeding in our family that we know of, so we may reconsider it in the future, but what we're already sure about is that it's not a deciding factor of our relationship.

• [...] Have you both considered your parents feelings in this? They may not be moralistic or religiously devout but this will be a bitter pill when they do find out.

(Just a question: would you tell this to a gay guy?)
Either way, yes, we do talk about this quite often. We love our parents and don't want to hurt them, so if we choose to tell them or they find out, we'll do our best to make them understand, or in the very least accept our relationship.

We'll try our best to make it smooth for them, and we'd be sorry if they're hurt by it, but this is a common compromise some couples have to make: they have to live their lives, not their parents', no matter how much they love them.

• Also, have you any other siblings or is it just the four of you?

Just the two of us.

[...] I don't know what was different about us that got us together. Most guys my age with sisters their age that have been raised together don't feel attraction for her. Most claim they're even disgusted at the idea. This disgust could be simply cultural prejudice against such relationships, but I don't know if the lack of attraction can be justified solely with cultural prejudice; it seems there's a natural lack of attraction between most siblings who have been raised together (while it seems there's a natural attraction between siblings not raised together). However, cultural prejudice may be a factor helping the former to happen.

I don't think being raised in a very close family had anything to do because this would be the situation for thousands of families with our ages.

I have given it a lot of thought and see nothing wrong with relationships such as mine, but back when I started to feel attracted to my sister, I was just a boy who wasn't nearly as smart as I am now, and didn't really stop to think (or give two hoots about) whether that was right or wrong. I could have been influended by social stigma, but I wasn't.

We did peek on each other when she started to develop, and that's probably when I started to be somewhat sexually interested in her, and probably a subtler attraction was starting to grow, but I never gave it any thought until much later, several months before telling her. That was when I realized what I was feeling (it also grew exponentially) and started to question if it was acceptable and whether I should tell her or not. I acted on my feelings fully consciously, disregarding whatever the society says, but that was years after this attraction began.

It's worth mentioning she was attracted to me as well, just had more doubts about its morality, but she's into me as much as I'm into her, so if there's something different that got me attracted to her, she had the same condition happen to her.

Or maybe we just really like each other, and we just happened to be siblings that grew together: most guys end up finding a girl they really like and want to date; this girl turned out to be my sister.

[...] Sometimes we feel we're just a bit further than lovers because we also feel a bit like siblings, especially when we remember stuff from our childhood or talk about our family. Sometimes it's funny, because we go like, "My love, what could we get dad for father's day?

[...] The shared upbringing definitely helps understanding each other and sharing values and inside jokes among other things. We have very similar morals, although our parents didn't impose a very strict set of them. Past the basic ones, we developed our own specifics. So yes, we don't argue over this kind of things. We spend long evenings sharing and comparing our views on everything from time to time, and it's a 100% constructive exchange.

And one thing is for sure: neither of us will hate our in-laws :)

• Either way, it sounds like a beautiful thing you have going for you, and your story makes me wish I had a sister and a relationship as beautiful as yours sounds - although I do not envy you having to deal with society's vehement opposition to your relationship.

Thanks. Indeed, dealing with the society is bound to suck one day or two, but for the most part we just dodge the issue by keeping it private and only telling when it's not going to be a huge bother. (I do think we should reconsider telling our parents though. I don't think they'd kick us out and stop talking to us.)

• If I may ask: All relationships have a point (or multiple points) where it has been close to a break-up. What are some of the situations that have bought your relationship close to a break-up?

It's funny, but I don't consider we've been close to break-up. We did have arguments, mostly over stupid things such as juggling friends and our dates, but I've never really felt we were close to breaking up. Due to her being my sister, I tend to think she'll always be there (I admit I shouldn't take this for granted, but I have a natural tendency to think so).

The worst argument we had meant that we didn't talk to each other for the rest of the day, and next day in the morning we were both apologizing for being stupid.

• Also, just out of interest, are you religious and if so, how have you dealt with the religious conflicts?

We're both atheists, and intellectually [enthusiastic], so there are no conflicts of this nature. I find it's a huge advantage that we have this in common: neither of us have religious prejudice or imposed morals and restrictions; our morals are completely personal and come out of logic, so they can be discussed and they can evolve. There have been times where one of us found something wrong until the other pointed out there wasn't anything wrong with it (or vice-versa) and discussed why, then the other changed his/her mind. Besides, we can't experience the "my god > your god" thing and don't have to go to church or wait while the other spends a superb morning at it.

• One further question if I may: How has this experience changed your outlook on life?

Not much more than being in love with a wonderful woman does for others I suppose, except for two things: first, it made me more rational and open minded. I've found a way to be happy in my life that includes doing something most people are prejudicial against, and that's supposed to be wrong, yet I discovered there was nothing wrong with it as hard as I could think of it. This made me more open towards the unusual: I won't reject something just because others do, or just because it's weird; I'll take the time to evaluate it for myself and completely ignore what others say about it until I've formed my own opinion.

The second thing would be that I've grown wary of the society, and feel a bit disentangled from it. I've seen most people think, say and do things just because others do the same, without thinking for themselves, and I've seen the dangers of this. They do this probably because it's easier, because they want to be holier than thou (everybody wants to be the number one fan), or because they don't want to be weird. There's nothing wrong in being weird; there's only wrong in being wrong. Sometimes weirdness is the right thing when most people are doing something that makes others suffer or ruins things, and some times weirdness is just an unusual, alternative path which is not better or worse than the common one.

• [...] If you think what you're doing should be perfectly acceptable to society, stand up for it

I have no problem talking about this and standing for it to the two people I could trust they wouldn't be leaking this information to my parents, as well as random strangers here in Reddit.

I'm just not telling my parents, at least for now, because they may not be able to understand it. I don't care whether people like you approve of my relationship or not, but I do care for my parents, even from the point that learning this may hurt them.

Likewise, there are other situations where telling this would do me no good. For example, I wouldn't tell this at work, because it could be used against me by prejudiced people who dislike my relationship. Does this mean I'm ashamed of it and that I wouldn't stand for it? Not at all. It means I'm not stupid and I don't want to lose my job. It'd be even worse if I stood for something that's currently illegal.

• [...] Both are in their mid 20's living at home

Totally common over here.

That's true. The need to go live in your own place to prove your independence is a modern Anglo-Germanic thing. The vast majority of cultures don't require that. Certainly, in the Mediterranean, many people continue to live with their families well after they're financially capable of leaving, to help out their parents and siblings and to save money. (FYI, the guy's a software developer, and has had enough money to move out, which is why he's moving out now.)

• Both feel the need to hide the relationship from family/friends

Not from each of [our] closest friends. Hidden from others because of social prejudice, not because we'd hide it otherwise. If there's anything sickly here, it's our society.

• Male has never tried another romantic relationship

So? My father was my mother's first boyfriend.

He's not his sister's first boyfriend, BTW.

• Male and female are full siblings

Bingo. Social prejudice. If you can explain how this will hurt anyone and why is it unhealthy, please go on, otherwise thanks for playing.

• [...] Common doesn't make it healthy.

Yes, it's detrimental to health to move out later than one'd do in other country, all of which being a completely customary/cultural element which also depends on your economy and needs. Furthermore, I'm at my parents' but I have a job. My sister is at uni. It's perfectly normal to be like this; most couples move out at like 27 over here.

• If you cared enough about each other, you'd work to change the prejudice.

Don't you think posting here is a step in this direction? Yet allow me to say this is kind of hipocritical coming from you, who just said my kind of relationship is unhealthy.

• You being afraid of society says more about you than society.

Not afraid, but disgusted. Yet it won't stop me from achieving happiness.

• Again; just because someone else has done it doesn't make it healthy.

Okay then, explain why it's unhealthy for one to be genuinely in love with the first date and stay with him/her. Do you have to go on a specific, arbitrary number of partners in order for it to be "healthy"? Don't you see this is kind of ridiculous?

• And no, you being full siblings isn't social prejudice, it's genetic bad news if you accidentally get her knocked up.

Which won't happen, because we know what we're doing, and I will likely get a vasectomy soon.

• You are potentially hurting your sister if she has to choose an abortion

She already said it's her own personal decision to have an abortion should we get that unlucky as for the top two safest [contraceptive] methods fail at once.