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.
When the newspapers broke the story of Woody Allen’s relationship with his soon to be ex-wife’s stepdaughter Soon-Yi Previn, a scandal ensued. Allen may not have done anything illegal, but since he had been Soon-Yi’s stepfather in all but law for several years, this relationship was regarded as close enough to incest to be shocking. In the words of one commentator, it was “grossly inappropriate.”
Most of us are unlikely to think of our parents or children as sexual competition, but the disparity in age doesn’t necessarily mean they are out of the running.
Another close friend Helen can attest to this. Helen’s father recently got remarried and she has a new half-sister. Since Helen’s mother has been dead for many years this should have been a cause for celebration, instead it has ripped her family apart because Helen’s new stepmother Lisa used to be her stepsister.
“The whole situation is fucked up,” Helen told me over a glass of wine. “I’m the aunt to two of Lisa’s children and a half-sister to the other. How the hell do you explain that to children?”
To make matters worse, before Helen’s father and former daughter-in-law got together, Lisa had a short-lived sexual relationship with her ex-husband’s brother. “She likes to keep it in the family,” said Helen with a snort.
Lisa, it seems, took the idea of loving your family a step too far and the end result of all this bed-hopping is that none of the men in Helen’s family are on speaking terms with one another.
Sibling rivalry doesn’t necessarily disappear when you get older. Sometimes it gets worse. Where once you were jostling for your parents’ attention and approval, older same-sex siblings can find themselves at war over the same man or woman. If you are similar enough to your brother or sister, there is always the unwelcome possibility that your partner may find him or her as attractive, or more so, than you.
In parts of the Middle East, levirate marriage is still practiced. In a levirate marriage a man is obliged to marry his deceased brother’s widow and care for her children. She can’t refuse him, nor he her.
Levirate marriage is not unknown in western societies. The most famous example, and one that changed English history, is Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon.
Catherine was originally married to Henry’s older brother Arthur. When Arthur died, Catherine married Henry in order to secure the peace between England and Spain. Unlike Middle Eastern levirate marriage, Henry’s marriage to Catherine was allowed because the relationship between the sickly Arthur and the teenage Catherine had not been consummated. When Henry wanted to divorce Catherine the consummation, or not, of her first marriage became the divisive issue.
Unlike Henry and Catherine, for most of us, having a sexual relationship with a current or former in-law is unlikely to end in bloodshed, at least not on a grand scale, but it is almost always a recipe for disaster.
My friend Olivia was at a party when her brother-in-law lunged at her for a kiss. “I have always thought you were the sexiest sister,” he declared before stumbling and falling on the ground. Olivia made a hasty exit and for the next few days was torn about what she should do. Her brother-in-law had been drunk but that didn’t excuse his behaviour.
Whoever said honesty was the best policy was a fool or a liar. Olivia told her sister what had happened – but instead of railing against the inconstancy of her husband, she blamed Olivia. Given that her sister had been married for ten years and had two children perhaps it was easier to take her husband’s side instead of Olivia’s, especially since the two girls had been rivals as teenagers.
When I starting asking around I was amazed to hear how many people had been involved with, or come on to, by members of their extended family or by their partner’s family.
Aisling has a grown-up niece eight years younger than her. They look like sisters, at least according to her niece’s boyfriend. He cornered her in a dark part of the pub, ran his hands across her back, and told her so. “I can’t believe you’re an aunty,” he said. “You’re so hot.” Unlike Olivia, Aisling wisely kept this information to herself.
Mark’s aunt by marriage is more than a little too friendly during family get-togethers – inappropriate remarks, not very chaste kisses on the lips and once she spent a whole dinner rubbing his crotch under the table. “My uncle was in bed with the flu but I am sure my nephew saw what was going on. I haven’t been back there since then,” he said.
Donal has had sex with one of his sisters-in-law, before she married his brother luckily – but this is not something he has or is planning to confess to the family. One of my cousin’s husbands was fond of whispering dirty talk to me, and one of my father’s cousin’s – 70 if he is a day – tries to feel me up whenever he catches me alone.
Like Aisling, Mark and Donal I have kept this to myself, preferring to avoid this part of the family instead of the emotional fallout that would be sure to follow a revelation.
These relationships were not by any means incestuous, but like my feelings about a possible sexual relationship with Gerry, they do seem just a little bit too close to make them acceptable.
Where there are no blood ties, the incest taboo doesn’t operate, or at least not in the same way. Instead modern social convention tells us that certain people are out of bounds, or at least that they should be. But it seems many of us haven’t got the message or choose to ignore it. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. As Hannibal Lector tells Clarice Starling in the film The Silence Of The Lambs: “We begin by coveting what we see everyday.”