My only female first cousin is much younger than me. Emotionally, she is still a little girl to me and I could never go to bed with her, even though she is legally an adult now.
That wasn’t the question.
I’ll quote this in service of reminding y’all that the question is about a previously unknown cousin, not about people you already know as a relative.
First cousins would be entirely too weird, but then, I’ve known all of my first cousins since they were born and there is absolutely no chance any new ones will turn up. Second cousins, meh, I don’t know who most of them are and some of them live in Poland, so I don’t suppose it would be any different from dating any other stranger.
I married (for a while) my father’s sister’s husband’s brother’s son.
Which is some sort of familial cousin, although not a shred of shared genetics. Completely legal. Also if it makes a difference, I never even met the guy until we were both in our 20s, and penis (although no offspring) ensued.
Frankly, that is as close as I’d want to get. I could not imagine EVER feeling OK about boinking someone even very remotely blood-related to me. It was hard enough to have to explain when we had a couple of shared aunts and uncles, and always stressing that there was NO shared genetic material involved.
I agree that it’s very unlikely that full first cousins will be discovered as an adult, but halfs are possible. Bastardy and all that.
I’m the oldest cousin in my family [via maternal grandparents], and once you’ve changed someone’s diaper, it’s difficult to think of them as a viable sexual prospect.
I’ve never met most of my biological father’s family, so I could be a Lifetime movie in the making if I met a cousin on that side and didn’t make a mental connection with the names.
It occurs to me that I never answered the question, so I will now; my too-close cutoff point is first cousin once removed. That is, 2nd+ cousins are fine, but not any of the first cousin not-removed varieties (though I suspect that genetically a full second cousin shares as much ancestry as a half first cousin–I’d have to draw a chart to be sure, though.)
That said…
But everyone is blood related to you in some way, unless one of you is a replicant or a Vulcan. It’s just how much you’re aware of. I seem to recall that Dick Cheney and Barack Obama are 8th cousins, which means share either or or two great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents. Are you saying that knowing of that sort of connection – 1 out of 512 or 1 out of 256 – would be a deal-breaker?
I have an unknown number of cousins from my mother’s side of the family whom I’ve never met at all or haven’t seen since we were little kids. such an occurance, therefore, is possible. I don’t think even first cousin would bother me. We have little or no shared family history and the common relatives are decades in their graves. They aren’t family in any sense of the word that would matter to me now. It would have mattered even less, if that is possible, during my promiscuous days.
It’s hard to answer the question though, because I’m considering the question from the perspective of real life. Certainly, given my current known relations and the history of our (first cousin) relationship, a romantic relationship would never work between us and our parents would most likely not approve (if we somehow ended up there) and they do, in fact, treat us as a sweet big brother/little sister pairing. This fact feels like it does bias me against first cousin relationships in general as I never found any first cousins as adults and had to deal with romantic tension issues.
I don’t know any second cousins personally at all, so perhaps I might be ok with it. I also didn’t really get to meet my great-grandparents or my grandparents’ siblings, so there’s the aspect of non-familiarity with parents who are observing a long-term familial relationship that suddenly turns romantic. There hasn’t been an elder watching my development over the years as I visit my second cousin Suzie every year and making judgements on how it’s going.
I do know that I am a descendant of a famous person who lived in the 1600’s, but the fact that someone else is also descended from them wouldn’t be a big issue.
Ah. OK - no. Otherwise I’d never boink anyone, ever, again. Which would be sad. Even a chimp or bonobo. Not that I want to, you understand. 
I guess I mean - people within my known family genetic pool, with whom I share a direct, known blood-relative - would not be boinkable. Other humans with whom I may or may not share some extremely attenuated genetic material with simply because I am human? Bring it.
Unless you are Dick Cheney. Then, ewww. No.
Early on in high school, a 13-year-old gf of mine married her 23-year-old 2nd cousin. It was perfectly legal. Later in high school, a gf married her 1st cousin and it required some kind of dispensation. Something legal. Blood tests were involved.
Anything past 1st (blood) cousin is fair game. :dubious:
I first married at 19 and narrowly averted being considered an old maid.
This. I don’t have any moral/emotional problems with sex with a cousin; but I’d worry a little about having children within them (assuming I wanted children). It’s my understanding that worries over cousin/cousin reproduction are exaggerated though, at least if it’s only an occasional thing and not something that becomes a common practice.
And I agree with the people who say it’s about how closely you were raised with them.
Based on my understanding, having children with a first cousin is not really a significant reproductive concern over unrelated persons. At my current age and place in life, it’s very unlikely I’ll have children intentionally (I think there are serious moral failings to have a child when you’re almost 60 years old, I think children are best raised by fathers much younger and will grow up more emotionally healthy without a senile 75 year old man as their father figure) so the reproductive issue isn’t a concern.
So in a scenario where somehow I meet and start having regular sex with a first cousin, who I did not know to be a first cousin, I wouldn’t stop once I found out.
Now, younger me it’d be different. More of my family was alive when I was younger, and I think the societal “ick” factor extends to fully encompass any type of second cousin / cousin once removed. That could be enough of a problem it’d terminate the relationship.
I wouldn’t pursue a known cousin or cousin-once-removed, but if I was attracted to any of my second cousins I might.
In all honesty I don’t think there is a real good reason to be squicked out by first cousin relationships. Historically they made great sense, in small communities a first cousin is someone you’ll be in contact with and genetically different enough from to safely have offspring with. As long as this just happens sometimes and isn’t the norm, there isn’t a big concern for the offspring. Plus, most people historically had a lot of kids anyway so it’s still extremely likely you’ll have a few healthy kids even if your unique genetic condition predisposes your offspring to having a problem.
I think a lot of this squick factor comes from public perceptions of what inbreeding did to European royalty. However, European royalty was very different from the rest of society. They both practiced first-cousin marriage, but commoners had more than enough genetic diversity with men and women from neighboring villages marrying and etc that it wasn’t a big problem. The royals intentionally kept their pool of acceptable mates very, very small. Many of the first cousin marriages among European royals thus were of the “double reinforced” variety, and when that line had certain genetic disorders introduced you started seeing it in a lot of the children.
Depends on if I grew up with them around all the time so that they feel like a close family member. Actual genetic closeness isn’t that important until it gets closer than cousin.
When I was in school, my girlfriend at the time and I found out we were either third or fourth cousins from a rather large Mormon polygamous ancestors. From different wives, though. That wasn’t weird at all, and we talked about getting married.
Almost all of my cousins are still Mormon, so that would be a no go for me, even if I could get past the eek, cousins factor.
I don’t really know any relatives past that, so second cousins would probably be fine, but I’d be really weirded out if I somehow met a relative walking around Tokyo, no matter how distant.
If you were raised thinking of each other as “cousins” then it seems really gross.
I don’t know though, I have no actual experience with this. Everyone I consider a relative who is anywhere near my age is both female and wouldn’t be my type even if male. It’s a situation I find kind of intriguing. Whenever I hear about it on something mainstream (a Friends episode and a Cosmo article come to mind) I am recreationally shocked.
(Also I would never normally choose to read Cosmo, but that didn’t used to stop those assholes from sending it to me for a couple years unsolicited, so once I did come across such an article.)
In Korea, it’s illegal to marry your first or second cousins. You’d have to get to third cousins before it’s legal.
At this age (assuming I were single) I dunno if I’d bother dating someone without at least the potential for marriage.
I’m not sure I get what’s a problem here, but that’s me. Your cousin and her husband are not genetically related (so far as I can tell from the description) and did not grow up together (I assume), so I’m not sure how this differs from any random two people meeting and eventually marrying.
I honestly can’t think of any male cousin I have I’d find even remotely attractive (my gene pool is rather toxic, IMO) if I were single.
I think there is a law in the south where you must have someone in your family that meets these criteria. Smokin hot and totally doable. Too closely related to actually do due to social and or legal pressures. And probably close enough to genetically be a bad idea if the kissin gets moving into the procreating area.