So this is a thing I witnessed as a teen: It’s Christmas time. Our family is getting together with another family for dinner and to exchange gifts.
The other family has a daughter and son. At some point, daughter and son sit on the couch together.
This, is probably the best example I could find. Only except, you have to imagine that dude’s right leg is on the other side of the girl. So basically, little sis is sitting between brothers legs. It should be noted, brother and sis are young adults.
My sister and I were extremely creeped out by this. But we’ve never been a touchy feely family anyway.
I’m an only child, but I always sat snuggled up with my male cousins and never thought much of it. It’s kind of nice. My family wasn’t touchy-feely either and it was so nice to find other people who loved hugs and liked to sit close together on the couch and snuggle up.
I think it’s weird that we’re at a point in our culture where physical closeness is seen as inherently sexual. The Sia Elastic Heart video and the ensuing “outrage” and apologies that came out of it is a good example of this.
My husband and his brothers and sisters are like this when they’re all feeling particularly happy with one another (we’re all under 30, btw) and it never feels weird or creepy because of the happy mood that triggered it. Four people who grew up together all the time, reasonably close in age, and had to share rooms and couches and cars get used to mundane physical contact quite fast.
If you weren’t raised that way it might be awkward though.
Well, it’s their family. Maybe that’s just what they do. But I won’t lie - if I saw some young people sitting on the couch in the way that you described and I knew that they were that closely related, would I think it was a little weird? Yeah, probably.
I think it’s the “between the legs” bit that put it over the top for me. That seems like a lounging position that’s strictly reserved for couples, to me. And don’t teenage boys get inopportune…uh…alertness all the time?
It’s certainly not within the cultural norms. It’s nothing that would ever have happened in my family. But like someone else said, it’s not like they’re dry humping each other and it doesn’t sound like either sibling is being forced to do something they’re not comfortable with.
It wasn’t so long ago that entire families of mixed ages and genders slept in the same bed together (or the same room at the very least). Somewhere in the last 200 years we’ve got it into our heads that kids will be irrevocably damaged if they happen to see or touch anyone of the opposite gender.
If they’re both comfortable and happy, the rest of us should be happy for them.
I voted “Other” because it would be creepy as hell for my brother and I. We are very close emotionally and intellectually, but not are we not emotional people, we’re not touchy-feely at all.
But it’s not creepy if other sibs do it. Everybody has their thing.
My brother and I aren’t that physically close, but my male cousins I lived with and I sort of are, and they are to their sisters. That said, I’d really have to be there. How long did it go on? was the room cold? was there anywhere else to sit? One of my cousins is 11 years older than one of his sisters, and I know someone who thought it was odd when she sat on his lap when she was a little girl (like, 5 or 6) and he was a teenager, but I thought it was cute.
What was the age difference?
I’ve currently going with “not creepy,” but I actually voted “other,” because I think there’s not enough information, and it may really just depend on what is normal for that family.
