I hooked up with my COUSIN at a family reunion & it didn’t just happen once – now he wants me to move in with him
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A WOMAN who got physical with her cousin over the course of a week-long family reunion has shared her story on a podcast - leaving listeners stunned.
She revealed the predicament on the Closet Confessions podcast, where hosts Sarel and Candice discuss confessions from listeners, some more risky that others.
In one episode of the podcast, the anonymous woman wrote in to share her own taboo story that's left her in a sticky situation.
Despite knowing that having any kind of relationship with her cousin was "horrible," the woman found herself fooling around with him a few years ago.
It all started a few years ago at a family reunion, she explained.
At the time, she was 18-years-old and her cousin was 24.
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Over the course of the week-long event, the pair found themselves sneaking off together to take naps in the same bed.
But the naps soon progressed into something else.
"After doing this a couple of times, we started getting handsy, and one thing led to another, and we ended up hooking up, not all the way, but almost all the way," she said, leaving hosts X and Y lost for words.
The anonymous woman continued: "Flash forward, I got accepted into a university near where he and his brother live and they have invited me to live with them. I said yes.
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"The course is three years long and I'm nervous about how this is going to play out since there's still some tension and we haven't talked about the hook-ups."
Although they're usually always ready to dish out advice, Sarel and Candice struggled to get to grips with the confession.
""What I would do is I wouldn't have hooked up with him in the first place, but we are here now," Sarel said.
The girls agreed it would probably be a bad idea for the woman to move into the same house as her cousin after what happened.
"You need to work out why that happened, and you do need to talk about it with him," Sarel added.
Ultimately though, their advice was to steer clear of the situation to stop it progressing any further.
""What's said in the closet stays in the closet," Candice chimed in.
Can I marry my cousin in the UK?
Across the globe, more than 10 percent of marriages are between first or second cousins.
In the UK, there's no legal bar to two cousins having a relationship.
That means that if end up falling for the children of your aunts and uncles, there's nothing stopping you from eventually tying the knot.
If you're over the age of 18, you can do this without the consent of your legal guardian or parent.
First-cousin marriages were once quite common in Europe, especially among the elite.
But all this changed in the late 19th century.
As social mobility grew, so did a perception of the risks associated with cousin marriages.
Can having children with cousins affect babies?
Countless studies have been done on how a relationship between two cousins will affect their children if they choose to have them.
According to Alan Bittles from the Centre of Comparative Genetics in Australia, the risk of birth defects rises from roughly 2 percent to 4 percent for first cousins.
Hereditary disorders and defects can occur in various different ways, but the one that could relate to cousins is known as .
This means the condition can only be passed on to a child if both parents have a copy of the faulty gene. Both are "carriers" of the condition and this is more likely if the parents are related.
Studies have shown that a child of first cousins is more likely to have birth defects than two people who meet at random, because first cousins share 12.5 percent of their DNA, according to a 2002 study in the.
Because of the overlap there is a 1.7 to 2.8 percent bigger risk of intellectual disability and genetic disorders than the general population says , the lead author of that research.
A variety in genetics will help prevent disease.
Which relatives cannot marry?
Just because you can marry your cousin, does not mean that you can marry every relative in your family tree.
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There are relatives who you cannot marry, no matter how much you love them:
- Siblings and half-siblings cannot marry each other.
- A parent cannot marry his or her son or daughter.
- You cannot marry any one of your grandparents.
- You cannot marry your parents' siblings - meaning your aunts and uncles.
- You cannot marry your nephews - meaning your siblings' children.
- Adoptive children cannot marry their genetic parents or grandparents or their adoptive parents.
Which famous people have married their cousins?
There are many famous people out there who made headlines for marrying their cousins.
Here, we name a few:
- HRH Elizabeth, the late Queen of England, and her late husband Prince Philip were third cousins, as well as second cousins once removed and married in 1947.
- Biologist Charles Darwin married his first cousin Emma Wedgewood in 1839.
- Queen Victoria married Albert, Prince Consort, her cousin in 1840.
- Albert Einstein's second wife was his second cousin, Elsa.
