Cousin sexual attraction guilt

[captainanxious]

Hi,

So I'm currently struggling with huge guilt regarding a sexual attraction I had to one of my female first-cousin. I'm currently 29, and suffer from a severe depression.

We have 3 years age difference.

First I have to say that she is the only female cousin who is crossed-raced, so I always seen her as "different" (not in a bad way, I'm not racist at all) from my family because of her darker skin color and other physical attributes.

And since I was a kid, I always felt an attraction toward her.

But it when crazy when I hit puberty.

When I was maybe between 14 and 17, I played "hide and seek" with her and I remember that we hide together in the dark, and my sister would find us, and when I was hiding with her, I was behind her, hiding in my bed, and I contracted my penis to show her that I had an erection...

Another thing is I once masturbated while sniffing one of her used underwear, but I can't remember when I did that, I could be 16/17/18...

And, when I was 18, I asked her, who was 15 years old at the time, if I could kiss her foot, confessing her that I had a foot fetish, and she said "why don't you kiss your own foot ?" So I explained that it was not the same, and she said ok, so I kissed her foot, but finally I felt nothing arousing, so I began to lick it, and she said "Hey, calm down" so I stopped it, and asked her to never tell anybody about this, and she agreed. I remember feeling guilty about this right after doing it, and now I fear that I may have traumatized her. And this is maybe silly because she still loves me, and we have great contact...

And of course I had multiple sexual fantasies about her, until recently. But I must states that my sexual fantasies are very wide and open, (at least when I did not had this depression) there was nothing exclusive.

But the attraction toward her vanished with time, I still found her very attractive, but that's all.

And now, I struggle with an overwhelming guilt about this, and more with the fact that my uncle, her father, is currently living at my house for one week, and I have a lot of thoughts like "If he knew, he would hate me so much etc."

[captainanxious]

Please can anyone can relate or tell me if I'm a freak ?

[SweetSue]

Hi CA,

I seem to remember we talked about this before via PMs - Im sorry you are still feeling anxiety from this.

You are NOT a freak.

Is anyone helping you with your obsessive thoughts ?

Hows things working out for you with your therapist ? Is she helping you at all ?

Obviously I cant relate to what happened, but I do have brothers, and I remember that one of them had a crush on one of my cousins whilst we were growing up. (though Im not sure to what extent). We all used to tease him for it too (in a nice way) - oops (sibling love). I think its just part of growing up.

Hope that your day is kind to you

Take care

[captainanxious]

Thanks SweetSue !

Yeah I still have anxiety about this amongst other things.

And the anxiety spike when my uncle is here.

But before that, I had no problem being with my uncle...

[Verbally abused?]

It does not sound to me like you traumatized your cousin at all. Sounds to me like the guilt is causing trauma for you.

So, from my own experience... if all my cousin had done was to let me know or show me that he had an erection, there would be no trauma for me. Not even if he licked my foot. So you licked her foot, big deal! Not everyone has a foot fettish. There is no way of knowing that she knew it was a sexual act for you.

Not trying to sound insensitive here, just saying that there are far more tragic things that could have happened. Most importantly, they didn't happen!

I say, relax! Don't let the guilt get the better of you, just give guilt it's walking papers!

[captainanxious]

Thanks, I know deep down, that it was nothing very terrible, I mean it's not like I would have raped her, or something else...

But still the guilt is here, and what is very weird is that I already felt guilt when I've done that 10 years agos, and I moved on, and now it's going back, that's crazy.

[SweetSue]

Hi CA

Is your therapist helping you at all, to learn how to ease your obsessive thoughts ?

Im sorry guilt over this is still upsetting you

Do you think that maybe, your obsessing over this again now, because your Uncle is staying with you ?

Hope that your day is kind to you

Take care

[captainanxious]

Yeah I think that the fact my uncle is staying with me just messes with my thoughts. But I saw him an infinite number of times before, without being bothered by this.

[Verbally abused?]

You just need to be the harda** and give guilt the boot! That is all there is to it! If I had half as much knowledge and talent as others, I would find a pic of a boot kicking something and would edit it so that it was guilt being kicked. Then I could say that I did it for you. I do have some steel toe shoes you can use special for this occasion..want to borrow them, cuz you can!

[SweetSue]

That made me laugh VA - nice one

CA,

Are you still seeing your therapist hun ?

Take care

[TreasureGem86]

hello,

i am having sexual issues in my life. I am 28 and not married person. sometimes i feel that may be i have some mental or emotional disorder.

I have noticed myself to be more sexually oriented since i was young, may be since i was 11-12 years old. I first masturbated when i was about 12

years of age. I was sexually attracted to girls since that age. i feel a lot of guilt for all these and also i am confused with my emotions.

At that age, I use to fantasize girls (sometimes a lot younger to me too) kissing me, naked, me kissing their private body area too(i feel very

embarrassed about it) while masturbating. I was so young and i was thinking so sexually.

There are few incidents that i feel very bad about. I have a cousin who is 4 years younger than me. she is my real cousin (my mother's sister's

daughter). Technically speaking we have a relationship of brother and sister.but we are more like friends. When i was 14 she was 10. we use to play

together and also talk a lot. But i was sexually attracted to her too. it was weired. One night when my cousin was sleeping, i kissed her on her

lips and even touched her private parts. I was 14 at that time. I dont know what was in my mind but it all happened. I never thought of this being

wrong or right. i wish i wouldnt have taken such an ugly step.

But things didnt stop there. i use to fantasize her as my love partner and use to think of making love with her and masturbate. I loved her looks,

her nature, her way of talking and all that she has in her as a person. And i truly loved her. I never meant to hurt her. May be for me she was more

of a 'friend' to me than the real relationship of cousin. may be i always saw her as a friend who is a girl.

When i was 18 years old she came to my home to stay. we, as always, had a great bond like friends. This time too i did the same thing. I wet kissed

her lips when she was sleeping one night. but this time things turned different. next morning when she woke up, she got boils in her mouth. seeing

her in pain i felt like crying. I felt so guilty that because of my action she was in pain. I did everything to get medicine for her and felt too

bad for her pain. I wished it happened to me and not her. since then i understood what i feel for her. It was a lot different then being cousins. I

was happy when he got cured.

The worst part of whole story is that she is till today unaware of what i did to her. And i cant even tell her. I know that i dont deserve to live

too because of this. I know that she is my cousin and i should not have such feelings for her. But yes the truth is that somewhere inside me, I have

that feelings of by-girl love. I cant help myself any more.

When i was 19 i fell in love for a girl in my college. I tried my level best to give her the best in me. I tried to change myself a lot for her. I

became more religious than i was before. This feeling for her was the best thing i ever felt for someone. I tried to be less sexually oriented. I

even started dressing up nice and felt confident.I did my best but after 8 years of long waiting and faith all hopes were shattered. Things didnt

work out at all and my feelings were replied with rudeness. My feelings were treated as if it was unworthy for her. I went into depression. then i

started finding out what went wrong. I believed in love but why things didnt work out? I started looking for the answer.

Then I dug all my past life. may be god punished me for somethings i did in my life. I called my friends and asked to forgive me if they were hurt

because of me. I said sorry to people even if i did nothing to hurt them. also felt that may be one more reason for my punishment could be what i

did to my cousin and what i felt for her. i use to run away from girls just to avoid hurting them unknowingly by thinking anything sexual for them.

unfortunately this made me more sexually oriented because half of the time my mind was thinking of running away from girls in order to avoid sexual

thoughts. I wast completely lost. i even stopped talking to my cousin during that time. I couldnot discuss with anyone about how i felt at that

time. I have only 3 friends. I cant bother them. I cant discuss how i feel with my parents as they will be hurt and get irritated of my repeted

crying. I started judging myself and dishonouring myself. It effected my studies a lot.

It took about 4 years to overcome that emotional breakdown(up to some extent), all alone. I am 28 now. Even today i have the same feeling of

attraction and love for my cousin and i know that it is true. I cant help that, as i said. but yeah i know that i will not do anything wrong to her

that could hurt her.I feel bad for what i did to her when i was young. I don't know the issue in me but i know to control my feelings.

[Sandstorm]

There's nothing wrong with being sexually attracted to your cousin, it's perfectly normal. Cousin marriage used to be extremely common in western cultures. Now, it's not socially acceptable, but it's perfectly biologically within the range of normal, healthy sexual attraction to feel turned on by a cousin.

[infrared_radiation]

I'd like to second the thoughts of the above poster. I was going to say that from a historical perspective, cousin marriage was once commonplace. It is also still practiced quite commonly in some non-Western cultures.