I've encountered two real life situations of incest that ended in the incest couples eloping. One was a friend of mine who had a different father than one of his half-sisters. It's kind of amazing at all that they were so magnetically attracted to one another. The half-sister had two other sisters, and I personally thought they were far more attractive. So did everyone else. But the half-sister my friend fell for, was the oldest of the three half-siblings and she was 6 years older than my friend. They met for the first time during a Thanksgiving meeting when the father was showing my friend to his 3 half-sisters from a previous marriage for the first time. I watched. I was there. It was like fucking lightning struck them both when they first met. They couldn't keep their eyes off of one another the entire meal. I can't have been the only one to notice it either.
They were dating in secret three weeks later and having sex about 10 months into them secretly dating. They just couldn't help themselves around one another. I had no real opinions myself either way because why the hell would I care whose screwing who? Anyway, I briefly dated one of the other sisters and we went on like...group date things a few times. Anyway, it eventually became known because the sister I was dating, got into some kind of argument with her sister and ratted her incestuous relationship out to their mother. It got nasty for a while. I dumped her ass because that was a shitty thing to do to your sibling knowing the trouble it caused. Anyway, after about 4 months separated by their parents, both eventually said screw everyone and eloped. This was 8-9 years ago and I still keep in touch occasionally. They are still going strong several states over. He got a vasectomy because of reasons and she got her tubes tied because of reasons. They still can't resist one another. I've been to their house a few times and it's amazing that they can still look at one another in the way that they do. I just can't make myself see something wrong with it. They are intoxicated with eachother still 10 years later.
Another instance that ended in elopement was a guy and his sister being separated at birth, they were fraternal twins so twins but didn't look alike. They didn't meet until they were both 17. I was 13 at the time. I was friends with the little brother of the fraternal twin sister so I spent time at thew house and saw events unfold. Well, don't know when exactly they met, but they started dating when both were 17, about a week after they first met. Same story. Practically love at first sight. I don't normally believe in such a thing because love takes time....but I question that when I remember moments like this. Anyway, same story as the first. Dated openly though since no one knew their kinship yet at first. They were together even in college, went to same college. They got engaged at 22 after dating for 5 years. Not sure how it came to be known, but eventually it was discovered they were fraternal twins. The kind that don't look alike. Welp, marriage cancelled. Ensuing drama. Families try to keep them apart. This time, it lasted for 2 years. Both were 24 when the fraternal twin sister tried to hang herself, she just couldn't handle being separated from him. He was drinking like a fish to cope. Finally, after the failed suicide attempt, she and he eloped. Its been 5-6 years since they eloped. I haven't heard a word from them but my friend, the little brother of the sister says they are still together and being of age to drive, he travels to see them every summer.
So, incest to me, is a very hard subject to approach considering these two experiences I witnessed. I usually just keep silent.
*puts on evolutionary biology hat*
It's a little complicated, but in general, people are often attracted to the same characteristics that show up in their family. The correllation isn't 100%, because attraction is influenced by a whole shitton of factors, but the genetic influences of attraction and the genetic things they're attracted to tend to collect in the same bodies -- genetically, an organism is ore likely to be attracted to its own genetic characteristics.
Picture a group of birds. The birds are a dazzling array of colours, just every colour you could think of (they're a hypothetical species of improbably-varied-colour birds). Some of the birds have genes that are blue. Some of the birds have genes that make them find the colour blue really sexy. Those birds are more likely to hook up (because one group finds the other sexy). They have children, who inherit genes from both.
Next generation, you have birds that are blue, and also find blue really sexy.
This explanation is massively simplified (I took all the probability and stats out), but tiny influences like that are present in all populations, over all kinds of characteristics. They're not the be-all and end-all of attraction, but they do mean that there's a natural level of genetic influence making people find other people like them really sexy.
Because incest carries genetic risks that increase over generations, many animals, including humans, have a defence against it. This is not related to the phenomenon described above; there's a separate defence mechanism that overrides any 'that feature is sexy' inclinations and says "this person is too closely related to me and is DEFINITELY NOT SEXY." In humans, this is based onproximity and time -- there are certain critical periods of development where, if you are raised in too close proximity with someone, you will absolutely notfind them sexy. People tend notto find their children, parents or siblings sexy, even if there's no taboo against the relationship, because of this mechanism -- they were raised in the same households with them when at least one of them was at a critical period. (This is why adopted siblings will have the same aversion to a sexual relationship as genetic siblings, provided they were adopted young enough).
In some countries with a massive sex discrepency (*cough* China *cough*), it's not unheard of for families to 'adopt' a future wife for their sons when both are children. This almost always fails; both children tend to refuse the marriage. They were raised too close to each other.
Anyway, the point I was getting to is that when siblings are raised separately from each other for their entire childhoods, this "that person is definitely not sexy" mechanism doesn't clock them as related, and doesn't kick in. So it's not unusual for separated siblings to be attracted to each other for the reasons I explained above. Again, attraction is complicated, so it's not 100%, and we have taboos against these relationships that can kill attraction pretty early anyway, but these sorts of relationships aren't surprising in these conditions.
Huh. Weird. Is it arousal related? You dont usually wanna fuck your family so you dont go horny for them. And I dunno. Maybe the horny is a factor. Cuz like, I dont like the smell of anyone's sweat until I'm ready to fuck.
But what do I know? Just spitballing
I'm pretty sure Daitengu is talking about the immune system studies. For reasons that are way too complicated to go into here, there's this one specific collection of genes involved with training your white blood cells that really, really benefits from variety; the more variety you have there, the better your immune system. It's a really important part of your immune system, and you want different alleles from each parent to get it working at its best.
These exact genes also, through good fortune, determine some of the chemicals in your sweat. People with your snazzy immune genes smell more like you. People with different snazzy immune genes smell different. Some studies have shown that people smell sexier to you if they have different immune system genes (which is of course more likely if there's more genetic distance between you). You're attracted to the different immune genes, you get babies with stronger immune systems. That's the theory.
Here's the cool part -- this is reversed for people who are pregnant, or who have hormones similar to pregnancy (i.e., are on the birth control pill). Pregnant people don't wanna be around strange smelling people as much. They want to be around their family and take advantage of their existing support network while they're tired and vulnerable. Awhile ago the pop science world heard of this and went nuts with it because you can write some great "it you're on birth control YOU WILL MARRY THE WRONG MAN" stories with that.
I should point out that basically all human attraction/pheremone science is... nebulous. Plenty of scientists don't think that any of this sweat attraction stuff actually happens. Others think it does. The field is... it's hard to explain why, it's really complicated, but in general it's super hard to do reliable science in this field for like ten billion different reasons and only a few of those reasons have anything to do with actual science or experimental design. Just look at all the "left brain/right brain" or "male brain/female brain" bullshit you see out there to get a sense of how easy it is for a small discipline to just go totally off the rails under the right social conditions. But it might be true, and in another twenty years or so we'll probably know for sure.
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