Are incest fantasies common? Are they healthy and acceptable?
I’ve seen quite a few Web sites out there devoted to incest porn. It does seem to be a very common fantasy. Hell, several years ago I was involved with a person who had a raging fantasy of getting me in bed with one of my siblings. I was less disgusted by the incest aspect of it than the facts that (1) I apparently wasn’t enough for the person by myself, and (2) the sibling in question rather despised me. Anyway, taboo = sexy is pretty true. I have a couple of fetishes of my own that are well outside the mainstream, and part of the fun of them is the fact that they’re “weird” or “forbidden,” but as others have said, if they’re causing you real psychological probelems. they’re no longer fun. Perhaps a sex therapist is in order — not a regular therapist, who might try to convince you that suppressing your fantasies is the way to go, but someone who has more of an open mind for such things. Someone who can help you work on having a healthy fantasy life without juding you on the contents
While I heartily recommend Nabokov, Ada is in fact one of his tougher slogs of a read. The subject of incest fantasies is discussed in Nancy Friday’s collections — My Secret Garden, Forbidden Flowers, and Men in Love. Both men and women have them, and chances are in one of those books you’ll find one that will make your fantasy look casual. (If you want something more clinical, the question is addressed in books such as The Hite Report and The Kinsey Report.) Friends dealt suggestively with incest more than once — most obviously in the episode where Rachel was dating a guy who was just a little too close with his sister/roomm
“Your comments may save me from unbearable shame and constantly beating myself up – I’m getting sick and tired of it and have enough other emotional problems to deal with already.” This was basically me two or three years ago. All of a sudden, I was paralyzed by fear that I wanted these things to happen, in reality, and it literally stopped me from functioning. They included fearing that I was attracted to family members; fearing that I was a pedophile; and worrying that I had violent urges. Unlike a fantasy, which is kind of something that you can take out when you want to play with it, so to speak, and put it away, I felt like I had lost total control over myself and my sexuality. Unbearable shame? Check. Constantly beating myself up? Check. A little bit of talk therapy and a little bit of anti-anxiety meds later, I’m healthy and happy and I don’t feel desperate and ashamed anymore. Bottom line: when I tried suppressing these fantasies, what I found that I ended up suppressing was al
There is nothing intrinsically unhealthy about any sexual fantasy. There’s also nothing intrinsically unhealthy about any sexual act, so long as it doesn’t harm (physically, mentally, emotionally) any of the participants. Speaking anecdotally, incest fantasies are garden-variety. I’d be willing to bet that just about everyone has at least one, in some degree, at some point, and the majority of people probably more than one. Go to a nice supportive therapist who specializes in sexual issues. Believe me, you’ll feel much happier jacking/jilling off without shame to a hot fantasy about your cute brother/sister/whatever. As for social acceptance, I highly doubt it. Incest taboos run deep, much deeper than most others. They inspire a visceral horror (which is obviously a big part of the attraction), and visions of deformed babies and Hanover chins. (Obviously not a concern with same-sex incest). Add in that most (but certainly not all) incest is coercive and abusive, and there’s a recipe fo
There was a British soap opera called Brookside which had a long-running thread about a brother and a sister who carried on a sexual love affair with one another. The whole thing was done in quite a sexy fashion and I remember at the time lots of people commenting that the supposed brother and sister were really hot. Doing a search on the characters’ names – Nat and Georgia Simpson – led me to this Guardian article which discusses whether “consensual” incest can ever be acceptable. The journalist describes the Brookside portrayal as “somewhat salacious” – ie, it was designed to turn people on, suggesting that there could even be a mainstream interest in incest as a sexual fantasy. As some other posters have said: if this is just a fantasy and stays that way, and unless some sense of coercion or abuse is involved, there’s no reason to beat yourself up.
