Summary of a Sibling Marriage

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. It details what it might sound like if a brother and sister were to decide to live together as a couple. It is NOT SEXUAL. Please skip if looking for a sex-oriented story.

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There was one specific time where she walked into the house when I was in high school and was standing at the fridge wondering what to take out. I saw her from the side and realized I was looking at the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in the my entire life, and also the kindest, most giving, most intelligent person I had ever met. It slowly turned into a crush starting from that day, and more and more into an incest fetish centering around her. I hid it with everything I had. I loved her too much to mess up our relationship with what I perceived to be my sickness. We were best friends, and as close as siblings can normally be. We have rivalry but we were also incredibly supportive of each other.

I kept up the charade of platonic siblinghood till our mid-20's where it cracked. A series of events, led to her confronting me about the way I am sad around her. She had her finger on my pulse no matter how much I tried to hide it. I had really been struggling with the fact that no woman I had ever been with could compare to my sister in anything - character, intelligence, beauty, humor, personality. Nothing came close. I had put her on a pedestal. I tried therapy, nothing worked. I felt like I was sick. Sick to love her, sick to desire her, sick to want her, sick to take an amazing friendship and relationship with my sister and want to attach romance and sex to it. There was some serious self-hate and ideations about leaving town or the country. I can't describe it with any words except to say it was like I was dying of thirst and was told I can have anything except something to drink.

After weeks of physical evasion, and months of pulling away emotionally, she cornered me in her apartment and demanded that I tell her what was going on. She was angry that I was basically acting like I didn't care about our relationship, and it was very atypical of me to leave her hanging. Not responding to texts till days later. Not coming over. Not being responsive to anything. Using work as an excuse.

I confessed everything, in tears. She responded with her own confession, also in tears. It was the most cathartic night of our lives. It wasn't a dream scenario, we cried and confessed and held each other in sorrow. We actually grieved our relationship in a way. We could never be just siblings again and whatever was going to happen would be hard, and difficult and rough on ourselves and the people we loved. There was no getting out of that reality. Some of our tears were for the fact that the phase of innocence in our relationship was over. There was desire now, expectations.

We didn't actually consummate till much later after "dating" and a lot of talking. It was strange, having sex with my sister for the first time was the happiest I had ever felt in my entire life but it didn't even have to do with the pleasure - it was just the idea that I really, really had her for me and she had me for herself. We both ended up in tears after finishing and just held each other again letting the catharsis take over. It's truly insane how many bottled up emotions there were being held back that were released through confessions and discussions and sex.

One of the most beautiful things about a sibling is that it is unconditional love in a very specific way. That is, your sister gets married - you're happy for her, you expect nothing from her. She gets a job, she quits a job, she moves here, she moves there - you're just supporting her. She has a kid, adopts a kid, buys a car. You don't care. The only expectation you really have of a sibling is that they

1. Don't treat your parents badly.

2. Are nice to you and your family and keep relationships alive.

3. Don't harm/hurt themselves or others or generally do evil things.

Everything else - you're happy to see them living their dreams. These confessions changed that. We're expressing that we do want more from each other. We are tying our destinies together. Our plans. Our dreams. We're taking two lines that were supposed to run right next to each other in parallel, and intertwining them against the laws of civil society, religion, and even evolutionary biology. There is a loss there, and even though I firmly believe that for us - our siblinghood makes us better lovers, partners and friends - anyone who has been through this understands that the phase of relationship *after* the confession is going to be very different. The old relationship changes in so many ways that it makes sense to grieve it and feel it. What we did do, was commit to each other that we'd try and see where this went.

We spent some time "dating". We treated it like a legitimate dating relationship. It was the strangest and most exhilarating and weird thing I had ever done. It started off incredibly awkward, but quickly became very comfortable. It was weird because we already used to hang out all the time and now I was dressing up for her and vice-versa. We told each other we'd do it that way. So we'd go to the same kinds of restaurants, but a little more formally. It's silly when you go to nice places as siblings not caring what you look like, and then decide that since you're dating, you're going to "try". It quickly became a little joke that we still look back at and laugh at how silly we were and felt.

A few months later we finally did the deed. I felt no shame, but she felt guilty about what our parents would think, which cause me to think the same and we were racked with guilt. Not about our feelings for each other but how we'd handle this. What others would say. How we would surely break our parents' hearts.

We went to therapy (it is not easy to find someone who is willing to take clients like this), and ultimately decided to be together. We committed to be together even if we had to leave the country. We finally told our parents, who reacted in rage and disgust. We were and in many ways still are incredibly close to them. They were incredibly dedicated to us and went out of their way to give us their love, time, and everything they had while balancing high-powered jobs. Their disgust and anger made us doubt what we were doing, and we had a period where we almost broke the whole thing off. But decided not to and lived with being disowned for a few years. This was very difficult. We are currently on speaking and visiting terms.

We are in our mid-30's and have an absolutely normal life in suburban America. We are involved in our community, a few volunteer organizations, and other activities. My sister makes amazing BBQ chicken and we have an active social life with our neighbors and friends. We run marathons (my sister is faster than me), and are involved together in a local charity. We are some of the most boring people around and no one would ever expect that we are hiding this secret. We fight like any married couple, we have silent treatments sometimes, we used to argue over chores until we got our system worked out, and sometimes do things that drive each other crazy, and we laugh all the time.

We live far from our hometown and tell everyone we met as children and that we were family friends. We have shared with no one outside of a very small circle, and don't plan to. We know we are strange, and we consider GSA (genetic sexual attraction) something that happened to us, not something we chased after. Once it did though, there was just nothing we could do to separate our hearts from loving each other. She's my soulmate, my wife, my sister, my best friend. It's in my blood (pun intended) to love her and I couldn't stop even if I tried.

She's the air I breathe, my compass, my rock, and the woman who makes me laugh during my toughest days. She knows me like the back of my hand and keeps me honest. She knows the worst parts of me - she was there when I developed them. So she knows how to remind me who I am, whose I am, and who I want to be so that I'm always aiming for my best. I try my best to do the same for her and to be there for her in the same ways.

It's very hard to put a sibling on a pedestal - you've seen their worst, their dirtiest, and their best. You know who they are as a person. For me - her place in my eyes is simultaneously feeling like she's in my arms and feeling like she's a blessing in my life that I just need to adore and be grateful for every day because I don't deserve her. (she reads my posts sometimes so I hope this gets my brownie points).

It's impossible for me to lie to her because she knows my every tick, my every facial expression, and every tone in my voice. And vice-versa. It's created a relationship that has a level of honestly that might seem sickening for some, but is refreshing for us.

Fun tidbits: We have to file our taxes separately because we are technically single, and the business of wills and power of attorney was more complex than we thought. Giving your sister all the powers that a spouse has is a little funny and requires multiple pieces of paperwork. Have a good lawyer.