18-Year-Old Plans to Marry Her Long-Lost Father

It's been established that reuniting with long-lost relatives can and does result in "Genetic Sexual Attraction," a term coined in the 1980s. In fact, some have estimated that elements of sexual attraction occur in as many as half the cases of estranged loved ones who meet as adults. Still, it's widely considered taboo, and even more so when the attraction is between a father and daughter, reports New York magazine. As the woman who coined the phrase GSA told the Guardian in 2003, "That group tends to stay very silent. It's still regarded as dangerously close to abuse, even though it is no different from other forms of GSA." But one such unnamed couple living in the Great Lakes region is now making news after the teen daughter talked at length with the magazine about reuniting with her father—whom she hadn't seen since she was about 5—12 years later and finding herself instantly attracted to him.

The daughter says they have been dating for nearly two years—since she lost her virginity to her father just days after reuniting with him—and that they plan to marry, if unofficially, and move to New Jersey, where she says adult incest is legal. She says that she and her father, who conceived her on prom night when he was 18, plan to have a large family and that she's not worried about their kids having genetic problems because "that happens when there’s years of inbreeding, like with the royal family." She adds that "incest has been around as long as humans have" and "everybody just needs to deal with it." Full interview here. In 2010 Wired reported on a study that found, as the lead researcher put it, "people appear to be drawn to others who resemble their kin or themselves"; he speculated that "incest taboos exist to counter this primitive tendency." (In August, a Brazilian woman learned she had married her brother.)