Why do some people fall in love with close relatives?

For centuries, the history of love has become the basis of the great works of art and literature. However, this hardly applies to stories of mad passion between relatives. Incestuous novels are unlikely to make you follow the development of events with blurred eyes. Rather, they will provoke the urge to vomit and nausea. In any case, it was such a reaction that many people had when 51-year-old Kim West and her 32-year-old son Ben Ford shared their history with the world.

Love story

It all began decades ago, when the young Kim had a son. However, the family values the woman disdained and abandoned the child a week after his birth. Years passed, and already an adult, Ben did the same as many adoptive children - he decided to establish contacts with his biological mother. Then something happened that made the world shudder with disgust. Mother and son are not just reunited, but created a love union.

In an interview, West admitted that the first sexual fantasies about her son appeared at the same time when Ford tried to find on the Internet confirmation that he was not the only one capable of experiencing a carnal craving for his own mother. Later they met at the hotel, and when the moral and ethical framework were ruthlessly wiped off with alcohol, they shared one bed.

So began the relationship, which West described as "stunning." Ford probably shared her point of view, because, without hesitation, he left his own wife for the sake of his mother. Opening the press, the couple disappeared for fear of receiving 15 years in prison and ended up in the ranks of sex offenders.

Psychological root causes

However, Kim and Ben, loyal to public ostracism, could claim some indulgence, at least on an evolutionary level. Let's leave for a while the pillars of bewilderment and indignation and try to look into the depths of the problem. After all, any sexual deviations have their own psychological root causes.

You will hardly be surprised to learn that heterosexual men are more likely to give preference to partners who look like their mothers, just as women will choose men reminding them of their own fathers. This phenomenon in psychology is called positive imprinting. To justify it scientifically was possible the Icelandic scientist. After a study in 2008, they found that distant relatives have a chance of producing more healthy children than ordinary couples. Meanwhile, there is still the concept of "negative imprinting", or else the effect of Westermarck. In this case, a person rejects any sexual attraction to people with whom he lived as a child, including parents, siblings.

So, maybe the combination of positive imprinting and the absence of its negative version caused the painful behavior of Ben Ford?

Disappointing results

Psychologist Judith Wenben-Smith argues that people who did not have healthy family relationships as a child, try their best to separate physical or emotional comfort from sexual attraction. Nevertheless, they can act differently. The object of their love in this case is a relative. This is not a vice or a disease, as Judith claims, is a way that a person reacts to feelings arising from reunion with loved ones from whom he was separated and about which he fantasized.

However, involvement in such relationships, based on strong emotional "misfires," can become doubly devastating. In the society, incestuous love has been and will be a taboo subject, and people who have gone into incest, risk falling into isolation from society. In addition, they will forever lose the chance to create healthy family relationships.