An 18-year-old woman plans to marry her dad - right after they move to New Jersey where incest is legal, according to New York Magazine.
The father-daughter couple wish to remain unnamed, but have been living together in the Great Lakes Region.
After not seeing her father for 12 years, the woman said she was immediately attracted to him when they first met.
"It was so weird and confusing," she told New York Magazine. "I was seeing my dad for the first time in forever but it was also like, 'He's so good-looking!' And then I was like, 'What the hell are you thinking? What is wrong with you?' I saw him as my dad but then also part of me was like, 'I'm meeting this guy who I have been talking to over the internet and really connecting with and I find him attractive.'"
The 18-year-old has been with her father for two years and lost her virginity to him a few days after they were reunited. Her father had been living with his girlfriend at the time, but the couple now lives with an ex-girlfriend of the father's. "Now we're like a little family," the daughter told New York Magazine. "She calls me her daughter."
Genetic Sexual Attraction (GSA) is the term used to describe intense attraction some people feel after being reunited with a relative they didn't grow up with, according to The Guardian. It occurs in 50 percent of long-lost reunions, but father-daughter GSA is the least common form.
Sometimes the couple slips and calls each other "daddy" or "baby girl," but the woman told New York Magazine that they both just stop what they are doing. She said it catches them off guard, but she also said that if the relationship doesn't work out, the man will still be there as her father.
"When I need my dad I say, 'Hey, Dad, I need you.' And then he's not going to be my fiancé or my boyfriend, but my father," she told New York Magazine.
Many studies show the dangers of having children in a incestuous relationship. "Prenatal, neonatal and infant mortality was higher among children from incestuous unions, and mental retardation as well as congenital malformations, single and multiple, were far more frequent among these children than among their half-sibs who were offspring of unrelated parents," concluded researchers in a 1971 study published in Human Heredity.
The couple plans on having children and will most likely not tell the children about their relationship. Who will be called grandma and who will be an aunt will also have to be determined.
"I wouldn't risk having a kid if I thought it would be harmful," the woman told New York Magazine. "I've done my research. Everybody thinks that kids born in incestuous relationships will definitely have genetic problems, but that's not true. That happens when there's years of inbreeding, like with the royal family. Incest has been around as long as humans have. Everybody just needs to deal with it as long as nobody is getting hurt or getting pressured or forced."
"I just don't understand why I'm judged for being happy," the woman later said. "We are two adults who brought each other out of dark places. People need to research incest and GSA because they don't get it and I don't think they understand how often it happens."
