I slept with my cousin after years of sexual tension and now I don't know what to do

On February 28th the Daily Mail had an article about an unnamed woman who had sex with her cousin but feels guilty because of how their family and the public will react:

Her cousin admitted he felt the same, and the two became intimate. 

The anonymous person added that she is now unsure about what she wants from her cousin, but said she wants to keep him in her life. 

She said that she fears that there could be a fall out if other members of the family heard of what happened between them. 

She asked the columnist for her opinion, adding she wants to know what other people think of her story, and that she cannot be the only one in a similar situation. 

In the response to the anonymous post, the columnist said that the person was not 'weird' for having sexual urges towards her cousin, but should seek a therapist to explore where her desire to be with him stemmed from. 

Lalala LetMeExplain began by explaining that marrying your cousin is not illegal in the UK and Ireland, but that it is not a common practice. 

The columnist added that the anonymous person should not be judged for having sex with her cousin.

Sultan of Brunei's Daughter Marries Her First Cousin

On January 25th, People had an article about the royal family in Brunei, a small monarchy on the island of Borneo:

It's a royal wedding in Brunei — that of Princess 'Azemah Ni'matul Bolkiah and Prince Bahar ibni Jefri Bolkiah.

Princess 'Azemah, 38, is the daughter of Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, and wedding festivities began in the independent sultanate on the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia on Jan. 8. Prince Bahar is the son of the sultan's brother Prince Jefri Bolkiah, making the couple first cousins, Tatler reported.

The event began in the Banquet Hall of Istana Nurul Iman, the sultan's official residence, and seven ceremonies were held in the days that followed, according to the Borneo Bulletin. The traditions included a gift exchange, the presentation of the royal insignia, a three-day wedding ceremony, a dining reception and a ceremonial close.

Marriage between first cousins was encouraged in Ancient Greece

On January 16th, CNN had a article about marriage customs in Bronze Age Greece:

Even more surprising was the discovery that around half of those living on the islands married their cousins, while the proportion on the mainland was about a third.

“It’s not 100%, but not everybody has a cousin,” Stockhammer said.

“People have studied thousands of ancestral genomes and there’s hardly any evidence for societies in the past of cousin-cousin marriage. From a historical perspective this really is outstanding,” he added.

Stockhammer and his colleagues believe such unions were down to economics, to prevent family land from being divided.

He explained: “All of the driving force is to unite the land within the family. If you look at what people were growing, it was grapes and also olives for olive oil, but both grapes and olives might need to be at a certain place for decades.

“If you marry in your family it means that you focus on staying in the same area.”

He said that, by contrast, in other parts of Bronze Age Europe, women often traveled hundreds of miles in order to marry. Resources in those areas would have been more plentiful, he explained.

“In Greece, there’s not much space to grow things and things that you plant need decades to grow,” he said.

“We can completely see the cousin to cousin marriage from the genomic evidence. It’s too many people doing it to say it’s pure chance – but it isn’t 100%. I would say it was quite a strict practice.

“It’s an unwritten rule because everyone has done it.”