general I don't see how someone could fall in love with their childhood friend

[AlicornSpell 146]

While it is very rare, some people have fell in love with their childhood friend and married them, but they are a minority compared to the married couples who first met each other as adults. 

The whole "falling in love with your childhood friend thing" does happen a lot in Anime/Manga and other forms of fiction, but it rarely actually happens in real life. 

The Westermarck effect, also known as reverse sexual imprinting, is a psychological hypothesis that people who live in close domestic proximity during the first few years of their lives become desensitized to sexual attraction.

Here's the Wikipedia page about the Westermarck effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect

So basically, If you knew someone before age 10 & were consistently around them, there is often an effect on your brain where you’ll associate them as a sibling. You simply won’t be attracted to them. There are a few small Jewish communities in Israel that raise children collectively & are having issues with people not marrying within the immediate community due to not being attracted to people they were raised with.

[Brony Number 42 10,069]

It seems like I have that effect on women at any age.

[Lucky Bolt 35,062]

It's very much possible, I've heard of it happening before. I have someone in my family who even married her childhood best friend and they have a family now. I haven't seen any of my own childhood friends since...I was a kid lol. 

[AlicornSpell 146]

9 minutes ago, Lucky Bolt said:

It's very much possible, I've heard of it happening before. I have someone in my family who even married her childhood best friend and they have a family now. I haven't seen any of my own childhood friends since...I was a kid lol. 

Possible, but still very rare. I never had feelings for any of my childhood friends because they felt like siblings to me. And I never knew anyone who fell in love with their childhood friend. 

[Kronos the Revenant 1,971]

Joke’s on you, I never had any childhood friends and no girl in their right mind would fall in love with me. 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃 I’m not broken, just stating facts from experience. 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃

[AlicornSpell 146]

Here's the TV Tropes page that is about the Westermarck effect: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LikeBrotherAndSister

Here are a couple of a sentences from the "real life" section of the TV Tropes page about the Westermarck effect:

 

• A particularly nasty example of this trope occurred in 16th century France. At the time, marriages among royalty were arranged, and some of the unions were less than joyous. As a result, someone got the bright idea that if the young princes were raised with their respective fiancées from an early age, they would become accustomed to one another and grow up to form stable marriages. Unfortunately, since the couples weren't too closely related by blood or adoption, no one counted on the Westermarck effect described above. Thus, when it came time for the couples to grow up and get married, they saw each other as this trope, and the process of trying to produce heirs squicked them so much that they did so as little as possible, if at all. The nasty part comes in when, due to lack of heirs, the ruling Valois dynasty died out, and the resultant Succession Crisis led to civil war.

 

 

Here's a quote I found on the internet a long time ago about a guy talking about his female friend he knew for a long time and how he couldn't see her as anything romantic:

"in my experience, I am a heterosexual male, and there was several instances where I have seen my life-long best friend (female) completely nude and was not aroused at all. Since I have been around her for so long, and saw her more of as family than a possible mate. I felt more like when you walk into your parents room while they are getting it on rather than lets say, walking into a prostitute house."

 

Edited September 27, 2020 by AlicornSpell

[Vefka 1,499]

Hm, It didn't happen to me. I have a childhood friend, but I last met her ~5-6 years ago, thought I don't see a reason why I wouldn't fall in love with her, even when we were kids I was attracted to her in a boy-girl way

[Cagey 4,248]

Interesting. I would comment with my own experience, but looking back, I don’t think I was close enough with most of my childhood friends to count it. 

[Ittoni 538]

I had childhood friends in a sense but we were not attracted to each other as far as I know. Our parents tried to ship us to get married but that was only very awkward.

[Evil Pink One 13,506]

1 hour ago, You said:

I did have a crush as a young teen, think about 13, on my neighboring girl I did knew like forever.

Anyway, though, you are true about that stuff. That's why laws against incest are de facto close to be irrelevant. Incest only happens between siblings if they grew up separated and/or didn't know they are siblings.

Not really... Incest still happens even if they grew up together... And childhood friends tend to be together .... It depends on the country and way of thinking. Or influence

[AlicornSpell 146]

5 hours ago, Kujamih said:

Not really... Incest still happens even if they grew up together... And childhood friends tend to be together .... It depends on the country and way of thinking. Or influence

I wouldn't say that childhood friends tend to be together. When compared to most married couples around the whole world, nearly all of them have only known each other since sometime around in their adulthood, and sometimes since their teenage years, but rarely have they known each other since their childhood years. 

[Stardust 641]

I guess if you haven't seen them for years and then you see them again and that. But then even as a kid people did get attracted to ppl but they didn't start out as friends I guess and wasn't necessarily sexual. There is that desenitizing effect tho it seems.

Anime is pretty fake tho anyway sibling stuff ew. 

[Dreambiscuit 9,638]

I don’t think anyone really thinks of a childhood friend as a sibling just because they spend lots of time together. And falling in love over time as certain areas of the brain develop is perfectly feasible. Love is intangible; it can change from one form to another as circumstances change, and can apply to anyone whether they grew up together or not. Psychology can try to explain it one way or another but the mind doesn’t fit into neat little packages of organized data that applies universally to everyone. I firmly believe that childhood friends can fall in love, marry and be happy just like anyone else. If anything, they have an advantage in that they know each other better than most people who meet as adults and they’ve shared many of the same experiences at the same time, giving them a uniquely similar perspective on the world, which I think would bring two people very close in many ways.

[AlicornSpell 146]

16 minutes ago, Dreambiscuit said:

I don’t think anyone really thinks of a childhood friend as a sibling just because they spend lots of time together. And falling in love over time as certain areas of the brain develop is perfectly feasible. Love is intangible; it can change from one form to another as circumstances change, and can apply to anyone whether they grew up together or not. Psychology can try to explain it one way or another but the mind doesn’t fit into neat little packages of organized data that applies universally to everyone. I firmly believe that childhood friends can fall in love, marry and be happy just like anyone else. If anything, they have an advantage in that they know each other better than most people who meet as adults and they’ve shared many of the same experiences at the same time, giving them a uniquely similar perspective on the world, which I think would bring two people very close in many ways.

A lot of people do think of their close childhood friends as siblings since they did grew up with them. There is a reason why someone came up with the concept of the Westermarck effect. 

The Westermarck effect, also known as reverse sexual imprinting, is a psychological hypothesis that people who live in close domestic proximity during the first few years of their lives become desensitized to sexual attraction.

Here's the Wikipedia page about the Westermarck effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect

Also, when compared to most married couples around the whole world, nearly all of them have only known each other since sometime around in their adulthood, and sometimes since their teenage years, but rarely have they known each other since their childhood years

So it is rare for someone to fall in love with their childhood friend and hook up with them. 

[ToastedScone 395]

Weird, I was thinking about this not long ago. I saw all of my male friends more as siblings, even into teenagerhood, and I used to beat myself up mentally because "IT'S NORMAL TO BE ATTRACTED TO MALE FRIENDS, SCONE!!"

I used to get really uncomfortable when people shipped me with male friends and I even tried to force myself into a relationship with one, but he said no, and I was relieved because I didn't want to date a guy I saw as a brother anyway...

Years later, I'm fairly certain it's because I'm a lesbian, but even if I was het I couldn't see myself dating any of them; I can't even see myself dating any of my FEMALE friends from childhood, so I suppose the effect works with a homosexual brain too

[AlicornSpell 146]

4 hours ago, ToastedScone said:

Weird, I was thinking about this not long ago. I saw all of my male friends more as siblings, even into teenagerhood, and I used to beat myself up mentally because "IT'S NORMAL TO BE ATTRACTED TO MALE FRIENDS, SCONE!!"

I used to get really uncomfortable when people shipped me with male friends and I even tried to force myself into a relationship with one, but he said no, and I was relieved because I didn't want to date a guy I saw as a brother anyway...

Years later, I'm fairly certain it's because I'm a lesbian, but even if I was het I couldn't see myself dating any of them; I can't even see myself dating any of my FEMALE friends from childhood, so I suppose the effect works with a homosexual brain too

Yeah, there has to be a reason why most childhood friends don't fall in love each other. And I believe it does have something to do with them thinking of them like as a sibling as a result of growing up together. 

I don't understand what Dreambiscuit is saying when she said "I don’t think anyone really thinks of a childhood friend as a sibling just because they spend lots of time together". A lot of people have known their best friends since childhood, and they think of them as a sibling. 

 

[BornAgainBrony 2,397]

I figure it was a lot more common within the memory of past generations. The shorter the life expectancy, the earlier people would look for a mate. And people tended to live in one place their whole lives. People a hundred years ago often got to live out their years with the same people they played tag with as toddlers. The pain of "moving away" was practically unheard of.

Also, I can think there is no comparison between the two. Meeting as adults and having to spend years establishing a deep connection, vs knowing someone since they were two, and not only knowing who they are, but also knowing who they used to be and how they got here. We should all be so lucky.

[They call me Loyalty 1,948]

There is a component of innocence or ignorance when it comes to the experience of partial love. It is difficult for to me experience exclusive love, when so many aspects of the human being behind our superficial understanding of each other become apparent to my perception. I do not see the other as something different than myself, but rather another aspect of my being. What I mean with this, is that to fall in love, you have to fall for it, fall for the illusion that makes you believe that love exists outside of one, in order to project such kind of emotions towards the other, therefore ignoring an aspect of oneself.
During my childhood I had difficulty to put this kind of knowing into words. But it has been always there, in the back of my mind. It is something of a burden. Sometimes, not knowing can you bring you much happiness. But if ignorance and neglection of reality is the price. Then I rather carry with the weight of knowledge. Enhanced awareness is like a double-edged sword as it can also bring peace when it comes to understand the aspects of life human beings struggle with, especially for those who lingered in the comfort of ignorance for so long.

[AlicornSpell 146]

13 hours ago, BornAgainBrony said:

I figure it was a lot more common within the memory of past generations. The shorter the life expectancy, the earlier people would look for a mate. And people tended to live in one place their whole lives. People a hundred years ago often got to live out their years with the same people they played tag with as toddlers. The pain of "moving away" was practically unheard of.

Also, I can think there is no comparison between the two. Meeting as adults and having to spend years establishing a deep connection, vs knowing someone since they were two, and not only knowing who they are, but also knowing who they used to be and how they got here. We should all be so lucky.

I think there is a comparison between the two or else the concept of the Westermarck effect never would have been theorized. 

You always are going to have a different type of connection to someone that you knew since childhood than you are with someone that you knew during your adult years.

Also, it always seemed rare for childhood friends to fall in out with each other (even 100 years ago). 

[Fluttershutter 2,420]

On 9/27/2020 at 12:01 PM, AlicornSpell said:

So basically, If you knew someone before age 10 & were consistently around them, there is often an effect on your brain where you’ll associate them as a sibling. You simply won’t be attracted to them. There are a few small Jewish communities in Israel that raise children collectively & are having issues with people not marrying within the immediate community due to not being attracted to people they were raised with.

The key word is "often". Often is not always.

[AlicornSpell 146]

13 hours ago, Fluttershutter said:

The key word is "often". Often is not always.

It is rare for childhood friends to fall in love with each other. 

Yes it does happen as evidenced by the stories you hear about, but they're the stories that stand out a lot because people see them as cute and aspirational love stories. Most of the time people see their childhood friend as more of a brother/sister than a potential partner. Or, sometimes one does while the other develops romantic feelings and it ends up in a mess. So Childhood friends barely fall in love with each other because they knew each other as children and feel more sisterly/brotherly. It has to do with incest perception most likely. We usually remember snapshots of people from the time we met, and prepubescent imagery is usually enough to suppress sexual desires. It would feel incestuous. There's no mystery, there's nothing more to learn about the person. So dating them would be borrrring. 

There's a reason why "high school sweetheart" stories are as rare as they are - usually one or both people get curious for who else is out there at some point in their early 20s.

[SparklingSquirrels 21,332]

I did have a male friend when I was a young child (very young, like 3-5). Now he has a kid of his own  

Anyway, it can happen but it isn’t very common. I don’t know if it’s so much about seeing them as a sibling than it is just growing up and knowing that a relationship won’t work just on proximity, since you might have different goals in life or needs/wants in a long-term partnership. 

[Jedishy 3,548]

On 11/26/2020 at 9:53 PM, AlicornSpell said:

There's a reason why "high school sweetheart" stories are as rare as they are - usually one or both people get curious for who else is out there at some point in their early 20s.

Yes such things are rare. That's why they are stories that people aspire to. People seek to do the impossible. No one is gonna make a move about Joe or Jane Doe that punches the clock for 30 years and has 2 kids and a white pickey fence. No struggle. No overcoming odds oe doing a great feat and no one wants to hear about it.

[AlicornSpell 146]

On 2020-12-01 at 10:12 PM, SparklingSwirls said:

I did have a male friend when I was a young child (very young, like 3-5). Now he has a kid of his own  

Anyway, it can happen but it isn’t very common. I don’t know if it’s so much about seeing them as a sibling than it is just growing up and knowing that a relationship won’t work just on proximity, since you might have different goals in life or needs/wants in a long-term partnership. 

I don’t know anyone who married someone who was a childhood friend. People I know who have opposite sex friends from childhood think of them as siblings and the thought of being romantic literally makes them feel sick.

[AlicornSpell 146]

Most people who knew someone for that long feels too much like family for them, so it would be hard for them to make it romantic.