Is it romantic, or is there too much of an ick factor?

Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nz or fill out this form.

Dear Hera,

I talked to a guy for two or three hours recently, and there was a real connection. We’re both single, heterosexual, close in age, live near each other and know a lot of the same people, but hadn’t met before. I don’t like meeting random strangers online and have hoped to meet someone the old-fashioned way. The problem is that he’s my close friend’s sister’s ex-husband, and I can just imagine the awkwardness it would cause if we started a relationship.

My friend might cut me off completely. If things went well, I would be his nephew’s dad’s new partner, which is a little too close for comfort. It’s not as if it would be incestuous, but there’s an ick factor. It’s not Jemaine Clement’s ‘shagging your best friend’s daughter’ icky, and we live under laws that say you can marry your cousin, but I’m not 100% comfortable. At the same time, it’s great to meet someone I can relate to so well, and I’m tempted to say ‘to hell with them’.

I’ve believed in leaving romance to analogue fate, but maybe it’s more acceptable these days to meet unrelated people, cut randomly from the world. What to do?

Barking Up the Wrong Family Tree

Dear Barking,

With the caveat that every situation is different, and depends on lingering ancient grievances, how close the family is, and how likely you are to end up at Christmas functions – from a purely academic perspective, your interest in this person doesn’t sound remotely scandalous to me. 

New Zealand is too small and parochial a country to be splitting hairs over dating a friend’s sibling’s ex. It’s impossible to meet anyone in this country without them accidentally turning out to be your ex-wife’s chiropractor’s son, or the cousin of your enemy. Admittedly, your situation is slightly more uncommon, but unless your friend’s sibling’s ex had a very acrimonious break-up, I can’t see anything wrong with asking him out! 

The fact that you have many friends in common and haven’t met each other before suggests that you’re unlikely to be constantly running into one another if things go south. 

The idea that we should all be pairing off with perfect strangers is a weirdly modern notion. For most of human history, people found their partners from a much smaller and more interconnected pool of people. Read any biography of someone born before the age of Hinge, and they’re basically guaranteed to have had several affairs with their cousin’s wives, or run off with their former mistresses’ 16-year-old daughters. Or maybe that’s just lesbians and 20th-century authors. By historical standards, your dilemma barely moves the impropriety needle.  

Personally, I’m all for anything that brings more romance to this world. If your friend is standing in your way without an airtight reason, they are a craven hoarder of love! We should lean into the messy interconnected business of being human, and get better at setting our relatives up with our friends and colleagues and exes, until we are all hopelessly enmeshed in a terrible sexual and romantic web from which we cannot escape. 

This, to me, is infinitely more romantic than the indignity of flinging yourself onto the conveyor belt of the digital sexual marketplace, and maximising your USPs in the hopes of finding lasting love.

I can’t see why your friend would honestly object to this, unless there’s some important context missing from your letter, like the person you’re interested in had a very acrimonious divorce with your friend’s sibling, and they’re legitimately worried for you. 

I don’t think this is a situation where you need to ask permission. Your life is your own, and if you feel strongly enough that this connection is worth pursuing, there’s no need to feel constrained by social etiquette.

However, there’s no harm in raising the situation with your friend and seeing what they think. This way, you’ll know in advance whether they have a strong objection, or whether you’re missing some important context. 

You might discover your friend thinks this is a good idea, and is happy to set you up!

You might discover some ancient lore about their sibling’s relationship that makes you rethink the entire thing. 

You might discover your friend is weird about it for no reason at all, in which case “to hell with it” is still a completely viable response. 

I think you should ask your friend what they think. There’s no point agonising over the potential fallout if the fallout is purely hypothetical. 

My vote will always be on the side of sticking your neck out for love! If you feel a strong connection with someone, and can talk for several hours without getting sick of them, that’s worth 100 meandering Tinder conversations.