Dear Auntie Kate:

Appears: Anonymous

Dear JJ,

One of the wonderful things about cousin relationships is that they are permanent. There's a delightful old saying that your Aunt Kate thinks is just precious and it applies just perfectly to cousin couples. "You can choose your friends, but not your relatives."  When this sweet child is a lovely young debutante at 18 you will be a suave young man of 21, and somehow a part of her life. When she is a freshette at college, you'll be a handsome and mature senior. When she graduates from college, you'll be a  successful junior professional. No matter what, you will continue to have a familial connection for as long as you are both alive.

It's one of the facts of life. No, this summer probably won't be the last  time you see her. It might be the last time you meet in that extended childhood we cling to until the responsibilities of adulthood take over and we start the long wonderfully winding road that leads to the sunset.

It's time for you to start building that life long relationship.  Tell  her she's a wonderful, lovely young woman. Tell her you want to be her companion and special friend. And, if you're sure that you do, you tell her that you love her. Are you going to be separated? Write letters my dear boy! Send cards. Make the telephone ring. Not to the point of fixation, but to the point where she always thinks of you fondly and would like to be with you if she could. As she ages into adulthood, if you both do want to be together, you will have many years to be so.

But, now JJ, the worst news.  Just keep thinking with the head on your shoulders. There is a large age difference between eighteen and fifteen. If you don't want to be vilified by your family for seducing this appealing and delicious child, don't do it. They will find out, they will react negatively and strongly.  Remember, the ground rules are quite different between those two ages. Not to be crass young man but after a date, fifteen year old girls think they may get kissed goodnight. Eighteen year old men think they may get laid.  Don't worry, that difference in desire and expectation will narrow quickly over the next two or three years, and by the time you are both in your twenties you will both be about the same age and playing by the same ground rules. Believe it or not. By then you might be living in a cousin couple accepting state.

Remember that fifteen year old girls are pretty easy to overwhelm. Kate is just rubbing her hands together with glee for you! My goodness, don't mess this one up!  You want to nurture this relationship for a long, long time. It's true that you can't choose your relatives, but it's also true that you can choose to tell them to get lost. Be gentle dear JJ, and don't try to bowl this sweet child over. Your old and crafty Aunt Kate perceives, perhaps, that if you can seduce her before you are nineteen the age difference makes the sexual relationship legal. If that's true you are a nasty, naughty man and really trying to justify thinking with the wrong head by technicality. Kate always wants to encourage the best in us, so I won't take that path any further. I am sure it was just a flash of wicked imagination on my part.

You just love this lovely young woman, let her know, and then treat her like  you wanted to be kissing her sweetly goodnight for the next ninety years.  You never know, when she's old enough to start, you may be the man she's always dreamed of meeting. Particularly if you plant the seeds of affection and desire now, and let them grow.

Oh Kate misses the enthusiasm of youth. (Sigh).  I am sorry honest  affection and patience are all I can suggest to you.
 

Your
 

Aunt Kate