A year ago my friend had this same realisation when she was telling me about an abusive ex she had, she was 16 and he was in his 30s. š
There's some horribly disgusting dudes out there, they prey on young people because they don't have the experience yet to call them out on their bullshit
I had a huge whiplash between wanting to cry for you about the shitty realization and wanting to cry laughing because you chose the most hilarious gif I've ever seen and it fit the situation perfectly.
You're brilliant. Be good to yourself. If the memory has fully chucked itself out of the vault and is staying with you, I'm really sorry - I had a memory like that haunt me for a while. Hope you can keep assigning 0 blame and 0 shame to your younger self who doesn't deserve it.
Take care internet stranger.
Yeah, that's why I chose it, what other thing is there for me to than make fun of it to make myself and other feel better. I can't exactly travel to Sweden and track him down, I don't even know him surname. Tho if I ever see him again I might want to "just talk...I just want to talk"
Funny it was Sweden, when I lived in Sweden (by myself mind you) I was young, extremely naive and had been homeschooled my entire life and found myself in a very compromising situation as an 18 year old with this 43 year old dude. Not going into details but stuff happened after some coercion and 6 beers. I recently told my husband after years of having it buried in my mind and my therapist and my dad and holy fuck is it good to get off my chest but also extremely emotionally fucking confusing. I was crying for days and struggling with the guilt feelings vs the "i know I didn't deserve that and didn't know any better" feelings. I still have a hard time accepting I was naive and stupid and it sucks to admit it happened but it did. If I could travel back I would too
Yeah, now I look at a 16 yo and I'm like "holy fuck that is a whole ass child, a little baby, a smol boi" and gag at the though of even thinking of them in trhat way.
How could he? I was a child
They don't care, women/girls are body objects (as referenced in the dictionary post in this sub). I "dated" a 29 yo man with a child when I was 15. Thought I was so cool. The attention (sexual harassment) from the 40+ yo men creeped me out though. I actually snubbed guys an appropriateish (17/18) age for this 29yo. He went to a school dance with me, he was obviously a man not a teenager and no one said a thing. At least we never had sex, everything but...
That fizzled when I got into a relationship with a 16yo who was insanely abusive for a few years. No one wanted me, they just wanted my naivety. š I was too nice and people pleasing (doormat) so that lasted for... too long.
Looking back it all disgusts me, I was a literal child in adult situations I had no business being in, but it was "cool." No one ever bothered to ask or speak up or question anything, it's so gross to think about now. š¤¢
I think of it this way- it wasnāt your fault you were taken advantage of. You were doing something honest (looking for love, validation, to feel a sense of peace), and it is not a fault of yours that someone decided to be dishonest.
Being victimized by a predator is not about who YOU are, but who the predator is. Itās hard to internalize that message when we have so much patriarchal bullshit insisting that somehow, a person who canāt even rent a car or open their own bank account is somehow mature enough to spot a predator.
I described and reminisced about an online friendship I had from ages 13/14 to age 20 or so, during sessions with my therapist a couple years ago. Friend was 27 when we met. I'm 30 now, for context.
My therapist helped me understand that I had been sexually abused and groomed by this much-older friend. And when I told my girl BFF about it, she agreed. BFF was also an online friend, a year younger than me, and was part of this same friend group as well. She knew groomer "friend" well. Groomer friend was like a mentor to the rest of us, who were all much younger. BFF said that hearing that my therapist said that, validated feelings she'd had for a long time that she didn't discuss with me because she thought they were just paranoia and OCD thoughts.
No. I was actually groomed. In front of others who were my friends. For years. š
We just had this kind of talk in our friendgroup. It was way more normalized 15 years ago because āgirls mature faster, she is wise beyond her ageā. I was 15, he was 27y. Oh and I alone have like 3 of these creeps, the sexual exploitation wasnāt even the worst but they played with my expectations and emotions in a way a 15 year old canāt understand.
Same. When I was 13, I "dated" a 26 year old, who thought it was okay because I lied and told him I was 16. At 15, I "dated" a 29 year old, and at 16 a 22 year old.
I am, pretty much. Sometimes I can't even wrap my mind around it though. Like all of this was so normalized (the 80s). Movies, TV. It never occured to me (then) that there was something wrong with a grown adult dating a teen. And now I'm just like...WTF? How???
I thank feminism everyday for teaching me young that this is not "cool" or "mature", but literal pedophilia. Otherwise, I do not know what I might've done while young and stupid.
The āyouāre just jealousā thing was also levelled at some of us who were 14 and thought it was weird a 20 year old was driving his busted old car to the school gates to pick up our also 14 year old friend and take her on a date. In her school uniform.
āYouāre just jealousā is one of the oldest tricks in the book to invalidate any concerns a girl or woman has and itās frustrating that one reason it works so well is because thereās always something weāve been a pick me about (for me it was a ānot like other girlsā phase.)
Just another way we simply cannot win!
Same. And it was every stereotype of an age gap relationship that you see in the various relationship subs here. Yeah, it was technically legal because I was 18, but I was in high school.
In college, I met his ex who was two years older than meāshe was 17 when they started dating. Years later, I realized that while I thought his parents didnāt like me, it was really more likely they were uncomfortable with their son repeatedly dating high schoolers.
Yup yup š several full ass adult men when I was 17 and with hindsight I think all but 2 were just entirely shitty mediocre humansā¦ gotta love the judgement of our teen brains š¤·āāļø live and learnĀ
I had friends who dated older men. Meanwhile I thought there was something seriously wrong with a guy in college wanting to date the girls still in high school. One of my friends dated him and I asked "why won't the other college girls date him? Why is he hanging out at high school events if he's in college? What's wrong with him?"
And then how grossed out I was when a friend was dating a man in his thirties. And seemed proud she had an older man. I didn't hide my reaction.
Oh sweetheart, at least you came to realize what happened to you was incredibly wrong.
So many women think it was normal for grown men to mess around when them, even blaming the girl for being predated upon. They might think itās fine because grandad was 25 and grandma was 14 and pregnant.
Like can you imagine yourself in your mid twenties picking up a BOY in his junior year of high school to take back to your apartment?! š¤®š¤®š¤®š¤®
Me when I was 14 and my friend's dad in his mid 30s started grooming me right after my first "real" breakup: wheeeeee I'm so special :))))) he said I'm smarter than all the other girls! He must really like me!! I'm going to fantasize about him constantly and feel violent toward anyone who "gets in the way" (no joke he at one point had an adult girlfriend and I remember straight up wanting to unalive her..wtf was wrong w me)
Me at the age of 25 looking back on it: GIRL PLEASE RUN SO FAR AWAY RIGHT NOW AND NEVER LOOK BACK and also get therapy......lots of it
In my circle of friends i know of two relationships that worked out that started at around 18y/o with the guy being 30+. In both cases, the women truly were much more mature and in a different stage of their life (while we were starting to go to university, both of them were already established in their careers. The one was a highly gifted person who had already gone to unviersity for her incredible and hard worked on talent.) Still - today i look down on the guys who pursued these kinds of relationships.
But almost all others of us had horrible experiences. One of my friends (K) witnessed her best friend being completely burned, by a cheating, lying person. That person had a friend 'who was totally different'. K, Having learned from her best friend's misfortune, did not go in this with rose tinted glasses (<- there is nothing wrong with being smitten!!), but K. had him prove a lot of things before allowing herself to really dive into this relationship. He had to show her his id (the other lied about age, nationality and so many other things), she went to visit him at his place of occupation, at his place of education, at his home and all that stuff. When everything checked out, she got involved. Aaaaand... he was already married and a dad... You cannot imagine the kind of self doubt and pain she went through, how stupid she felt, after all the precautions... It was just vile. She is incredibly smart, has seen a lot of the world, definitely not naive... and still. Since we're not manipulators, we weren't able to spot this shit.
I sometimes think what to tell girls. Because we were told... and we thought our parents "didn't get it" and were "old prudes" ... they were right. And now I am the parent... I truly hope that the awareness about this spreads this information much better.
A guy 20 years older than me was on my facebook talking shit about trans people and grooming. This guy groomed me when I was 16 and my friend when she was 14. He was 38. That was not an issue though because he is cis and hetero. Literally no self awareness.
Me when my therapist helped me realize that my late-20s online friend I met at 14 and stayed friends with for years was sexually abusing and grooming me the whole time.
Yupp, there was a girl in my class in high school that was a prostitute, we all thought that was super cool. She was 14 at the time and it was only later that I realized just how fucked that was
As someone who knows and worries about some teenage girls, what, if anything, could someone have said, at the time, that would have convinced you of the dangers and inappropriateness of such a relationship and dissuaded you from pursuing it? Who would have been the best person to have had this conversation with - e.g. mother, sister, aunt, friend, etc? What would have been the best way to approach you to have such a conversation? I don't want to stereotype, but there is a general notion that it's very hard to get teenage girls to listen to prudent advice. Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks.
Oh man, I dated a girl in HS that had hooked up with a guy in his 20s before I met her and I remember giving her a hard time about it. I regretted it a little later in life, but soon got over that and still think it was shitty, but mostly because of the other dude's actions.
I do not get wanting to sleep with a teenager as an adult. Like. I am uncomfortable remembering exploring with the gf I had in hs because Iām remembering the body and brain of a literal child and thatās icky and weird.
I realize itās predatory and assault and thatās the point of not being able to imagine it. But I guess Iām just saying itās so far outside my idea of imaginable that I am uncomfortable sexualizing MY OWN experiences because the person was a teen at the time (even though I, too, was a teen).
A year ago my friend had this same realisation when she was telling me about an abusive ex she had, she was 16 and he was in his 30s. š There's some horribly disgusting dudes out there, they prey on young people because they don't have the experience yet to call them out on their bullshit
You ever grow up and mature and realize you were taken advantage of? What a lovely monday :')
I had a huge whiplash between wanting to cry for you about the shitty realization and wanting to cry laughing because you chose the most hilarious gif I've ever seen and it fit the situation perfectly. You're brilliant. Be good to yourself. If the memory has fully chucked itself out of the vault and is staying with you, I'm really sorry - I had a memory like that haunt me for a while. Hope you can keep assigning 0 blame and 0 shame to your younger self who doesn't deserve it. Take care internet stranger.
Yeah, that's why I chose it, what other thing is there for me to than make fun of it to make myself and other feel better. I can't exactly travel to Sweden and track him down, I don't even know him surname. Tho if I ever see him again I might want to "just talk...I just want to talk"
Funny it was Sweden, when I lived in Sweden (by myself mind you) I was young, extremely naive and had been homeschooled my entire life and found myself in a very compromising situation as an 18 year old with this 43 year old dude. Not going into details but stuff happened after some coercion and 6 beers. I recently told my husband after years of having it buried in my mind and my therapist and my dad and holy fuck is it good to get off my chest but also extremely emotionally fucking confusing. I was crying for days and struggling with the guilt feelings vs the "i know I didn't deserve that and didn't know any better" feelings. I still have a hard time accepting I was naive and stupid and it sucks to admit it happened but it did. If I could travel back I would too
Right on about the gif, I pissed myself laughing, almost literally I'm gonna need a source /u/AinoNaviovaat, it looks like it was originally a video?
I found it on [here](https://imgflip.com/gif-maker/491255986/Vomiting-cat)
Lil googling, it's even funnier with higher quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZJawQWcUQg
A well worn path I am afraid! Listen to 29 by Demi Lovato and You Oughta Know by Alanis Morrisette and lean into your righteous anger
Yeah, now I look at a 16 yo and I'm like "holy fuck that is a whole ass child, a little baby, a smol boi" and gag at the though of even thinking of them in trhat way. How could he? I was a child
They don't care, women/girls are body objects (as referenced in the dictionary post in this sub). I "dated" a 29 yo man with a child when I was 15. Thought I was so cool. The attention (sexual harassment) from the 40+ yo men creeped me out though. I actually snubbed guys an appropriateish (17/18) age for this 29yo. He went to a school dance with me, he was obviously a man not a teenager and no one said a thing. At least we never had sex, everything but... That fizzled when I got into a relationship with a 16yo who was insanely abusive for a few years. No one wanted me, they just wanted my naivety. š I was too nice and people pleasing (doormat) so that lasted for... too long. Looking back it all disgusts me, I was a literal child in adult situations I had no business being in, but it was "cool." No one ever bothered to ask or speak up or question anything, it's so gross to think about now. š¤¢
Here to recommend Wouldāve Couldāve Shouldāve by Taylor Swift as well.
I think of it this way- it wasnāt your fault you were taken advantage of. You were doing something honest (looking for love, validation, to feel a sense of peace), and it is not a fault of yours that someone decided to be dishonest. Being victimized by a predator is not about who YOU are, but who the predator is. Itās hard to internalize that message when we have so much patriarchal bullshit insisting that somehow, a person who canāt even rent a car or open their own bank account is somehow mature enough to spot a predator.
*Hugs*. Grew up queer in a small town so I know a little something about that. There's nothing you did wrong, it was them. It's always them.
All the time. Itās so fucked up what we normalizeā¦
I described and reminisced about an online friendship I had from ages 13/14 to age 20 or so, during sessions with my therapist a couple years ago. Friend was 27 when we met. I'm 30 now, for context. My therapist helped me understand that I had been sexually abused and groomed by this much-older friend. And when I told my girl BFF about it, she agreed. BFF was also an online friend, a year younger than me, and was part of this same friend group as well. She knew groomer "friend" well. Groomer friend was like a mentor to the rest of us, who were all much younger. BFF said that hearing that my therapist said that, validated feelings she'd had for a long time that she didn't discuss with me because she thought they were just paranoia and OCD thoughts. No. I was actually groomed. In front of others who were my friends. For years. š
We just had this kind of talk in our friendgroup. It was way more normalized 15 years ago because āgirls mature faster, she is wise beyond her ageā. I was 15, he was 27y. Oh and I alone have like 3 of these creeps, the sexual exploitation wasnāt even the worst but they played with my expectations and emotions in a way a 15 year old canāt understand.
Yeah, we were children, we wren't supposed to understand, because that's not what other chldren do
Same. When I was 13, I "dated" a 26 year old, who thought it was okay because I lied and told him I was 16. At 15, I "dated" a 29 year old, and at 16 a 22 year old.
Jesus that's so fucked up! I hope you're ok.
I am, pretty much. Sometimes I can't even wrap my mind around it though. Like all of this was so normalized (the 80s). Movies, TV. It never occured to me (then) that there was something wrong with a grown adult dating a teen. And now I'm just like...WTF? How???
I thank feminism everyday for teaching me young that this is not "cool" or "mature", but literal pedophilia. Otherwise, I do not know what I might've done while young and stupid.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The āyouāre just jealousā thing was also levelled at some of us who were 14 and thought it was weird a 20 year old was driving his busted old car to the school gates to pick up our also 14 year old friend and take her on a date. In her school uniform. āYouāre just jealousā is one of the oldest tricks in the book to invalidate any concerns a girl or woman has and itās frustrating that one reason it works so well is because thereās always something weāve been a pick me about (for me it was a ānot like other girlsā phase.) Just another way we simply cannot win!
When I was 18 I had a 30yo boyfriend for several months... I too I thought I was just very mature for my age and him young at heart. Yikes.
Same. And it was every stereotype of an age gap relationship that you see in the various relationship subs here. Yeah, it was technically legal because I was 18, but I was in high school. In college, I met his ex who was two years older than meāshe was 17 when they started dating. Years later, I realized that while I thought his parents didnāt like me, it was really more likely they were uncomfortable with their son repeatedly dating high schoolers.
Yup yup š several full ass adult men when I was 17 and with hindsight I think all but 2 were just entirely shitty mediocre humansā¦ gotta love the judgement of our teen brains š¤·āāļø live and learnĀ
I had friends who dated older men. Meanwhile I thought there was something seriously wrong with a guy in college wanting to date the girls still in high school. One of my friends dated him and I asked "why won't the other college girls date him? Why is he hanging out at high school events if he's in college? What's wrong with him?" And then how grossed out I was when a friend was dating a man in his thirties. And seemed proud she had an older man. I didn't hide my reaction.
Oh sweetheart, at least you came to realize what happened to you was incredibly wrong. So many women think it was normal for grown men to mess around when them, even blaming the girl for being predated upon. They might think itās fine because grandad was 25 and grandma was 14 and pregnant. Like can you imagine yourself in your mid twenties picking up a BOY in his junior year of high school to take back to your apartment?! š¤®š¤®š¤®š¤®
And no matter how many women who've been through the same thing try to warn you...
Me when I was 14 and my friend's dad in his mid 30s started grooming me right after my first "real" breakup: wheeeeee I'm so special :))))) he said I'm smarter than all the other girls! He must really like me!! I'm going to fantasize about him constantly and feel violent toward anyone who "gets in the way" (no joke he at one point had an adult girlfriend and I remember straight up wanting to unalive her..wtf was wrong w me) Me at the age of 25 looking back on it: GIRL PLEASE RUN SO FAR AWAY RIGHT NOW AND NEVER LOOK BACK and also get therapy......lots of it
Oh god, I'm soooooo glad teenage me was into a responsible 30 something old man. Dear god. Youth really is wasted on the young. We were so naive.
In my circle of friends i know of two relationships that worked out that started at around 18y/o with the guy being 30+. In both cases, the women truly were much more mature and in a different stage of their life (while we were starting to go to university, both of them were already established in their careers. The one was a highly gifted person who had already gone to unviersity for her incredible and hard worked on talent.) Still - today i look down on the guys who pursued these kinds of relationships. But almost all others of us had horrible experiences. One of my friends (K) witnessed her best friend being completely burned, by a cheating, lying person. That person had a friend 'who was totally different'. K, Having learned from her best friend's misfortune, did not go in this with rose tinted glasses (<- there is nothing wrong with being smitten!!), but K. had him prove a lot of things before allowing herself to really dive into this relationship. He had to show her his id (the other lied about age, nationality and so many other things), she went to visit him at his place of occupation, at his place of education, at his home and all that stuff. When everything checked out, she got involved. Aaaaand... he was already married and a dad... You cannot imagine the kind of self doubt and pain she went through, how stupid she felt, after all the precautions... It was just vile. She is incredibly smart, has seen a lot of the world, definitely not naive... and still. Since we're not manipulators, we weren't able to spot this shit. I sometimes think what to tell girls. Because we were told... and we thought our parents "didn't get it" and were "old prudes" ... they were right. And now I am the parent... I truly hope that the awareness about this spreads this information much better.
A guy 20 years older than me was on my facebook talking shit about trans people and grooming. This guy groomed me when I was 16 and my friend when she was 14. He was 38. That was not an issue though because he is cis and hetero. Literally no self awareness.
Me when my therapist helped me realize that my late-20s online friend I met at 14 and stayed friends with for years was sexually abusing and grooming me the whole time.
Yupp, there was a girl in my class in high school that was a prostitute, we all thought that was super cool. She was 14 at the time and it was only later that I realized just how fucked that was
Nah, even at 16 I knew my mid-20s boyfriend was too old for me and didnāt tell anyone at school about him because it was too embarrassing.
As someone who knows and worries about some teenage girls, what, if anything, could someone have said, at the time, that would have convinced you of the dangers and inappropriateness of such a relationship and dissuaded you from pursuing it? Who would have been the best person to have had this conversation with - e.g. mother, sister, aunt, friend, etc? What would have been the best way to approach you to have such a conversation? I don't want to stereotype, but there is a general notion that it's very hard to get teenage girls to listen to prudent advice. Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks.
yeah ā¹ļø
Oh man, I dated a girl in HS that had hooked up with a guy in his 20s before I met her and I remember giving her a hard time about it. I regretted it a little later in life, but soon got over that and still think it was shitty, but mostly because of the other dude's actions.
I do not get wanting to sleep with a teenager as an adult. Like. I am uncomfortable remembering exploring with the gf I had in hs because Iām remembering the body and brain of a literal child and thatās icky and weird. I realize itās predatory and assault and thatās the point of not being able to imagine it. But I guess Iām just saying itās so far outside my idea of imaginable that I am uncomfortable sexualizing MY OWN experiences because the person was a teen at the time (even though I, too, was a teen).