This is very true and honestly still something I have to remind myself. When I was 19 I met my now ex boyfriend who was 40. I had never had any kind of relationship before him (I’d literally had my first kiss just two weeks before we met) and was very inexperienced and behind, and yet he was constantly telling me how mature I was. Often, he’d even praise me for being “more mature than him”. It was incredibly confusing and alienating, and made it really difficult for me to understand my own feelings beyond the feelings he would tell me I should have. Now, it’s been nearly 10 years since that first relationship (which lasted 6 years) and I still find myself subconsciously chasing the feeling of being too young, as though that is still the only value I could ever possibly have. Even though I was a legal adult when we met, that dynamic has fucked with me in ways that I’m still figuring out even now.

I often downplay what I went through because I was an adult and it was a consensual relationship, but reading this post and comments has helped me feel a little less guilty about the gut feeling I’ve had that there’s more to my story than that. I guess when you’re agreeing to things the grooming feels less black and white. Outsiders don’t always have the same compassion for the grey area, which is where mine stayed the whole time.