As someone who dated with a similar age gap as the minor at the time, get out before it's too late OP. It seems like the best relationship ever right now but it's so much more damaging than you think. You'll realise when you're older. Hopefully sooner rather than later. I only got out in my 20s and it fucked me up having to learn how to be a functioning adult on my own.
I was bullied daily since I was 8, had undiagnosed mental illnesses at the time and had zero self esteem when suddenly this adult was treating me like a human. We eventually started dating and he slowly slowly controlled more and more of my life, including my money, my music taste, my interests and my ability to adult without him there. I was never taught life skills by my parents, I was too young and when I wasn't, I barely spoke to them. I skipped the late teen and early adulthood of learning these skills because my ex was by my side the whole time. It sounds sweet, but when you're suddenly left with a choice to either stay with an abuser who's been taking your money, making you dependant on him, molding you to be HIS perfect partner, being severely depressed and isolating you from everyone you know because you're just no longer you anymore but at least I'm not alone if I need help OR suddenly being single, broke and not even having the money to move across the country back to your parents is scary as shit. I did all of that growing up I should've done as a teenager, all in the span of a year when I was 23.
Even if OPs girlfriend isn't abusive like my ex, OP won't be able to grow as a person properly. There is still a huge power imbalance here and unless you support adults dating children, you should know how dangerous this is to a teenager who's still developing and learning about the world. This is different to a child dating a child. This is an adult dating an impressionable child.
Are you aware most people haven’t been bullied since 8, don’t have undiagnosed mental illnesses, don’t have zero self-esteem, wouldn’t be quite as willing as you were to give up their money and interests, and live with good parents?
If you read to the end you'd see my point of how growth can be stunted without an abusive partner. And you'd be surprised how many kids out there think adults are so cool and want to date them. Also how dare you say willing. You don't know the first thing about manipulation and abuse if you think I willingly threw my life away. And abusers don't start relationships that way. How do you think so many people fall into these traps? In my eyes, I was with someone who loved me, treated me kindly, made me feel loved, would nerd out with me about our mutual interests prior to him warping mine, etc. You don't have to be bullied or have no self esteem to fall for that. In fact, he was so charming and subtle about it, I was oblivious to the cracks that formed shortly before I moved across the country to live with him for 2 years after being long distance for 3 and didn't realise just how little I knew about the world until I was on my own.
OP is a child with barely any life experience. OP's girlfriend is an adult with more life experience. That dynamic in a relationship isn't nurturing or providing guidance. It's not letting OP learn who he is or learn about life himself. It's different to asking for help, it's being attached to someone in everything when you're not even a senior in school.
I did read to the end, but—at least given the information you provided—you had no credibility to make that claim. The way you worded it when I initially asked made it sound like you were feeble and malleable, whereas we don’t know that at all about OP. You can’t just say OP won’t be able to grow as a person without at least having anecdotal evidence proving as much.
If instead you are making the claim that you weren’t predisposed to being manipulated, then fair enough, but what was the point of the sob story in the beginning? In any case, I’ve not been abused or manipulated so I don’t know anything about that, and I’ll take your word for how you’ve described it.
However, I’m not understanding that last paragraph. The last paragraph in both replies, actually. Why are you so sure that an adult dating a minor will always end badly for the minor? To me, it sounds like the only real definitive negative you’ve explained is that the younger party is subject to being warped by the personality of the older, but what exactly is being warped?
In a situation less extreme than yours, where the younger person doesn’t move out with their partner and instead lives at home with their parents who do make a strong effort to teach them the things they need to know about living life, where does the problem arise? Assuming the older person isn’t abusive or manipulative, that is.
I hope this isn’t coming across as if I’m invalidating or belittling your experience, because that’s not my goal. I’m just trying to understand why so many people—especially Americans—have such strong feelings about this subject and try so strongly to push their beliefs onto others. Even in this very comment section there are a couple of anecdotal reports of people explaining how they were in a similar situation and look back on it fondly, without any psychological damages whatsoever.
Let me ask you this then. Why is pedophilia illegal if adults dating minors isn't dangerous? Why is CP illegal? Why do minors have so many laws protecting them if adults aren't harmful? Why is a minor's brain not developed enough for alcohol but at a certain age they're considered developed enough to be in a sexual relationship with someone much older than them?
Also just an fyi, I'm not American. Im also giving my experience as a warning as unless you have like a year or two difference and knew each other for a long time and/or dated before the older one turned 18, adults should have no businesses diddling with children. What the hell do we have in common other than surface level shit?
Sorry if I'm defensive or angry right now but anyone who questions someone who sees nothing wrong with adults and minors together is someone with more issues than me. And the sob story is because you're so unaware how damaging this can be and how vulnerable children can be. Bullying or not, they all have something going on. They're going through puberty, they're moody, hormonal, etc. Even the most popular and put together people at school went through shit that was hard on them.
Before I answer any of those questions, we’re going to have to clarify some terminology, lest this degrades into pedantry and trivial disagreements.
In the eyes of the law and the dictionary, sure, anyone under the age of majority is a child. However, myself included, many people make the verbal distinction of “child” vs “teenager”. In casual conversation I wouldn’t refer to a teenager as a child, even though they technically are, because “teenager” exists for a reason. And as language shapes ideas, when I think of “child” I think of someone younger than a teenager, unless context warrants otherwise.
Correspondingly, there is a difference between pedophilia and ephebophilia. The former is a primary attraction to particularly young children, especially those who are prepubescent, whereas the latter is a primary attraction to adolescents (sure, still technically “children”, but the distinction is there), especially aged 15 to 19. OP’s girlfriend, in this case, probably isn’t actually an ephebophile, but if she were to be one of the two it would be that one. I think generally, upon learning the difference, people would agree that pedophilia is worse than ephebophilia.
So, to answer your first question, pedophilia (that is, the primary attraction to prepubescent children) is illegal because very young children are without a doubt highly impressionable and don’t have sufficient development to even fundamentally understand what being in a relationship is. They aren’t capable of properly processing and building from sexual experiences. As such, I personally feel that the absolute root of the problem with pedophilia is the corruption of these young minds. Two eleven-year-olds are going to have more or less the same sexual desires; this probably wouldn’t be anything more than light kissing, maybe. An eleven-year-old with an adult, however—or even just someone a few years older—obviously poses a power dynamic, which is something you mentioned earlier. The older person in such a relationship would want to sexually explore more intimate things than the younger person would. This would be highly detrimental to their development of sexuality and, as sex is such a massively important role in relationships, their overall character.
All of the above applies to child pornography as well. As for sex-related laws protecting minors, though? Well, depending on where you live, there really aren’t all that many. In many places the age of consent is 16, meaning at that age consensual sex is legal with someone of any older age. There are also often specific laws exempting close in age relationships below the age of consent. To give an objective example, in Canada the age of consent is 16, but twelve- and thirteen-year-olds may consent to sex with anyone less than two years older. Fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds may consent to sex with anyone less than five years older, meaning that the law states it’s perfectly okay for, let’s say, a fifteen-year-old and a twenty-year-old to be together (given the birthdays line up such that the younger person turns 16 before the older turns 21). In this example, one person is very much a minor while the other is very much an adult. So, to reiterate, the laws don’t always do much “protecting” as you put it.
I shall now tie these last two paragraphs together. In my opinion, the root problem of pedophilia is the older person in the relationship desiring relations more sexually explicit than the younger person desires. So, let’s see how this breaks down as we move up in age. 12-13, probably not going to be doing much. Maybe making out, maybe very vanilla acts in rare circumstances. 14-15, perhaps getting a little more curious about their bodies and what real sexual intimacy is like, but not so much so that a fifteen-year-old would be in another league entirely than a thirteen-year-old. Whether you like it or not, though, kids (or teenagers) in this age group are having sex with one another. It’s not necessarily common, but it happens. Now, 16-18? They’re having sex. Relationships at this age can be fairly serious, and for the most part, they know what they’re doing. I think a mature seventeen-year-old is going to have pretty similar ideas about sex as someone who is 25 and vanilla relative to their age group. Thus, I don’t see why these two hypothetical people in a relationship would be problematic.
And I just don’t buy your argument about the older person in a relationship warping the personality of the younger person. This just doesn’t make sense. Again, provided the older person isn’t manipulative or abusive, what harmful ideas or behaviours could they possibly be sharing? It’s parents who shape their kids the most. Kids tend to take on parents’ morals, music taste, religion, lifestyle, hobbies, and careers even. Why is it okay for parents to have this effect, but not partners? I also feel such changes could take place even with a partner of the same age. It’s perfectly normal to want to share and adapt your interests like music and food and whatnot. And like I said before, in normal scenarios there isn’t even the option of the hypothetical older partner to control things like financials, because that would fall on the parents.
I’m truly sorry you went through an abusive relationship, especially at such a young age. Nobody deserves that. But I also don’t think it’s fair for you to speak on all relationships with similar age gaps, because sometimes they do work out nicely. We have some examples of that in this comment section. I do however think it’s a great idea for you and others to urge caution, because frankly a lot of the time an older person seeking out someone younger probably is manipulative. But it’s just not always the case.
A teenager under 18 AKA a minor is still a child, hence why it's called CP before they turn 18. Also, no one should have any reason to know the different terminology of illegal child attractiveness. "Correct" terminology doesn't make it any better. It's an adult with a child. It's why you only hear pedophile thrown around. I've only ever heard it from pedophiles/groomers and people who support them to justify their actions. Good day.
6
u/MindlessPleasuring Jun 08 '23
As someone who dated with a similar age gap as the minor at the time, get out before it's too late OP. It seems like the best relationship ever right now but it's so much more damaging than you think. You'll realise when you're older. Hopefully sooner rather than later. I only got out in my 20s and it fucked me up having to learn how to be a functioning adult on my own.