Hi emiko. And another welcome to you.
You are quite young to have been through as much as you have gone through, what with suffering long-term depression and PTSD. And to have been taken advantage of by a person much older than you are. (You may not see it that way at this time, but the day will come that you will. Sixteen is very, very young. I just can't envision any situation where it would be beneficial to one so young to become emotionally and sexually involved with a thirty year old.
DeeAnna, I
can envision a situation where it would be beneficial to one so young to become emotionally and sexually involved with a thirty year old--not necessarily because I'm so visionary or open-minded, but because I once had a close friend (a very attractive 20-odd year old at the time) tell me about just such a relationship she'd had when she was 15, with a 30yo man. Her own take on the relationship, as I recall, was that she was glad she had an older person introduce her to sex, as opposed to someone nearer her own age who would likely have been inexperienced and unlikely to have made it the sweet and enlightening experience that it had been for her.
NOTE: It is not
my judgement that the relationship was beneficial. It was the judgement of the 15-yo girl and later 20-odd-yo woman who told me about it. I defer to the girl and woman, who didn't come across in the least as being traumatized. In fact, given that she had the good judgement of leaving the Co$ after only a few years, I'd have to give her credit for demonstrating good judgement when I knew her.
That girl was a $cn friend whom I'd met in the 70's, who left the Cult about the same time I did, and it was an example of an older man (I) learning from a younger person (her)--in this case, she was 20-odd when she told me about it, but I learned from the experience of a 15-yo, because she (at 20-odd) was relating to her earlier life and simply validating later in life, her judgement at that earlier age. One of the things I "learned" (or had reinforced) is that it isn't automatically damaging or traumatic for a girl of 15 to have sex, even with a 30-yo. (And
why would a 30-yo inflict
more of this implied/purported damage
anyway? As compared to a 16-yo?)
She isn't the only example I knew over the years, but she's the clearest example I can think of that the very commonplace assumption is INCORRECT, that having sex outside marriage is necessarily damaging to a young girl in some way, in the late 20th/early 21st century. A century or so ago, it
was damaging (if known) because a girl's prospects of a good marriage were severely diminished and most people were anchored to the neighborhood/community they grew up in. They had to live with their reputation or leave home with bleak prospects out in the wider world. That situation simply isn't common any more in industrialized countries, nor is the universal
expectation of virginity at marriage--hence, the "severe damage" (or risk of damage) isn't automatic.
I could write a lot about this, but (1) I don't want to derail the thread and (2) I don't want to get too far afield from Emiko's situation. I don't know any more than what she's told us about her relationship with the woman--
and neither does anybody else here, except her. We don't know that there was anything
more traumatic about it than usual when an intense relationship crashes.
I had my first heart-blowing, ga-ga, head-over-heels-Madly-In-Love experience around that same age, and when it crashed it was traumatic for me too. I was f**king
devastated! And like most teenagers, I eventually got over it. And...I don't see that the girl involved being older or younger than I was had anything to do with it. I loved her, she didn't love me the same way--it happens at all ages and I decline to believe it would have been worse if she had been 30 instead of 13. If she had been devastated instead of me, I don't see that I would have been more responsible by being 16 instead of 13. It happens a lot and most people get over it eventually. Some people take the route I did and learn from it--eventually I was glad to have known my loved one, and felt richer for having loved her as I had--regardless of how she felt about me. The pain I suffered for my loss mattered far less than the joy I had experienced while I was with her. (Of course, that's a choice--not trying to tell anyone how
they should think.)
Of course, I didn't see it that way at the time. At the time, I was angry and blamed her--for
how she felt about me! Does anyone have a problem seeing how irrational it is to blame a person for how s/he feels? Or for not knowing that s/he'd feel differently six months later? And does anyone carry the illusion that that kind of emotional irrationality is confined to
teenagers? I'm actually embarrassed at how late in life I was still doing that--blaming a former flame for my feelings of loss, even for a little while; and I've definitely seen that I wasn't the only one in my age bracket to do that.
So--any emotional trauma that a 16 yo girl may suffer from a relationship (sexual or not) with a 30 yo woman--I have trouble seeing how it's a lot different from trauma suffered in a relationship with a 15-yo boy. Well, except that the girl is a lot less likely to get pregnant with the woman.
Now I may be missing your point entirely, DeeAnna. If I have, I'd be curious to hear what it is; but at the same time, I don't want to derail Emiko's introduction thread. I would like to keep it about her, not boys and girls and women and men in general.
It seems to me that she's taking a lot of flak over being young--as if that had any relationship to being able to give advice. I've been a stranger in a strange land, and was glad to accept the advice of much younger people who knew more
about the land than I did. Since Emiko hasn't yet dispensed any real advice, nobody has grounds to judge it as bad.
Hi Helena, IMO, you're misrepresenting ESMB with the above (below - HH) statement.
