'When I asked him why, he said, 'Because you’re a tease. That's like dangling a steak in front of a tiger and not letting him eat it.''
who have"dated" older men as teenagers and later realized they were predators to share their stories.
"We would talk on Instagram when it wasn't summer and I wasn't at camp. He made me feel so special. I didn’t even apply anywhere else for college. At college, he said there was an unspoken rule that staff don’t date freshmen. I believed him and waited on him. Moreover, a lot of the boys in my class did the same to freshman girls when we were seniors. It seems like they learned from the men before them. So sad." —Anonymous, Massachusetts"I was 18, a freshman in college, and he was 36. I thought I was so cool for having an older boyfriend. What I realize now, at 34, is that I wasn’t cool; he was just creepy. He would introduce me to his friends as his 18-year-old girlfriend. Every time, he would mention my age.
His pressuring me to have relations felt like rape. I kept going back and forth in my mind over whether I should have, or whether I did the right thing by cutting all contact — which was quite hard since he was my nephew's uncle. "He was controlling and dictated when I could be out of the house, how much money I had access to, and who he approved of me spending time with. He never hit me, but he preyed on my insecurities and shame to control me.
I broke up with him after about three months, and his mom reached out to me multiple times, offering to take me out to lunch to talk about getting back together with her son." —"When I was 17, I met a man who was 30. He quickly gained my trust and pushed himself into my life as the one I should turn to for everything and the only one who really understood me.
"Now, I relate much more to his friends. If one of my friends was dating an 18-year-old, I would be very uncomfortable with that friend bringing their partner to parties I’m hosting. Massive red flag." —Anonymous, California"I was around 13 when I first formed a relationship with a man who was 8 years older than me when we first started communicating. I was the 'little sister' figure of his then-girlfriend, which is how we met. I began chatting with him at her request.
"He would know how to gain our trust in a new situation to make us feel comfortable and included. I still find myself thinking back on what a creep this guy was and how wrong this was for someone that much older to prey on their younger staff." —Anonymous, Illinois"I used to serve him coffee when I was 16. He worked at the GameStop down the street. We chatted for a while, and then I turned 17 and was headed into my senior year of high school.
"Needless to say, I was hurt and ended up losing my virginity to some guy in a bar a little less than a year later just to get it over with." —Anonymous, New Jersey"I was 11 when I met him. He was 16 and a friend of my sister. He was a protective, big-brother type. Over time, we developed a friendship in our own right. By the time I was 15 and he 20, it was no longer platonic. We were together for five years.
After it was over, he still threatened me and tried to sexually harass me for years, visiting and circling my store up to four times a day looking for me. I would die of anxiety every time and hide in the storage rooms. The managers had to blacklist him. And to address it: My relationship with my dad is very supportive. My mother invested a lot of time in telling me I was unattractive and not very smart. Besides all this, my family doesn't really believe in sharing emotions or personal issues with other people, so he kind of checked all the boxes at the time. I was never attracted to him; he just made me feel hopeful at the time.
I finally told him I wasn’t happy, the split was amicable, and I moved back to Florida with my family within a week." —"When I was 15, I became very depressed. The only person that was really there for me was my 34-year-old teacher. He used to check on me throughout the day and text me until late into the night. At the end of that school year, he and his family moved. We stayed in touch, however, and would see each other every summer.
"When I confronted him about getting fired, he played dumb and pretended like he had nothing to do with it." —"When I was 15, my friend and I would go to her then-boyfriend's house so she could see him and have sex. I'd sit on the living room couch and watch TV until they were done. Then, the boyfriend's older brother became interested in me. He didn’t immediately make a move. He groomed me. He would come out, sit next to me, and watch TV.
"I was naive about sex still, despite having had boyfriends in the past, and was going through a hard time at home. The 'flirtatious' DMs kept up until I casually mentioned how I had mentioned him to my sister. He freaked out and responded, 'You’re my student, and you’re very young. You have parents. Your sister could tell your parents.'
"Last I heard, he was pissing off families and parents with the comments he was making to their underage daughters as their teacher. I’m 32 and see him now for what he is — wish I knew back then." —"I was 17, and he was 27. He was a rebound after my appropriately aged first boyfriend and I had broken up.
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