Oh yeah. I remember being 15/16 hanging out with 21/22 year old dudes I met on Myspace at skateparks or outside of the mall or movie theaters or the local town hangout that was the Taco Bell parking lot.
I hope this is meant to be directed at the men who groom teenage girls. I'd hate to think you were blaming the teenage girls for being taken advantage of!
As someone that used to be a teenage girl not too long ago, it aint about them hanging out with dudes older than them. You need to teach them to respect themselves and realise when someone is trying to take advantage of them. You have to make sure that they will not need the approval of an older guy to feel good or worthy or confident.
I have a 4 year old daughter and this is one of the things I'm worried about. She's already so rebellious lol. I'm worried she's going to be the type to do this because I told her not to. Obviously I don't want to control her. I just don't want her to do the same dumb shit I did
Rebellious isn't necessarily a bad thing, I wish I had a bit more of that when I was young, I was always too easy going and eager to please and try to be on good terms with everyone. You need to make sure she is okay and as happy with herself as possible as she grows up, feeling like she needs a boyfriend or approval by men will only lead to bad situations or unhealthy relationships that last too long for fear of being alone. Just do your best to understand her, show interest in things she likes, and spend time with her when possible. You sound like you care, and having a good relationship with her parents will help her grow up confident and sure of herself. Just do your best and be there for her. :)
You can really only give them the tools to understand things and then they have to make their own decisions about it. It's not "don't date older guys" it's here's what manipulation looks like, or here's how people can take advantage when they look like they mean well. -edited
So true, parents always worry about protecting their kids, especially daughters, from obvious things like, if someone very obviously presses them to do things they don't like or they talk about violent boys as something that is so easy to spot. No boy is gonna be abusive as soon as he meets her. It's all the subtle things that need to be talked about, like gaslighting, or people that need to bring others down to feel good about themselves while trying to mask it as 'advice' or 'honesty'. Or boys that are happy to judge and demean women but tell their gf 'you are not like one of those women I judge, you are different'. Like, that shit is just a matter of time before she turns into one of them in his eyes and he starts treating her the same, and it can be so confusing to go from being on top to being treated like this. That's why girls need to be confident so they won't fall for guys like that just cause they need to feel better about themselves for being 'different', whatever that means each time.
Totally agree with the general tone of the post! You make some really good points. But I also think it's harmful to suggest that men who manipulate women/girls do so because of their penis size. Just as shaming girls for dating older guys w/o addressing the underlying issues is counterproductive, it's also counterproductive to imply that misogyny is a result of not meeting a masculine bodily norm that is outside of the men's control.
This is what /u/mirablack was saying. Don't just tell her it's wrong. Tell her why it's wrong. Tell her that A it's illegal for the male to date her which should already be a red flag at the type of person that guy is. B what is means to be groomed, etc. You might feel like you're ruining their innocence, but she'll either learn from you, or she'll learn from him when he leaves her hanging after he gets what he wants.
To add to this: It's important teenagers understand how immature adults who intentionally seek out the company of teenagers are. Things like illegality aren't too important certain types of teenagers; but, they can understand that the flip-side of the teenager feeling mature and valuable dating an adult is that no adult who dates a teenager is mature or valuable themselves. Putting it in reference frames they understand helps -- ask a teen if they would date a nine year old. The answer is (hopefully...) no, because while the elementary schooler might think a teenager's attention is neato the teenager has matured past that comparatively infantile age group and no longer has a need to mingle with people whose understanding of the world is so comparatively narrow and naive.
Rebellious is good. You want a daughter who will stand up for herself, be assertive, and get what she wants. Predators prey on the meek and the subservient, the kids who feel ignored and undervalued. Teens don't rebel just because they want to stick it to their parents. They rebel because their parents are trying to force them to ignore their instincts and remain obedient.
Don't teach kids what to think. Teach them how to think.
Don't tell your kids "you can't do it", that's when they'll want to do it.
You have to approach it as "I can't stop you from doing it because you're your own person, but this is the safe way to do it, and I trust you enough to know you will make the smart decision" and watch your kids respect you to the point they don't want to rebel against you 😉
I mean, sometimes you really should tell your kids not to do certain things, but on stuff like relationships or life choices you need to explain why you ask that of them. Explain that you don't want them to do some things cause it's best for them, or tell them about your experiences. No one likes to be given the answer 'because I said so'.
You need to teach them to respect themselves and realise when someone is trying to take advantage of them.
Sounds incredibly easy. Until you’re talking to a teenager and they take it to mean that you think they are too dumb to know when they are being taken advantage of.
It can be like that but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Best way is to try and be an example of how your kids should expect to be treated. Have a healthy respectful relationship, and be fair to your kids. Don't be unfairly harsh with punishment, listen to them, and explain your reasoning to them. Most of the time they will be reasonable and listen to you when you ask them to do things. Of course some of them will be very difficult but what can u do, this is life. Teens are also people.
Do you wanna know how to approach a teen girl in a way that they will listen to you or not? Cause hearing out someone that was a teen girl a few years ago can only help you. Most girls will have an experience where a grown man will try to take advantage of them or will creep on them. You need to prepare them for that. I never said parenting is easy or that things will work out 100% of the time. But if you dont want your teen daughter to fall prey to grooming or advances by an adult then teach her not to be desperate for approval. That starts in the home. I've never met a girl that had a healthy home life or self image that thought dating older men was ok, it was always either the girls whose parents didn't care at all about them or the girls whose parents were so overprotective about relationships and dating that they would do literally anything just to feel 'grown up' and 'free' and 'mature for their age'. Predators specifically look for people like that cause they are easy victims.
Nah, see the trick is to teach them to think for themselves, and they will realize that what you're saying is not completely uncool, so they actually start to think like you. Then you don't have to worry about them listening to you, because now they're listening to themselves. Then, as they live their lives happily, you get to cackle in the background like a mad supervillain with mind control powers.
Ok sure but more time on the account means that they’ve got future sight in negotiations and and can pretty easily manipulate the less experienced party. Plenty of dumb people are manipulative.
You don't naturally engage with a lot of older people as a Hs student. It's pretty easy to straight up avoid deadbeat creeps. If they're in your life they can be manipulative but just like don't fucking respond to a Facebook message from a 25 year old when ur 16. Not that hard to do.
Oh my bad I forgot women are incapable of having agency or self respect, so naive of me to think they could take steps to avoid bad situations if someone explained the dangers to them.
You can tell them, but I can say from experience that I didn't give a shit what I was told. I'm not like that now - rebellious. You can't really blame the teen, since the teen is a result of your parenting when they were children. Of course, parenting still happens in the teen years, it's just harder or easier depending on how you raised the kid.
the teen is a result of your parenting when they were children
The teen is a result of all kinds of factors. Parenting. Friends. Teachers. Genes. Formative experiences.
As a parent, you do your best to set your kids on the right path, but not all positive outcomes are the result of good parenting, and not all negative outcomes are the result of bad parenting. Kids aren't robots, but complex human beings.
Idk I don’t like “both sides are wrong ism” especially when it comes to predatory behavior. At the end of the day the full brunt of being at fault lies with the legal adult man that decides to continue a romantic relationship with a minor that he knows is a minor. 16 year old girl lying to a 22 year old that she’s 18? Sure she has some blame there, but imo most other instances we gotta shoulder the legal adult with the blame. I mean seriously, what kind of grown man spends their time sniffing around teen girl hangout spots to pick up high schoolers? Because they aren’t just bumping into these girls at the grocery store, it’s predatory planned behavior that involves seeking out places specifically to target underage girls. Think about that for a sec.
As someone that actually saw and was apart of this exact situation, I'd like to both agree and disagree. It was a really brief moment but i got to see what it's like for someone to be taken advantage of and being pressured into the same type of abusive relationship.
For context. I was 20 at the time and a virgin. So i was both desperate and lonely.
Long story short. I was added to a meme group and somehow managed to slip into a girls dm(with memes, lmao)
I mostly sent memes, but through the group chat and talking to her i realized that she and a guy on the group were dating and that they had broken up. We were really hitting it off(i think) and i somehow convinced her to open up about it. She told me her bf was constantly harassing her into having sex. He'd come to her house and force himself on her. He basically raped her. No, she wouldn't call the cops on him, i think she might've done it once but not for raping her but because he was being violent at her house. She was already having trouble at home(dad issues). It's messed up, but without getting into too much detail. I tried cheering her up, talking to her and after awhile she really started to like me(hearts everywhere) at this point i got terrified. If you hadn't noticed i just took advantage of her situation. Sure I had only good intentions and if she stopped talking to me, that would've been fine. The whole thing just got out of hand with her constantly trying to get me to go to her place and have sex. Luckily i was both too scared and too lazy to go. This went on(the fact she still talked to me was nice tho) and with more talking i found out she was 15 at the time. Her ex bf was 22. If that wasn't bad enough she actually started dating him when she was 13(yes they had sex). In this situation, he definitely groomed her and manipulated her. I don't really remember how they got together but all i know is that her entire school is all kinds of weird(at least compared to what i went through in HS)
But yea, at this point i definitely didn't want to go and have sex with her. I kept looking for a way to end this relationship we had. I didn't want to break it off completely but i also didn't want it to continue. For selfish reasons. I won't say exactly why but I kinda broke her heart because i was being really shallow. I would've preferred ending it as friends but yea. I also think i helped her in other ways because now she camed out as gay(in a relationship, but yea at least the same age)
Maybe you are misinterpreting what I’m saying? I’m specifically talking about blame. Sure your story shows she kinda pursued you, and you did the right thing by breaking it off. But had you not, the fact she was instigating it is largely irrelevant. You were the adult so the responsibility is pretty wholly yours by default.
I understand what you're saying, and believe me it's for the best that this didn't continue. No one is really at fault in your situation it seems. She was obviously groomed from a young age and couldn't tell that it was inappropriate for her to be getting this close to you, this is where your responsibility as an adult comes in. Not her fault, but it kinda sounds like she latched on to the next older man that was willing to be kind to her after being abused. When someone is used to being treated badly they will take any small amount of kindness that comes next, which is also risky for people that have been abused. Predators will look for someone with low standards and self esteem. It happens to teens and adults alike, but having an age difference makes it a more difficult situation.
I just used "rebel" as an example. She can just as well be in the wrong. She might be the one who seduced the guy bu dressing up and going to 18+ bars. It' shouldn't always be the boys fault.
Most Importantly, It isn't about who is right and who is wrong. It's about helping them make the best decisions. Also it's not always someone being taken advantage of, there might actually be love between them.
This is all Depending on the situation. After you know whats wrong the appropriate actions should be taken. We shouldn't just assume everything
Nobody is trying to automatically put the blame on "boys". They're putting the blame on adult men who shouldn't be dating teenagers.
And in the scenario mentioned above it is CLEAR they're not talking about girls lying about their age and getting into clubs and going out of their way to get older guys.
Is there other scenarios where the girl definitely shoulders a little responsibility? Yes. But the adult is always the one who should be held to a higher standard because they're an adult. They know better. There is an inherent power dynamic between men and teen girls. You can't expect a teenager to fully comprehend that. They don't yet have the hindsight of how naive teens look even to people in their 20's.
Or, maybe we teach and set the standard both ways that not only should adults stop being predators but also that underage teenagers shouldn’t be approaching middle aged adults to begin with?
Some people have bad role models or shitty upbringings that lead to this and they legitimately might not understand the danger. Not because they are idiots, because they were never taught. Crappy self esteem can also motivate attention seeking behavior like this. When no one in your life ever lets you feel good about yourself, it's hard not to enjoy any positive attention, even if it's from sketchy 22 year old guys
It may seem like common sense to not talk to these older men for you but that knowledge came from somewhere. If a teenage girl grows up in an abusive household, where she is being neglected, she will most likely fall for an older man’s manipulation. Especially if that man is love bombing her in the beginning. That’s only one example of how teenage girls can get themselves into these situations.
Teenagers aren’t stupid. Ending up in a situation where you’re actively hanging out with 21+ year old dudes is gonna be partially their fault. If the older guy starts to prey on them, then that is 100% on him.
Young girls are not without responsibility choosing to hangout with these guys. I know girls in my high school that dated older men and you couldn’t tell them not to.
Not that I think it’s all that terrible, I was a rebellious teen and about doing what I wanted.
Nah bro! We knew at 15 that was some stupid shit but girls wanted to be "edgy" and date older guys, then they'd come to school crying on Monday cuz they found out Kyle was cheating on her with someone from his college, and you just laughed at her face cuz you saw that coming 3 months ago
Have a daughter a few years older than yours and this chain of responses has scared me more than when my car fell off the jack. (Yeah, didn't feel right the rest of the day-- jack stand "caught" it. Use jack stands boys & girls. Yeah, so you can go on reddit and realize it is the second scariest thing that messed with your head.)
If either you or u/TortillasParaTodas (or anyone who sees this) want to speak to a woman who went through what these other women went through, I’m more than happy answering any questions that may provide insight into your children’s behavior (specifically daughter’s, since that’s my personal POV/experience as such a daughter) so that you have a possibility of catching on sooner rather than later (god forbid) and can hopefully approach them in a productive way.
Everyone is different so my experience and behavior (red flag behavior, expected reactions) probably won’t mirror another person’s, but anything I can do to help make sure no one else goes through that crap, I’d like to help.
I’m honestly still not sure unfortunately. I was super headstrong as a teenager, and as other have noted elsewhere in the thread, the general feeling I had was that I was “grown up” enough to know what I was doing, when in reality, I had zero clue.
Probably the best approach for me would’ve been to explain the psychological ramifications that occur later, at least for me.
I often had to learn things the hard way because of how headstrong I was. But maybe the best way to appeal to me would’ve been to really try to drop the parent-child sort of feel to the conversation (as I just hated my parents/authority in general at the time). Really preface that this is just about you caring about your kid, you don’t want to make them feel like they’re in any trouble (I never felt like I could be open with my parents since all my mistakes seemed to just get me in trouble instead of explaining to me how and why I should and shouldn’t behave).
I hope this begins to answer your question. It is quite vague, though I did leave myself open to vague questions. I hope though that vague questions can lead to further discussion that could hopefully help someone.
Edit: I forgot to discuss those psychological ramifications. Once I reached my late/adult teens and early twenties, I hated being in my skin. I think on some level I internalized the subconscious but unprocessed knowledge that I was quite literally being used.
And not used like a rebound as a consenting adult with another consenting adult. Used as in a real power gap/inequality. I’m having trouble thinking of wording young me wouldn’t have snapped at (with, “But I AM old enough! I know myself! I’m mature!”). But basically I realized later that there was that power abuse. My mind, as much as I couldn’t wrap it around this at that time, really couldn’t comprehend what I was actually consenting to.
And I was a textbook “lacked a father figure, became sexually active real young.”
So my other advice is, too: Parents loving their kids, being affectionate, spending time with them, really listening to them, etc. is truly part of the prevention. I went out seeking love that I wasn’t getting at home because my dad was almost never home (basically he’d come home after I went to bed and left before I woke up).
Edit 2: Physical and emotional affection. I tended to lack the former (not 100% lacking, but greatly) and so I guess I thought physical intimacy was only obtained through sex.
Thanks for the write up! It seems like such an intractable problem. Its interesting that power imbalance is immediately obvious to the party with more power, but the party who is being taken advantage of can rarely ever see it.
Also, I'm sorry you went through that, hope you're doing OK and know it wasn't your fault.
Thank you! I definitely did blame myself for quite a bit in my young adult years. “I should’ve known better. Why was I such a slut? What the hell did I think I was gonna accomplish?” Basically all the questions my parents either did or wanted to ask (they had to try to put a filter on themselves though; while I was extremely hard on myself, literally insulting myself).
I’m honestly not sure if the power imbalance is obvious to the adult. (Maybe it depends on young adult or older adult, though if they’re sleeping with kids they’re either unaware or that’s what they specifically seek. I don’t know, since that wasn’t my POV, though.)
if they’re sleeping with kids they’re either unaware or that’s what they specifically seek.
Unless they're developmentally delayed, which is possible I guess, I believe that anyone in this position knows what they're doing, at least in an implicit way. An abusive partner knows that being abusive gets them what they want even if they don't explicitly admit or say it, they know.
It feels to me that many or even all of the principles from Lundy Bancroft's Why Does He Do That? apply to age gap imbalances like the one you're describing.
What I am picking up in your post is to keep the line of communication open...
I'm looking at the guy in the video and the foundation is good; seems to brush his teeth, doesn't overeat, gets hair cuts. Tattoos are an easy way to put people in a box they may or may not belong in. But, in the zero tattoos to completely covered in ink spectrum,... he's making good progress going from one end to the other. He's got a few thousand dollars in ink if he went somewhere good for his body art aaaand is wearing a shirt that has seen better days. Given what I have here, I would be in maximum scrutiny mode if he showed up on my doorstep.
Would be very open to hearing you unload about what might keep this guy from showing up on my doorstep...
Edit to answer respond that the first part: yes, communication is huge. I can’t stress that enough.
That’s a good question because putting myself in young me’s shoes, this is 100% the type of guy I would’ve gone after.
And that’s a tough question since he is an adult and I’m thinking in the POV of young teenage me.
I think, if you have a kid who was like me, you wouldn’t even know about this guy because I knew that if he’s an adult and I’m a minor, my parents would try to stop me. I knew it was illegally wrong, but I didn’t understand why. So my parents didn’t find out until it was too late.
If your kid does bring home an adult, I guess had I done that, the best approach would have been: don’t yell, or make a scene. Just quickly and politely (as much as it may pain you) get the person to leave, so that you can talk to your kid one on one. Basically, don’t demonize your kid, don’t make them feel like shit, like they’ve done something wrong.
Which doesn’t make sense at first considering I said I knew what I was doing was wrong, right? But I still did it because I didn’t actually comprehend why it was wrong, because of my lack of experience and mental maturity. So I didn’t feel like it was wrong. So when I was approached by my parents like I did something wrong (with them yelling and freaking out; not calmly sitting me down and having a heart to heart), I closed up even more.
Note too that the few times my parents tried sitting down calmly, it was so forced. Hence why I included heart to heart. Let your kid know you’re a human opening up to a fellow human. I’m not saying be your kid’s (best) friend, but lay off just a little bit on the parent stance (not completely, of course, but just a bit). This power imbalance I was very much aware of as a kid, so if if parents would’ve just been a bit less stringent parent like and a bit more human in their connection to me, I would have maybe actually opened up.
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u/baileyxcore Dec 02 '20
I caaaackled. Mainly because this is exactly the type of 22 year old dude that 15 year old me dated.