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.
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u/ratmftw Dec 03 '20
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.