When I was 14, a 23-year-old hit on me. Absurd! After all, I was a child then

There has been a lot of talk about grooming in recent days. I’m glad this problem is finally being talked about. However, I am surprised that we had to wait so long for this and in recent years many people have not seen such behavior as a problem.

While reading the mentioned article, I was reminded of some experiences from the past. I was 14 years old then. From my current perspective, I think I was still a total child. Then I went on holiday to my grandmother in the countryside. One day my friends and I went to a local festival. After this party, I received an invitation to our class from a man. I didn’t recognize him at all. He claimed to have seen me at the party yesterday. It turned out that he was the son of my grandmother’s neighbors – a 23-year-old who also came here for vacation.

I wasn’t interested. The student didn’t care about it

He was very pushy. He texted me every few hours. He also started visiting us, which was terribly uncomfortable for me. I was completely uninterested in developing this relationship. He wasn’t my type, and besides, at that time I was in unhappy love with a classmate. And perhaps most importantly, it already seemed strange to me that a 23-year-old student wanted to be in a relationship with me. But he didn’t care about it. Day by day he became more and more pushy.

Now it seems absurd to me

The holidays were finally over and we returned to our hometowns. Fortunately for me, the acquaintance with the student ended only with hurt male pride (I was blocked on Gadu-Gadu and removed from friends on Nasza Klasa). Unfortunately, due to these unpleasant experiences, I never spent the entire vacation at my grandmother’s again. I was simply afraid of meeting this man.

When I think about it now, the situation seems extremely absurd. I was a child then. I don’t know how I could build a relationship with someone who was already a student and at a completely different stage of life. When I imagine that I, at the age of 23, would be dating a 14-year-old boy, I am terrified.

I am currently 30 years old. I must make it clear that at this stage of my life I am not against age-gap relationships. I have two friends who are with men who are several years older than me. These are healthy and nice relationships. However, they were created by adults, much more aware of themselves and their needs than a typical teenager or teenager.

Marlene