Feel so guilty *[Content warning: contains discussion on suicide and underage sex/paedophilia]

[teenagewhore]

Warning, contains discussion on suicide and underage sex/ pedophilia. Name changed for obvious reasons.

TLDR - man I had a relationship with when I was 14/15 (and he didn't know) has killed himself after I ruined his life and I feel awful.

From the age 14 until I was 26/27 I looked the same. Mature. I hit puberty and aged 10 years overnight. I played on this but didn't wear lots of make up/ deliberately look older, it was just nature. I was employed at a pub as a glass cleaner and became friends with some of the people working there, all over 18. The owner/ person who hired me, didn't work at the pub and had no dealings with me day to day and gave a pathetic handover to the bar manager, my age was never mentioned (if the owner even knew - it was cash in hand) and I never mentioned it. I started as the glass wash/ table clearer and moved quickly to serving behind the bar as well. I did protest that I was "just" the pot wash but never raised my age as an issue. I made friends with others working there, who I presume were all 18+, several were late 20s and they started inviting me on nights out after work, and then on my nights off. I never had issues getting in to the bars and clubs and it became a regular thing. On one of these nights out I met a friend of a friend, we'll call him Bob. Bob was gorgeous, he was kind and generous and I fancied the pants off him. I was really pleased when after a few nights out, it became apparent that he felt the same and we started dating. We dated for 18 months, I was 16 when we broke up. Bob was a great guy and we got on really well. I deliberately concealed my age. If it came up I deflected, changed the subject and occasionally, out and out lied. I knew he'd break up with me, I knew he'd have an issue and I knew he would get in trouble. He was employed in a profession (not teaching). I was introduced to his friends and his family, my age was never questioned. He already knew my pub friends but I was careful not to introduce him to my school friends as they looked their ages. They knew I was dating him. He thought I was a mature student at the local uni - a lie I told him and carefully cultivated. We went out for dinner with his friends, to their houses, we were accepted as a couple, no questions asked.

My parents were divorced and not on talking terms, I used this to my advantage and lied to them about where I was, but most of the time I was "with the other one".

I know I was stupid, I knew at the time I was playing seriously with fire.

One Saturday we were in town clothes shopping and my teacher saw me and Bob. She came over and asked for an introduction, I tried to get away and avoid the contact but she clearly thought something was amiss as she made a point of introducing herself as my teacher, from the high school where I attended as a year 11.

Bob looked at me, I hung my head in shame and Bob walked off. I called him and called him, I turned up at his house, I wrote to him (this was pre-mobiles). Begged for his forgiveness and explained in my letter that I had lied to him. School called the police and social services and Bob was arrested, but not charged. I refused to cooperate, lied and basically the police gave up, thinking it wasn't worth the bother. Bob was ostracized by friends and family, branded a pedophile and spiraled in to drink and depression. He attempted suicide and lost his job, had a breakdown. I cut all contact, left my job and eventually moved on.

I heard on the grapevine that Bob never recovered, he was a broken man and his parents and friends never forgave him.

I on the other hand moved away, went to uni, got a successful career and I am married to a lovely (older) man and have 2 children and a lovely life. On the facebook page of my home town I found out he had died. Committed suicide. He was never able to recover from the breakdown I caused. I just can't believe it. I feel awful. I know there is absolutely nothing I can do now to make this better, bring him back or undo all the hurt I caused back then and have now caused to his love ones. But I also don't know how I can move forward.

I don't know what I'm wanting from this, I just need to let it out I guess. I'm not in touch with anyone from back then anymore and I don't have anyone who would understand, though DH is trying to.

You made a mistake like so many others do, but there was no malice in it

Definitely no malice in it. I never had any intention of trying to get him in to trouble. I didn't do it to score points.

I think 'mature student' is the wrong phrase, I mean I made out I wasn't just 18, just leaving school. I told him I'd had to retake my exams then had a gap year so he could reasonably assume me to be 22 or so. When asked I'd say stuff like "it's rude to ask a lady her age" or make a joke about it. When pressed I told him I was 23, 8 years older than I was at that point.

No one would believe a 14 year old was 23. No one.

I typed something here about my personal experiences and then decided I'm not comfortable sharing them here. But no adult man has ever believed a 14 year old was 23.

There's no reason to assume the suicide was connected to you at all! It's more than 10 years since you broke up.

Maybe the teacher stopped you in the street because she knew this guy for other reasons. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense. Maybe you weren't the only one lying.

My daughter is 14, and she has some tall, mature-looking friends, but you could never mistake them for adults. They're all like children in their behaviour and the way they talk. They think they're sophisticated, but they really aren't. You were probably the same.

Hard to believe anyone could mistake a 14 year old for a 23 year old, however old you thought you looked.
Yes you shouldn't have lied but he clearly had some reserved about your age otherwise why would he repeatedly ask.

And this whole situation might have left a dark shadow on his life... but he could have learnt his lesson, moved away, got help, built a new life, it was much easier to start a fresh in those days (no internet). His death is not your fault, he was mentally unwell, you were just a child at the time.

There's no way this was your fault. A decade passed in the interim - that's a decade of countless life events. Being blunt, if he'd been suicidal over the situation with you, he wouldn't have taken 10 years to do what he did. I'm very sorry for what happened to him but it has nothing to do with you.

Also he'd have known you were way younger than you claimed.

We all often press pause on someone and remember them for the moment they were with us, as if that's all they consist of, when really we were a tiny formative part of who they are, & what they experienced. You've frozen him in time and extrapolated the small impact you had on his life with him taking his life 10 years later. It isn't logical.

It's natural to feel guilt or concern if you are a good, empathetic person, which you sound like you are. Sure, that was a silly thing to do when you were younger and you're right to regret the consequences but at the same time you were a child, & IMO it doesn't sound like you were getting the greatest advice or support at home so it isn't much surprise that you seemed to try to fast forward to adulthood.

Anyway, show me a teenager who hasn't done God knows how many stupid things and I'll show you a unicorn. Whatever sadness he had went so much deeper than what happened with you a decade ago, believe me.

Regardless of the guilt you feel, this was someone you had a relationship with and they are no longer here. Its natural to feel something and like any loss you don't 'move past' it, you learn to live with it and heal round it.

That's a really awful and sad story but you need to cut yourself some slack here. As PPs have said, you were young and slant think through the consequences of what to were doing.

What about family and friends who shunned him? They must have been pretty terrible to not belive him - I'm guessing some of those 'friends' might also have known to and were clueless as to your true age.

Ultimately, no-one is responsible for Bob's suicide, other than Bob. Life deals everyone a shit hand or ten sometimes. His way of managing that was self destructive - that reaction might have been the same whatever unfortunate or difficult events took place in his life.

I know many adult men who target teenage girls. And not one has been ostracised in the community or by their family or lost their jobs. Not a single one. One sent disgusting messages to my teen daughter at her Saturday job. His boss was not interested, the police were not interested and his wife blamed my dd. As is often the case, my dd was ostracised, not him.

Unless you made a complaint it doesn't make sense that bob was arrested. For an arrest to be made there needs to be a suspicion that a crime has been committed or a complaint. There was no crime as you were 16 and presumably you didn't make a complaint.

I agree with pp that nobody believes a 14 year old is 23.

There's a lot that doesn't make sense here and I'd be wary of listening to stuff on the "grapevine".

No one would believe a 14 year old was 23. No one

Even if someone is working behind a bar serving drinks and looks the part. Whilst people might be able to spot a 14 year old from a 23 year old in the street it becomes near impossible if the 14 year is behind a bar serving drinks which can only be done by an 18year old.

At 28 I was mistaken for a school girl from a nearby boarding school.
I was in the local pub and was told by a teacher who stormed over to me to get back to school and he would deal with me later.

My cousin at 15 was dating someone who was in her 20s. He didn’t exactly look older but because he was into cars, worked at a garage (bunked off school to work at the garage so was there during the day), he owned a car and was a competent driver and liked to eat out in nice restaurants and was into nice clothes and shoes his gf never suspected anything till his mother caught him in town one day sitting in an expensive Italian restaurant pouring his gf a glass of wine.

If this guys parents and friends all assumed you were older than you were then turning their backs on him seems to be an extreme reaction. They were as guilty as him for not checking your age but I think if you are doing something that the law says you cannot do until a certain age and you are doing it at an age you shouldn’t be then you can’t blame people in thinking you are older than you were.

14 year olds do not look or sound like mature university students.

It's a bizarre story that makes no sense.

I think it's entirely possible, but I don't think Bob was a victim as much as you think he was. It's very unlikely that he had no inkling that you were extremely young, but as he didn't take the steps to verify that you were over 18, as the adult he's responsible for what happened. 'I wasn't entirely sure, but I didn't take reasonable steps to make sure I wasn't committing a crime' isn't a legitimate defence for anything. You were very young, and it sounds like you had family trauma and an inappropriate lack of supervision at a difficult age, it's no surprise you got yourself into mischief. I don't think you are to blame here.

I think that we should tread carefully in terms of labelling Bob as some kind of perpetrator and the OP as an innocent victim. There has to be middle ground.

At the end of the day, a young girl lied about her age, and when the man found out he was ostracised by his family. There are plenty of threads on MN where someone has found out that an older man has gone out with a young girl, and in general they are frowned on so if family decided as some appear to have on here, that this man had deliberately targeted a young girl then it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that he may have been ostracised by them.

On the other hand, the OP was young and couldn’t possibly have known what the consequences of her actions would be. And while the OP didn’t drive this man to suicide, the fallout from it clearly had a part to play, so it is that the OP needs to come to terms with.

At the end of the day OP, you need to learn to live with your past. It’s happened, you did it, and you can’t change the outcome.

Now what you need to do is find a way to look to the future without being haunted by it.

Therapy is probably your best bet.