Attitudes to underage/borderline relationship in the 90’s/noughties…wtf?!

[spinningbirds]

In about 2001 when I was 16, I was training pretty seriously in a sport, helped a lot by a successful older girl in the sport (17/18). This older girl appeared to be in a relationship with her female ex-coach’s ex-boyfriend, (she’d met him when being trained by her ex-coach, a several years earlier.)

The boyfriend was by this time 35. She was just 18. I was 16.

Her very nice parents somehow (?!) came around to the relationship, which I now know had started when she was 14. The girl an d the boyfriend invited me and another girl (also 16, also heavily involved in the sport) to go on holiday with 2 of them; I’d never been abroad without my parents before. The 4 of us went to Lanzarote.

I think that by me and the other 16 year old being there too (we all shared a self catering flat) it made it their holiday somehow “ok’?!

I don’t have anything specifically bad about the guy to say, other than that he always treated me coldly, perhaps he knew I didn’t like him. On the first night of the holiday the other three agreed to have some drinks when we arrived. I declined, and asked for just coke… he put vodka in it anyway. I soon felt weird, and freaked out, not knowing I’d had alcohol; I hadn’t been drunk before. The three of them laughed their socks off at me, sat on the bathroom floor of the flat in confusion, feeling sick. Only a long time later that evening did they confess the trick. Haha.

Anyway the holiday was fine, the couple had separate bedrooms but engineered plenty of alone time…

24 years later, this whole thing makes me feel creeped out. What was my mum thinking sending me on holiday with a bloke nearly 20 years older than us? Were times so very different in 2001?

For the record, the couple are still together. My mum said today she think they actually started dating when the girl was 13. But they’ve built a life together now, so that’s ok, isn’t it..

Anyway the whole thing makes me feel creepy AF, does anyone else have crazy shit like this from 20 years ago/could you give me some therapy to feel less weird about it?!!!

Loads of places. But (and it may be area specific) sex outside of a committed relationship wasn’t assumed. It was a step you chose to take together. Back when it was all fields round here, you dated first. Or maybe men knew the score when they dated someone younger. I know my boyfriends worked up to it, so to speak. I can remember the process 🤣
I was bloody lucky, looking back on it. I manage to avoid the really predatory ones. Maybe the ones my own age were a bit pushier.

A bit off topic, but very recently I was reading some articles about the future schooling options for the Wales' children. Whether Charlotte could be amongst the first girls' cohort at Eton with George and Louis eventually and how Katherine was supposedly keen for all of the children to attend Marlborough together

Even in those articles, Katherine's love life/sexual status as a young adult was being discussed with the statement that during her school days, "We got the impression she was saving herself for someone special" being dragged up from the past.

So even a generation on from Diana, it's been heavily implied that William was Katherine's only sexual partner. This isn't the only such statement that's been made.

I even remember on the wedding day, during the televised press interviews before and after the wedding with people with tenuous links at best to the couple, that someone (I think a clergy member or someone with a church link) tried to argue that, although they were a "modern couple" who had lived together before marriage, they "had perhaps lived like brother and sister". I was fairly young but remember thinking, "they seriously don't expect us to believe that do they?!". My old grandmother and an aunt bought it and tried to insist Katherine was a virgin bride as Diana had been. I remember thinking how horribly intrusive it all was and that there was nothing that would make me want to swap places with her in that moment.

I was in my teens in the 90s and dated men in their 20's the largest age gap being about 12 years and I 14 when I met one and 16 when I met the other, I also went on a couple of dates with a 34 year old. I can scarlessly believe it looking back! It was borderline normal at that time I think. I mean they were proper boyfriends who had dinner at my parents house on a Sunday. Having older boyfriends pick me up in their cars from school vastly increased my coolness amongst my school mates. I was still a good student and played cello in the school orchestra, did ballet and didn't smoke or drink. When I got into University in another city I broke up with my boyfriend who was 9 years older than me.

Looking back it seemed kind of normal and that any girl with something about her would date someone older but I can't say they were happy relationships as such. 14 is way to young to date a 26 year old man and I had a lot of anxiety the whole time about them not loving me or preferring other women closer to their own age which they probably did. The one who I dated from 16 to 18 who was 9 years older was sweet to me and I think did genuinely care about me but I also know he felt like the relationship was shady and there were times I know he was embarrassed by the age gap. When I see photos I did look older and they looked younger so it doesn't "look" too bad (even though it was) but now if I snoop on their socials they look like old men and their is no way I'd date them now.

When I was 20 I met my now husband who is my age and that relationship just felt so different, much more equal and comfortable where I felt I could really be myself instead of playing a part to seem more mature. I was probably very lucky that things didn't go worse in those relationships in my teens.

Yes, the discussion of Katherine's love life was disagreeable and disturbing.

@Ohnonotmeagain I'm so sorry that happened to you and I know from my own experience the trap that you end up in when you are a naive teenager. In my case, I was 14 and went out with a very manipulative 19 year old man who was out at work and had a car. As in your case, he 'waited' until I was legal and then I was pregnant within weeks. I had an abortion, telling no one in my family. Like you, I often also wonder how my life would have been different had he not got his claws into me when I was so young. My school work went haywire and although I passed my exams they were nowhere near as good as they should have been. I eventually split up with him when I was 17 and he hit me one night during an argument. Fortunately I was strong and finished it at that point. But I went straight on the rebound to someone else, married them at 18 and limited my life chances quite considerably at that point. It's all okay now, but now I'm much older I see so clearly how things went all a bit wrong for me in those years. My parents were quite strict and also caring, but my mum was quite ill during those years and started to be quite disabled, my dad had a really high-powered job with a lot of stress, so it wasn't an easy time for them and I think they were just pleased I was out of the house enjoying myself.

No I've never looked at him differently. And we've been together over 25 years now, most of my friends have had relationships and even marriages come and go in that time.

I think our DD is very different, I had left home and been self sufficient since the age of 16, and growing up I had a very bad upbringing and wasn't supported by my parents.
DD is very different, she is clueless at how to cook and I've very much been the opposite of my mother. She and DS are very aware that I'm always here to help and support them. But I think I was far more mature at 18 than DD is.

DH and I had a lot in common as well, both massively into music, very similar sense of humour. He's very caring and would give someone his last tenner if he felt they needed it more. So our situation is different because at 18 I had already had several years of being mature and responsible for myself.

The only negative was the guy I was engaged to.

Why is it always ‘Up North?’

I’m from up North, from Cheshire/Greater Manchester, in one of or the wealthiest area in the country I read. Definitely no girls pushing babies around as young teens and shock horror, my friends and I all went to university and are middle class.

Same! Except I'm from a "rougher" part of "up North".

None of my peers from school had kids before 30. Most didn't until after 35.

Never seen a flat cap or whippet round here either 😂.

Actually ETA...ONE girl from a year of 150, dropped out and had a baby. I've never seen loads of teenage girls pushing prams with their babies in around where I lived, then or now.

It’s so rude! Like it’s this strange place oop North full of common people and scum

It's probably jealousy, cos they don't have Booths 😂.

My best friend from school married our A Level music teacher. He was older than her dad. Even at the time there was some concern and a teacher at the school spoke to the bloke about it after we’d left school, but they swore blind nothing had happened until she’d left. I don’t believe that for an instant. He died of cancer last year aged 58 while she was pregnant aged 34.

16 was seeen as adult and 'fair game' even 16 year olds could be topless in the sun, so gross

Sorry if it's already been mentioned (haven't read whole thread) but ... Chris Evans and Billie Piper. So wrong.

I thought all up North was common and full of teen mums pushing their kids around, fag in one hand pushchair in the other, phone changing hands as she plays online bingo. /s

I grew up in inner London but went to a convent grammar school so the majority of us weren't pregnant before our twenties and thirties but outside of our privilege - in terms of education and possibilities, my family were poor - there were a lot of young girls with babies and if the mother happened to be white and her child mixed race the judgement was huge. She'd be seen as "damaged goods" and there a horrible descriptor for them. It was really horrible racism and misogyny. I don't live there now and can only hope it's changed.

Unbelievable comments up thread about ‘The North’. It’s not like Taste of Honey anymore! we have inside toilets now!

I was allowed to start having serious boyfriends from age 16, the first was 23 from then on all my boyfriends were in their twenties. It was considered perfectly normal at the time, all my friends also had older “boyfriends”. They’d pick us up from school in their cars and an older boyfriend with a car held huge social currency. Some parents clearly prevented it though because I knew girls who didn’t have boyfriends at all or they were the same age - classmates etc. I wouldn’t say I was particularly damaged by it - I want to be honest and I am often impatient with the judgment of older social norms by modern attitudes, but I think of my own daughter at that age and I was ready to commit violence if a man in his twenties had ever approached her. I have very loudly & publicly told men to stop staring at A CHILD! And once told a man he was a disgusting creep and to leave CHILDREN alone when he approached her while she was waiting in a park for me.

Are you a Muslim? This sounds terrible. Im sorry you went through this. You cant live your life this way. And if you are Muslim, I would suggest getting help from the mosque or women's aid. This isn't acceptable. At 60, you shouldn't be living like this.

There’s a real dissonance, isn’t there? I feel similarly.

I also feel sorry for kids trying to celebrate their 18th birthday. The Septembers don’t have anyone to go to the pub with, then it gradually improves until you get to august and they can all go 🤣
I’m pretty sure I was in nightclubs at 15. Definitely all through 6th form.

I was drinking in pubs at 15 too. No one cared.

Well, I saw these young mums in York.

Maybe they were from Croydon on a school trip to the Jorvik Centre 😂

Friend in my first year at university, so aged 18/19, had a 'boyfriend' from home who was in his mid 30s. Turns out he was her ex geography teacher from 6th form. They'd been together a couple of years and had had private 'field trips' when she was at school. It was really weird having him hanging around our halls every weekend when he came to visit her - and there was a lot of drama (mainly from him) when they eventually broke up. Sadly after that she seemed to have a different postgrad student or lecturer sleeping over every week.

With their babies in pushchairs? No chance!

Hope things get better for you. U might like to start a thread in relationships where people can guide you

I think the societal understanding of safeguarding / abuses of power etc. really changed between the tragic Soham Murders (2002) and probably around 2009/10 when safeguarding training/single central records etc. had become very mainstream in all schools and young people's settings.

Along with various celebrity grooming scandals and the advent of social media during that time, things really changed.

Also in the 80s/90s a lot of young people were at work full time from 15/16 years old. People 'settled down' (usually getting married) a lot younger, and first-time parents were a lot younger too. 'Childhood' was just generally seen as a lot shorter.