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?!!!

That's awful I can't imagine how frightening that must have been for you, 16 in a foreign country with a predatory bullying man. One who spiked you for fun.

If he was messing with your friend at 14 then he's a sex offender and should be prosecuted

I hope it didn’t read as me approving- it wasn’t good for us, I know. I hope things are better for you now.

@spinningbirds I was born 1970. We got very mixed messages.

It wasn’t ok. However, those men didn’t think of themselves as doing anything wrong, and it’s not right to view them as predators. I mean some were. Others just got on better with girls who were inexperienced, maybe wanted a wife who would look up to them- very misogynistic but not unreasonable for the time!

If mum could have married me off to a successful professional, she’d have been all for it.

Back in the very early 90's a neighbour who was 16 started dating a lad 10 yrs older, so he was 26. Personally I always wondered what a 26 year old saw in a 16 year old....but her parents had no issue with the relationship & they did eventually marry. Not sure if they are still together to this day as the family ended up moving away.

As someone in their 20s I’m guessing attitudes changed with my parent’s generation who presumably grew up witnessing gross behaviour and decided they didn’t want it for their own daughters

When I was 17 I was working in a pharmacy and I started dating a 29 year old who basically chatted me up when he came in to get his methadone. We were living together within a few weeks because he was homeless My parents did the whole 'well if we say you can't date him you'll just do it anyway' but now looking back, he groomed me and he groomed them and they should have protected me. I ended up with him for 5 years, we had a child, he was still a drug addict and now 21 years later is still an addict and an alcoholic. When my/our daughter was 17/18 I had a bit of a breakdown over it, and it hugely affected my relationship with my parents. I said to my daughter, you'd have to step over my cold dead corpse to leave this house with a man like that and i would and will do everything in my power to stop it.

These are the same parents though who dropped me at the home of a boyfriend/friend I met on holiday when I was 15, then went to London for 4 days- no phones, no way to contact them because they weren't at home. I mean, seriously. I was 15?!?! They didn't even meet his parents.

It's weird because they were totally normal parents, quite square and old fashioned.

It’s so weird isn’t it, how our parents reacted to this.
As a child I wasn’t allowed to watch ITV or play out with the neighbours kids as it was a bad influence and we weren’t that type of family.
But dating a man in his 20s at 15, going off in a car with him no problem at all.

I met a bloke in the pub in the eighties one summer. Dated a bit and then found out he was a teacher starting at the school where I was in the sixth form. He was quite taken aback to find out I was still at school and said we were to avoid each other at school. First day back and he was my new form teacher! We were pretty awful - sitting on his desk and calling him by his first name. Looking back though - he was in the wrong. I was only 17.

When I first started teaching in the 90s, one of my Year 11s asked me how old I was. When I replied that I was 22, she looked shocked and said,

”You’re younger than my boyfriend!”

I told my HoD, more as a funny anecdote than a safeguarding concern if I’m honest, and nothing was done or said beyond that.

I’d freak out nowadays.

Should add, the boyfriend lived in Basingstoke, our home was Birmingham and they went to London. I literally had no idea where I was, no money, no way of contacting them and no way to get home. Nothing happened but I was so vulnerable and they just left me there!

Completely normal in the 70s to have a boyfriend several years older. I didn’t know anyone who had a boyfriend their own age.

Also normal after WWI for there to be big age gaps between couples, so many young men were killed that there weren’t enough to go round. My DGM was 21 when she met my DGF, 15. He did all the chasing btw. They eventually married and were very happy together.

Oh My gosh, I’m so sorry, they massively failed you.

I completely feel the same about my own daughters (they’re still tiny at the moment, but woe betide any creep who comes near as they get older) and I’m proud of you for making such a success of that rough situation. Impressed actually. Your daughter will be too, if she hasn’t figured that out already x

@MyDeepZebra how awful your own mother practically selling you to a punter. And his actions are reprehensible.

Bear in mind you could leave school the summer before you turned 16, and work full time in a factory or a shop as a 15 yr old.

I went to secondary school in the 00s and young girls with much older guys was so common. There were loads of girls from about second or third year who had boyfriends in their 20s. My first serious boyfriend was 24 (and a fucking creep) and I was 15, and it set me up for years of unhealthy relationships. My parents definitely weren’t happy with it though, but there was nothing they could do as it was technically legal.

I still carry a lot of trauma from my first relationship but at the time I was absolutely convinced I was a grown woman, and most of my peers were the same. We were acting like 25 year olds from the time we were about 13.

When I was 14 I had an 18 year old boyfriend. He would pick me up from school in his car. He was abusive and I remember the bruises on my back being evident in the changing rooms. The pe teacher just asked me about them and left it. Safeguarding in the mid 90s basically didn’t exist. Looking back I wish it was more like it is today, it would have helped 14,15,16 even 18 year old me a lot. I had a very turbulent mid to late teens full of abusive relationships with men older than 18 even older than 21

God, yes!

Mid nineties, aged 15, men at dodgy pubs and clubs all over us (they knew we were very young)
20 odd year old used to wait outside school in his jeep for us…we were around 15 then too
My first kiss was in Tunisia when I was 12, with a 17 year old, this was a family holiday and it was at a beach bar…where were my parents?!

2002 is when things changed. Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were murdered by the school caretaker. He had complaints of rape and assault against him and information sharing was poor. After that people working with children and vulnerable adults needed CRB then later DBS checks.
I think that put the idea of child safeguarding into public consciousness.

When I was in the 3rd year at secondary school so age 13 a lot of my friends had boyfriends who were 18/19. It just seemed normal , age 16 I was dating a 29 year old. I also remember when I was 12 that there was a girl in the 5th year dating the drama teacher who was in his thirties. They would leave school together holding hands , this was 1988 and nobody batted an eyelid

Oh and a bit older..,18 maybe and in a pub with same aged boyfriend…men in their 60’s maybe? Literally circling around me, pulling up chairs talking to me…bizarre

At 15, first boyfriend, 19. Second boyfriend while still 15, 23 years old. I moved in with him at 16. No one stopped me. My mum even signed a consent form for me to go abroad with him at 16. He was a drug addict, a gambling addict and had severe mental health issues. He left me with £23,000 of unsecured debt. I moved on from him into another abusive relationship and then another really bad one, during which time I had my son.
I was failed by my school over bullying, and my parents and the system. Going to the health clinic for the morning after pill at 15 should not have been a case of "here you go, now go on the contraceptive pill and have some free condoms". So many adults complicit in child sexual abuse.

I have just been rereading Riders by Jilly Cooper set in 1970-80 and it is FULL of stuff like this, Rupert Campbell Black devastated he can’t go off an shag two sixteen year olds as his wife turned up, 17 year olds graduating from pony club into the arms of 30 year old Billy who she can ‘save’.

Do you think it’s to do with 20th century school leavers age being 14 then 16 (with a levels being 18 obviously) - my aunts, long dead, left school at 16 and were working full time in grown up jobs - they were definitely ‘grown ups’ in that sense.

In that, I don’t think the ENTIRE population can have been perves, somewhere along the line society has clearly changed how it perceives 16 year olds.

(I would fight like a lion possessed to protect my 15/16 yr old kids from older men/women, to be clear!)

Lost my virginity at 17 to a 22 year old. I remember going downstairs the next morning and having breakfast with him and his dad. The dad then dropped me off and told my boyfriend I seemed very nice, but far too young for him

My mum (now 70) left school at 15 and started work in Manchester city centre, got a flat and was out every night in town. 15 seems so young for your own place and working full time in a proper job

When I was a teenager (15/16) in the 1980s I had boyfriends in their early twenties. I used to go to my local pub and knew a lot of older people as I had two older sisters. No-one thought it was odd or inappropriate, including my parents. I don't have daughters but if I did, I would be very much against them dating someone that age at 15/16!

Much older boyfriend with a car was seem.as a good catch as a teen. I remember my 14 year old mate was going out with her older brothers 24 year old mate. I thought it was off and creepy. But he had a car so she was besotted and it made her feel grown up. He took her to the pub! Her parents was approving