WWYD if your 15 year old daughter...

[MrsAtticus]

brought home a 22 year old boyfriend?
(sorry it's not actually an aibu)

I was once that 15 year old

Wish to god my mum and dad had stopped it

I'm hoping that I'd bring my kids up to have more self esteem with that. If it had happened, I would be a sobbing, rocking, wreck in the corner.

I would call the police, as my parents did when my 15 year old sister started dating a 20 year old.
Although the police weren't necessary, my three brothers sorted it out easy enough.

Oh and the law says that nobody under 16 can legally consent to sex, so if someone over 16 has any kind of sexual contact with someone under 16 it is rape.

Id embarrass them both by calling an emergency meeting with his parents and hers present.

Then point out the law, consequences and connotations of the relationship,

It worked on me when my parents did this! ... We broke up with a pact to resume the relationship once I turned 16 if we still felt the same about each other, needless to say a few months later when I did we had both already moved on to other people.

But we're still friends today as grown ups. He wasn't a paediphile, just an immature guy who hadn't thought things through.

weareeternal so you believe that if someone who turned 16 yesterday had sex today with someone else who is 16 tomorrow, it is rape?

I was that 15 year old once, but I hadn't told him I was 15, and didn't tell my parents how old he was. If they known, I would have been grounded until about now probably.

It was quite common at school for 14 to 16 year old girls to have boyfriends in their late teens/early twenties (this was late nineties). It wouldn't have raised any eyebrows, certainly, amongst most of my peers.

Whether the parents knew or not is another matter. I think a lot of the girls in question actually had quite horrendous experiences at far-too-young ages and am very glad that it no longer seems to be as socially acceptable.

I think I wouldn't go down the stopping-seeing-completely route, rather try and supervise - he can visit at our house with the bedroom door open etc.

My one experience of the matter was with a close female relative fairly recently - she was 15 to his 23.
I know from sad experience that the police really aren't interested unless the girl wants to press charges - how do you prove beyond reasonable doubt that they have had sex?

I should also point out that two weeks after my sixteenth birthday I started dating a 33 year old. I suppose it's always going to have to be an arbitrary cut-off, but it did make me think that emotionally I wasn't really any maturer than what I'd been fifteen days previously.

When I was 18 (I'm now 48) I had a fling with a divorced 30 yo who had a child.

I never met the child or his ex.

I did not want to get involved that deep, so I ended the relationship.
I did tell my parents months after, (I was an adult so there was nothing they could've done, but I know they wouldn't have been happy)

It is not rape, statutory or otherwise to have sex with a 15 year old. It is an offence but is not rape.

When I was 15 my boyfriend was 22. I was very mature for my age however, which my parents were fully aware of. They never made any bones about it that i can remember. We had an on/off relationship for about 5 years and are still very close friends even now at 34/41.

In the 80s it was pretty common. Just as Lecturers having "relationships" with students was common.
The past is another country.

My 15 year old DD just wouldn't. She is also in some ways far more mature than I was at her age.

The 22 year old boyfriend would. Not be welcome to stay the night.

I would also be asking him tricky questions in private about underage sex, what about women his own age etc.

He would feel deeply uncomfortable about having a relationship with a 15 year old after I had made him feel a bit creepy.

I was that girl also. My parents were very accepting. To this day not sure what their real feelings were.

Given what I know about myself at that age if it was my DD I think I would possibly not like it but ultimately there isn't much you can do at that age so think I would keep my opinion to myself and try and make sure I was there for her and that she knew she could speak to me.

Would be keeping my eye out for her though and would try and encourage her to maintain her friendships and relationships with friends and family. Through my own experience I can see it was very easy to withdraw and enter into an older world that really I shouldn't have been involved in.

When my DD1 was 16 she had a nice 18 year old boyfriend who went to the local college. He told her he was very uncomfortable meeting her from school because she was wearing her school uniform and it made him feel like a pervert. I think that is that is the reaction of a decent man to be honest.

I was a 16 year old when i had a 21 year old b/f.
He is now my husband of 8 years. Been together 13.
Please don't be so quick to judge, keep an eye on the situation especially until she is 16 but my parents didnt bat an eyelid and really took to him early on. They handled it exceptionally as if I had a 16 year old daughter i would be suspicious of everybody !

My dd is 15. She has a friend who is 23. They do not go to his flat, they sit in Costa or on a bench outside the church and chat and muck about for hours. It's all in full view, in busy places.

He has a girlfriend of his own age.

I am a bit concerned, but I know that if I say she is not to see him, then it is likely to push her towards him, so I just insist that they only meet in public, and have made sure she understands that this is for his sake too, and why.

She is interested in a boy at school in her year, so I don't think that - at the moment - she is likely to want to be more than friends with the older chap. I have always been able to trust her, and hope that will continue, but at her age I nkow hormones are blasting around and that things change very fast etc. All I can do atm is hope that she will remain sensible and trustworthy.

I was 15 when I met (now) dh. He was 21.

I think my family failed me, pretty much, they let me go away with him, they let me share a bed with him.

My parents were going through a nasty separation (although still shared the home) and no one really bothered about it.

Thankfully, he was well bought up & nothing happened until I was well passed 16 & at my instigation.

Even knowing how it turned out for me, I wouldn't like it if one of my dds did this, and would certainly pay more attention to what was going on than my parents did.

And the point of this post is....?

Ok, this might be long but I'll try to keep it succinct, two very different stories here!

I was 14yo, about to turn 15. Had a relationship with 20 or 21yo man, can't remember exactly. My parents did not approve, his mum had died so only his elderly father for guidance on his part, and he didn't care much whatever. We were having sex (at his house) and an accidental pregnancy ensued. I still had a year of school left. My parents were obviously furious, they had been very strict with me about when I was allowed out/when he visited etc. and tried to stop us seeing one another. I'm sad to say I lied and did whatever I could to be with him anyway. They were talking about going to the police etc. once the pregnancy came to light, so I did stop seeing him as I didn't want any trouble (small town, everyone knows your business etc)

My parents begged and pleaded with me to terminate the pregnancy, my friends advised the same, as did wider family. My mother ended up using her small savings to pay for an abortion, as I was already 11 weeks and our GP had told her there was probably a few weeks wait for an NHS abortion. This was money she had saved for my sisters and I to learn to drive. Eventually my family came to accept what had happened, but it was clear they felt unable to trust my behaviour in the future. In the meantime I had endured all kinds of oddness from this 'man', who claimed the child of his I had 'killed' (his words) might have been the second coming of Christ he was deathly serious, his words have not been taken out of context here!

Fast forward a year, and I'm 15 about to turn 16yo, meet a lovely man, who was aged 19yo about to turn 20. We started going out, my parents were very worried. Understandably! However we took it easy and grew together to finally marry and have 3 children, still together nearly 20 years later.

So to summarise - depends of the maturity of the two people involved, basically! I was too young the first time, and he was a dickhead. My parents were right and I will be eternally grateful to them for helping me get it of a situation I thought I was grown up enough to handle, when I wasn't. My mum did most of the talking and I didn't think she did it that well, too much of her own feelings were obvious and the way she approached some of it pushed the teenage me further away. They tried to discourage the second relationship with DH but quickly realised from experience what would happen if they came down to heavy on it, so I think they watched carefully from a distance.

Hope anyone looking for information about similar situations finds something useful in my post.

And it would be a cold day in hell that my 15 year old gets into a sports car driven by a twenty something too unless it's with her brothers as they are good drivers.

My sister was 14 and started going out with a 19 year old. My parents invited him round to meet him, and my mum told him that if he laid a finger on my sister she'd have the police on him. He told his mum, who was so annoyed she made him finish with my sister. Result!

I think I would talk to her and more specifically the boyfriend. DH would be too busy procuring a shotgun.

Upshot is at that age the maturity difference is too much.

She won't see that.

The real question is why a 22 yr old man wants to be with a 15year old kid. That's why I would be speaking to him (in such a way to make clear he is out of order).