39 year old friend has 18 year old girlfriend

[Pooshy]

Our good friend is coming to a bbq with us tomorrow and bringing his gf who he's been dating since January

We've not yet met her but he's 39 and she is 18.....!! She is closer in age to my children than me

My DH and I are horrified that he's going out with someone so young. DH has expressed this to him plenty of times and how it's so wrong but it doesn't register. To top it off I know she had a tough childhood with sexual abuse from her father

He's actually a really nice guy (he's our sons godfather) but I just don't know how to act tomorrow....

Probably springing from a hatred of his ex wife and what he thinks she did to him!

I started testing my newly discovered charms on him from the age of 14, and he did exceptionally well to resist it for more than two years.

Being able to 'resist' for the next 4-5 years is literally the bare minimum that is expected from a teacher; along with making sure there is enough professional distance that the relationship can't become too close.

It doesn't matter what the girl's intent- a teacher who does this behaves appalling. There is always an inherent power differential and anyone who isn't grown up enough to deal with that appropriately shouldn't teach.

There are very good reasons why teachers like this are arrested and (at the very least) never teach again.

Why are you so keen to brand someone a victim who is clearly does not feel like one? There are more colours to life than black and white. Because I've seen this exact same story play out before, and more than once. In every case the scales-from-eyes moment was quite traumatising for the woman who'd spent her adult life insisting age is just a number/she was lucky to have met him/it was really love/actually she seduced him/she'd been mature for her age etc etc

"I started testing my newly discovered charms on him from the age of 14, and he did exceptionally well to resist it for more than two years."

Crax - that statement says it all really. He groomed you so well that you remain an apologist for paedophilia to this day - even as an adult with a child of your own!

What "charms" do you imagine you had at 14 fgs? Who talks like this? You have no boundaries whatsoever and your comments are a total insult to abused children everywhere.

Cruxmum the way you describe your 14 year old self is very telling. Given your 'gifted' academic background and subsequent Doctorate, I'm sure you don't need cognitive dissonance explaining to you.

My 14 year old and her mates are testing out their newly discovered charms. Female and male, straight and gay, they are so sweetly, childishly inept .

18 is adult I would not like it if my 18 year is of neice had a 49 year old boyfriend but it wouldn’t be my business as she is an adult. My gran married her 38 year old boyfriend at 18 they had 5 kids together and he died in his early 70s leaving her a young widow which was unfortunate. But her youngest was 15 by then.
What I find difficult is that this is scorned one way but not the other Cher, Madonna Tina turner no one says that’s disgusting or paedophilic. Though I can’t inagun fancying Tom Holland I totally prefer Chris Pratt but that’s my taste.

What I find difficult is that this is scorned one way but not the other Cher, Madonna Tina turner no one says that’s disgusting or paedophilic.

Because they dated (and married) much younger men, not teenage boys.
Emmanuel Macron's wife however, I do absolutely think has paedophilic tendencies to pursue a sexual relationship with teenage Macron while she was 40 years old.

Same for the Radfords.

He groomed you so well that you remain an apologist for paedophilia to this day - even as an adult with a child of your own!

It's not paedophilia. I wish people would bother to know what a paedophile is.

Oops, the Radford age difference was creepy on his part, not hers

Gottage I'll correct myself, I intended to refer to Brigitte Macron as a predatory ephebephile, not a paedophile.

There's things that are legal but morally wrong, just because somethings legal doesn't mean it's okay or right.

At 18 she is a teenager, she might be legally an adult but only just, you don't just turn 18 and suddenly become a mature adult. At 18 you are just learning what being an adult actually means, you are just learning really about proper adult sexual relationships. 18 is so young.

I am 22, I have nothing in common with 40 yr old men, we can have a chat and a laugh but I can't imagine we would ever be on the same level enough to have a sexual relationship, we just are at very different stages of life, and I can't imagine any decent 40 year old really wanting to be with me, I find that really creepy because I know how different we are.

Even now 18 year olds seem so young compared to me and I'm only 4 years older ffs! I don't know a single 18 year old who could be on the same level as a 39 yr old man (and I know plenty).

I have a few friends who have and are dating men in their 30s and every single one of these relationships have a power imbalance. They aren't two equal people, they are almost always "big strong man" teaching a "young girl" dynamic. I don't think big age gap relationships with people so young can ever be fair or equal.

It makes my skin crawl a bit, I know the type of man who hits on 18 year old girls in clubs, I look at 18 year olds and see a late teen, I don't see a fully formed adult ever, and that's before you even the sexual abuse into it.

Goodness. Wonder what you would make of me. My late DH was 34 years older then me and my late DP was 16 years older than me. If they are happy then be happy for them!!

There's things that are legal but morally wrong, just because somethings legal doesn't mean it's okay or right.

I agree.

When adult men routinely go for teenage girls, it just makes me wonder if their lack of positive qualities renders them incapable of appealing to women of their own age group. Teenage girls have little experience by which to compare (or even notice) their partner's inadequacies.

With these men, I just think it's a case of not meeting the bar with adult women, so instead of raising their game to meet the bar, they just go where the bar is lower.

Are were you a teenager with a history of sexual abuse when you met CharingCross?

I don’t want to spend time with my own teenagers, let alone someone elses.

It is icky and also , how boring for you. She’s not a peer - why should you have to spend your leisure time playing grownups with a child?

@TatianaLarina.... No!

So your experience isn’t relevant to the thread.

And who told you you could say who can post and who can't all of a sudden??? 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄

I didn’t say you couldn’t post I just said it wasn’t relevant.

Isn't it great when people think they can dictate to other posters!!!

I think the point that Tatiana was making was this is not about age gaps, plenty of age gaps relationships that work very well (in my family included)

This is however different this is a man who has clearly decided not to like women and watched too much porn so (wrongly) decided he is in to BDSM when actually he is just into objectifying women and dominating due to his hate over the break up of his marriage. In order to find someone to do this he has picked on a vulnerable 18 year old

As you say.

I've previously posted in thread but needed a namechange for this.

Craxmum - describing your history as you have has started an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. I have a long history of childhood abuse, including sexual. Few years into high school a new (male) teacher joined. I was regarded as "gifted", and there were many occasions where I was alone with said teacher (at least 3 times a week). Couple of years in he came to my home for a meal (highly identifying so if I get the jitters this post will disappear) with me and parents.

School continued. Things seemed different after said meal, looking back as though there wasn't the teacher/student dynamic, it was more friends as I saw it. I found out a week before the end of summer term he was leaving. I know now his reason was utter bollocks, and he had only told headteacher and dept head. Did he leave because our "relationship" was perilously close to crossing serious lines? I'll never know, but plausible. I'm happy he left many years on, I actually dread to think what could have happened, it's similar age gap to be discussed too, he would've been late 30s/early 40s.

Unfortunately for me, childhood abuse got a lot worse after he left. C'est la vie.

He sounds vile.

He has discussed his girlfriend's sexual abuse history with your DH.

He discusses their sexual activities with his mates.

Those sexual activities are BDSM.

She is only just 18, with a history of familial abuse.

There is a 21 year old age difference. Actually the age difference is the least icky thing about it. And even that is still icky.