Was I groomed?

[Krazyk30]

I'm currently going through some counselling for anxiety and other issues over the last few months and it's brought up a lot of memories that I'm trying to work through. One of them is about a relationship I was in with an older man. My partner knows and thinks I was groomed but I'm unsure what I think about it so thought I would ask for opinions here. So my best friend when I was younger had an uncle who lived with her nan, and we used to stay over at her nans quite a lot from like 12 years old onwards. Her uncle (10 years older than me) in my eyes was so cool and I really fancied him, and he would always buy us alcohol and we would sit in his bedroom and drink with him at weekends etc over the years. He would often say to my friend that he would sleep with one of her friends one day and he would tell us about his sex life (he was always partying), that's just the way he was. So I knew him very well for a few years, and fast forward to 16, he would give me and one of my other friends drugs when his niece wasn't in his bedroom and we carried on drinking together and he helped me out in some situations i got in also. I then got kicked out as i had a bad relationship with my mum as a teen, and stayed with my friend for a week, then he told me to move to his house (my friends nans) as we were secretly seeing each other which I did. This lead to a 5 year extremely abusive relationship where I suffered lots of trauma from him. But my question is was this grooming? As nothing sexual happened before 16 and also when we did first have sex, I wanted too, I had fancied him for years so I wasn't forced? I'm so confused with it all.

Yes, you were groomed.

At 12 years old you were still basically a child. He was the adult and did not behave in an appropriate parental guardian way. He knew what he was doing, and why. You – did not. You just saw a fun uncle who let you get away with all sorts and covered for you.

Inappropriate behaviour doesn’t have to be sexual. He gained your trust. Got you on his side. Made you believe he could solve all your problems. Got you drink and drugs, probably in return for being good in some way (again, doesn’t have to be sexual). Praise and reward. And also as a lever, subconscious blackmail. Then when the time was right, he makes his move. By then, you believe this man can move heaven and earth for you and you owe him so much, he’s got you out of so many pickles and you have a bit of hero-worship going on. Along with some burgeoning teenage hormones. And he played on that. Again, he knew what he was doing. He was playing the long game.

This, is grooming.

@Boomboom22 It has definitely give more awareness for others. That's what I'm grappling with whether it was just bad decisions from a schoolgirl crush and that maybe he saw me different when I was older and he did like me and that's why we got together. Grooming is such a strong word, it's hard to think that it was all planned and manipulated to happen as it did, I'm not sure I can fully believe it x

Not read the full thread BUT you were not to blame, @Krazyk30. You were a child. You might have wanted this. But you were a child. A decent adult would not have given you what you wanted. A decent adult doesn’t ply adolescents with drink. Adults who do this are always at fault. The child never is. It’s really that simple. And no doubt this contributed to the breakdown of your relationship with your parents because you were being groomed for abuse but manipulated into thinking you wanted this.

Decent adults don’t respond to adolescent crushes. This was entirely his fault.

@Krazyk30 you didn't have a part to play in this. An appropriate adult would have said hello to you and nodded on the stairs. They might have been aware you found them attractive and they'd do nothing to encourage it (and as others have said nicely discourage it). But this man didnt do that. He absolutely groomed you and then you suffered for years. This must be really hard to hear and it sounds like you're getting help but please please be kind to yourself right now. You're going to have so many emotions coming up - I feel really sad for the little girl you were and you will too but with so much more feeling and power because you are her. If this is knocking.you around emotionally please seek some extra help

@Pushpull thank you for your kind message. If I'm honest I don't feel anything about it I don't think, which is why I'm struggling to see anything wrong with it, however I completely get how others do and I would say the same if I heard it had happened to someone else. The relationship itself has affected me massively my entire life, I spent many years putting myself in terrible situations and in harm and hating myself which has basically left me coming back to look at these old memories to see why I was and still am that way to a degree x

@nocoolnamesleft I do think I had a part to play in it, I used to go round as much as I could because I loved to be around him,

This is part of the grooming process, to make you think you’re making choices when actually he’s manipulated and drawn you in.

It was grooming, him waiting until you were 16 for sex doesn’t make it less so - the reason laws around grooming and exploitation extend to 18 is because grooming can start pre-16 but extend past the age of consent, where the perpetrator can handily say you made a choice.

Your capacity to chose freely was utterly compromised by him and his behaviour. You have nothing to be blamed for here regardless of what you did or said or wanted - you can’t consent to your own abuse and exploitation.

I think 'planning' sounds rational and deliberate to people like us.

It probably wasn't particularly carefully thought out on his part- more that rather than understanding automatically that as a child you needed protection, he saw you as just another object he could manipulate to his own ends.

He got a kick out of being powerful, being able to toy with you, to become important to you. Not for your benefit but for his. And then in the longer term he was able to use you for whatever gratified him.

He undermined your development of boundaries.

Have you heard of the shark cage? We help our DC build a protective cage around themselves, that keeps predators away.
When our parents are shoddy, and when men like him get involved, we end up with very gappy bars on our shark cage.

It starts when your parents ask you to lie (say you're four, not five. Don't tell your dad). It carries on when you can't tell them the truth about things because of the trouble you'll be in. When they blame you for what other people did.

This man spots that you have an inadequate shark cage and joins in the process of keeping you vulnerable. (It's just one, no one cares. It's ok, it's just me. But I helped you, I thought you cared...).

Al that pressure and manipulation, you don't know where your bars should be. You don't recognise red flags.

Not your fault.

@pickledandpuzzled I haven't heard of that before, but that is exactly what kept me stuck there for 5 years. He used to threaten if I ever left him he would tell my mum I did drugs and some of the sexual things I had done and they would disown me, that I wouldn't be able to walk out of the house without being beat up etc. Even that he would mutilate me if I ever looked at another man (my private areas). A few times when things did get really bad, I tried to leave and he would just physically restrain me on the bed for hours until I just gave up and collapsed in tears. I had literally noone to turn to, as he had isolated me from all my friends and family, it was the lowest point of my life

((Hugs))

Sounds like your new chap is a keeper though!

I think @pickledandpuzzled explains it really well. It sounds like you're at the start of your journey in understanding this and starting the process of healing so it's understandable that you're puzzling it through. Please know that none of this was anything you did or didn't do and was all on him. He sounds an awful human and the emotional scars will be as deep (or deeper) than the physical impact. I'm so sorry this happened to you, and you should be so proud of who you are

One thing that reassures me, OP, is seeing the patterns repeated in other people's lives.
Once you see the patterns, you realise that it's not your fault. You were unlucky, or left insufficiently protected.

@Pushpull yehh iv been in counselling for 4 months now but haven't yet spoken about this part of my life yet, but I told my therapist I would on our next session hence me trying to make sense of it in my head first before I share anything. Thank you for being so kind