No longer a teen but I do believe I was groomed as a teen.. advice needed pls

[Sarah39W]

I’d love some advice. I’ve thought about therapy but on the whole I live a very happy and stable life and worry dragging all this up again will not be best. I do however feel I need to vocalise a few things and get some opinions on what i went through..

I am 48 year old mum (happily married) and this has been put to bed for years however now my teenage girls are the same age it’s bright up a lot of feelings.

When I was 16 I met this boy, he was friends with mutual friends they were all in their late teens/ early 20 assumed he was the same.

we started dating and fast forward a few months were going out . My parents were very laid back something that now horrifies me. I will say I was a teenager that lacked boundaries & did whatever I liked basically. As time went on this ‘boy’ turned out to be 27 which mum mum didn’t seem fussed with. He was a drug dealer, no one knew and I think my family liked he was very well dressed, drove a very expensive Porsche and told them all he owned multiple businesses. I still can’t get my head around i was 16/17! What on earth did my mum think he had in common with me ??

another few months on and he treated me really badly, would say he’d pick me up from a night out and leave me standing there on the street in the darkness at 2am. I’d say I’ll get a cab and 10 mins would turn to an hour standing there on my own. I’d find girls things in his car, he’d tell me he was interviewing girls for an escort agency he was opening, drove me around to look at expensive houses and say the escort girls are buying this themselves they make so much money, looking back now I have no doubt this is what he was grooming me into. He’d ‘take’ me shopping at designer shops in London yet he’d only buy himself things, making me feel I couldn’t afford anything. He’d Rose forends on holiday and not me, he was very loving but also quite matter of fact that we wouldn’t be forever. It would break my heart as I was totally in love. Now looking back I can see what the plan was.

Things came to a head when arguments turned into physical fights, I took an overdose twice and each time was asked by MH services are you ok now? And that’s about as far as my care went. I wasn’t ok, I was eventually put on heavy anti depressants and lost a good 3/4 years of my life and I couldn’t get off them. During this time I’d still call him and he’d meet me for sec it was a mess and ruined my teenage years.

There is so so much more to this story. It tuned out he’d given me a fake name, I didn’t know him at all. The mutual fiends actually knew very little about him, I don’t know he was actually a high up criminal or someone who was a fantasist - both equally as terrifying. Before it ended we’d have police following us or was this made up and again made to scare me ??

Only recently I have started to think about this ex. It’s like I need to know where he is now. I’m not interested in him in a romantic way but I still live in the same town and feel I need to know where he is what he’s doing, I hate to bump into him, obviously don’t ever bring up his name so can’t even ask mutual friends. I’ve looked on fb and isn’t and nothing. Prison maybe lol. Or Dubai 🙄

My daughters are around the same age and it’s really triggered a lot of memories which are not so nice.

Any advice.. what would you do..

I'd do nothing. Maybe some counselling to talk it through if you are so inclined. It was 30 years ago, he was a twat, you were naive. Don't spend the next 30 giving him any more headspace.

I think you need to speak to your parents op. They massively let you down and I think you'll go a long way towards healing if you have it out with them

Fwiw mine didn't give a shit either, my first boyfriend as 24 when I was 15 and I ended up pregnant at 18, he walked out one year later.

It is common that your past experiences come to the surface when your children are the age you were when bad or traumatic things happened.
It depends how much this is affecting you now, how preoccupied you are and how you’re feeling. Some therapy to talk it through and process the ways you were exploited by the man and not protected by your parents could be helpful.

It was an inappropriate relationship with an element of grooming, and certainly emotional abuse and controlling behaviour.

The urge to know where he is in his life now doesn't seem like it would be healthy to explore or follow up. I'd be spending some time thinking about why that seems like something you want to do. Do you want to know if he has had a bad life? Or is it about feeling in control - as in, knowing that you won't bump into him around town because he no longer lives there? Or something else?

I certainly wouldn't act on it. Work on putting thoughts of this unpleasant man aside. It is in the past, you were a child - you're not now and you aren't in this man's control any more.

Hi op. I was dodgy age gap type relationship when I was a teenager..

my advice would be to try and think what you want from digging it up. It helped me to recognise it as grooming/rape and him as disgusting. But I can’t talk about it to other people. I’d never be able to ask my parents about it without ripping open terrible wounds for them and they are elderly.

I do keep tabs on him a little bit, he’s a father now so he’s stopped putting his life online as much but he’s very successful in his career and socially successful. So I’m not sure it’s helped me to know all that. I sometimes contemplate telling police to check his hard drive but I doubt they’d act on a random tip off. He was 18 when it started and I was 14. Everyone knew. People raised eyebrows but no one did anything.

edit: I guess keeping tabs means I know I’ll never bump into him. I don’t know what I’d do if I did. Probably call him a fucking nonce and hope everyone was staring and hope his wife asked lots of questions afterwards. But realistically I’d probably not even if I felt brave enough - just in case it was the wrong person! The funny thing is he’s shorter than me and not at all physically intimidating so it almost seems silly to be afraid of him. He just makes me feel sick.

He’s dropped off the face of the earth so it’s mainly intrigue. I suppose some of it is I want him to see I have a great life, part is out of noisiness, I don’t know it’s a strange one to explain. It’s like all these feelings have bubbles to the surface. I actually think a large part of just talking about it. My husband knows a little of what went on and he wouldn’t want to chat about it obviously, it was a long long time ago and he’d be very upset to know I was so badly treated. But I do feel it’s mainly that I want to vocalise it and ironing out on my head which I will never be able to do anyway unless I actually spoke to him and got the truth - and I definitely have no interest in doing that.

I’m so sorry to hear you went through that. It must be hard knowing what he’s doing and see him in plain sight, this has actually made me realise maybe that wouldn’t be useful for me. Perhaps I’m expecting him to not be successful and if that’s not the case that would probs make me feel quite different and quite resentful.

I doubt you'd get the truth from someone like that if you did ever speak to him. That would be a waste of time. These people are flawed and damaged, they will not give you want you want or need.

It does sound as though your daughters being the same age has highlighted how much you were a child and were abused by this man, which has caused you to start ruminating over it.

Maybe it would help to talk through with someone, an appropriate counsellor or psychotherapist maybe?

Yes I agree. Thank you