Do abusive men share dark secrets early to test and trap partners?

[ThisStateOfIndependenceShallBe]

Sorry this is probably going to be a bit rambly, not quite sure what I'm trying to say or ask. It's just that something's got me thinking.

Over twenty years ago now when I was in my early twenties my new boyfriend, who was in his late twenties, told me that a couple of months before he'd met me he'd slept with a seventeen year old girl.

We met travelling overseas, and he claimed that in the country we were in it was statutory rape to sleep with someone under eighteen if there was a ten year age gap. (I've since googled this, and it's not, the age of consent is sixteen and in the eyes of the law the age gap doesn't matter.)

He seemed determined to convince me that according to the law of that country he was a paedophile and put on a bit of a tortured soul act.

I can see now that that was a massive red flag, but at the time I just kind of shrugged it off. It was before we met, she was over sixteen, lots of my friends had much older boyfriends when they were in their teens, so I just refused to see it as a big deal, even though he seemed to want me to.

Now thinking back I'm wondering if he was trying to bind me to him by sharing this, sort of making me part of it by telling me about it. Or testing me to see what sort of behaviour I found acceptable. Or pretending to be this tortured soul so I would fall over myself to be the one to save him from his demons, and put up with his bad treatment of me.

Part of me even wonders if maybe it would eventually have come out that the girl was actually fifteen, and he would have said, "you were okay with me sleeping with an underage girl of seventeen and fifteen is only a bit younger, so why is it any different?' And then I would have been drawn even further into his twisted world. (Obviously that's just my imagination running away with me, I have no real reason to think the girl was any younger than seventeen.)

I know that when he cheated on me he told the other woman something about our relationship that also painted him as a tortured soul, and even though I think she believed we'd split up, it made her complicit in his abuse of me, so I think when she found out that actually he'd been cheating on both of us probably the only way she could justify having been with him knowing what he'd done, probably putting up with the same mistreatment because he was such a tortured soul and couldn't help it, was if she convinced herself it was true love. (I don't actually think he's capable of love.)

Anyway, telling her his dark secrets clearly worked better on her than it did on me. When I found out about her I broke up with him. She married him several years later.

Thanks to anyone who's bothered to read my probably incoherent ramblings.

I suppose what I'm really wondering is, do you think abusive men typically tell their girlfriends their dark secrets? Do you think they do it to flatter them. ("He trusts me enough to tell me!") Is it to trap them by making them complicit with the knowledge? Is it so they can get away with bad behaviour- the poor soul is fighting demons, he can't help what he does?

In my experience, this. Hours of interrogation

I'm so sorry to hear this! What an awful thing to have in your family!

I wonder if part of why they do this/why women continue to date them is the saviour complex. He's a bad boy but I can turn him good?

Thing is quite a lot of men who are just a bit anti social (as in, prefer their own company a lot of the time) portray themselves as "a bit dark" when it's not anything awful, just a way to have a bit of space some of the time.

So I imagine it can be hard to tell the difference between "don't want to go out sometimes" and "moody and violent" from how men present themselves.

my ex presented himself as a bit stupid but as I understand more and more of what he did, I realise that he was anything but, Machiavellian is a more fitting description.

Mine too. Looking back I don't know if he always planned to be abusive from the start. But I just can't fathom why someone would go into a relationship intending to cause harm.

The point is that men like this say and do the same thing to every woman they meet.

Yes, I've come to realise that. I thought it was just me at first, that I was inadequate somehow, but now I think that all women are interchangeable to him and I was just the one who was there.

Someone less naive then the OP would just have said ‘I’m pretty sure that’s not the law, but you do you’ and moved on

I wasn't completely convinced it was the law but I wasn't sure. I was a bit confused about why he was telling me, but thought maybe he was just trying to be open and honest, or if maybe he was trying to show off somehow that teenage girls found him attractive.

💐to those of you who have had abusive men in your lives. So sorry you went through that. I hope you are all in better places now.