Have I been groomed?
I've been in a relationship with a guy who is 15 years older than i am. He's 35 now and i am 20. He used to be my tutor. My mother found about my feelings for him and i had to stop taking his classes. And since I was no longer his student i confessed my feelings to him and it was mutual. I was 15, almost 16 at that time. We came into a sort of relationship. Mostly contacting over phone. We met only a couple of times a month at most until last year which was the 4th year of the relationship.
He was someone i really looked up to before the relationship began and after that someone who was a great support system emotionally. My relationship with my family is bad to say the least. I grew up in a joint family of over 20 people. We all love together in the same house and people are just envious and callous. As for my parents, my mother used to physical abuse me until my early teenage years and after that it was emotional abuse. As for dad I don't think I have ever had a conversation with him. He's very misogynistic and i grew up with way too many restrictions. I studied in an all girls convent school, didn't have much contact with any male friends just male cousins. All this put me in a vulnerable place emotionally and at that age having this guy was like everything. I really love him and so does he. It may sound like i am defending him but he really is a great person and a lot of people can vouch for it. His parents wanted him to get married as he was over 30 and here people get arranged married in their 20s. But the guy told me that he would give me time till 18 and then if i confirm that i would marry him in future he would inform him parents about me. And so he did and even then we didn't marry until I was 20.
I had secretly married him about a year ago because I was afraid that my family would not have a good reaction to our relationship because he is not from our caste and to my family that is everything in marriage. I was still living with my parents like usual. The marriage was just a safety measures. A few weeks ago my family did discover our relationship and they locked me up until my husband brought the police to set me free. My family accused me harrased me a lot until they found out that I had already done the court marriage and that now they could not break is apart. My husband really did fight a lot to free me from my family as they have a lot of influence in the area with the police.
My relationship with him is great. But recently a friend of mine who had moved to a different city for college was going through relationship troubles. And ultimately when she gave me the details it was apparent that the guy had groomed her and was forcing her to get explicit photos of herself and her friends. He had been fired from his two previous jobs on account of sexual harrasment. He was about 6-7 years older than my friend and the way she would talk about him even after knowing all this. Still wanting to find something to defend him made me question if this has happened with me too. I don't know.
I don't think I was groomed in any way. But my relationship was not leagal. I don't doubt my husband's feeling. And like I said in the title it wouldn't matter if it was grooming because I am married to him now and won't be leaving him. We did have sex when I was about 16, but only once. And a couple of time in the next 4 years. But that was all. It was only after I was about 20 and we got secretly married that we did start having sex like a normal relationship. Before that he said he didn't want to do anything sexual as it would not be right. As I was too young. But the whole relationship and the situation with me being at such an impressionable age and him as a supportive figure makes me question if really it was grooming in any way.
It really sounds like an older man took advantage of a vulnerable teen who was hurting.....it's hard because I very much think what he did when you were underage and he was a fully grown adult man was disgusting, wrong, and abusive to you. He was a pedophile, and r**ped a child. I think that you were groomed, he knew you were vulnerable and used that to make you attached to him. But the tough part is that I don't think you're dumb or that your feelings are all false, in the sense that its understandable to love and care about someone who was there for you. And you're still very young, your brain is even still developing... I'm worried that the feelings you developed for him are based off of manipulation. But, you are an adult now, and this is your life. If you feel worried or strange about it, even if you also feel like you want to be with him at the same time, I wonder if talking about it with someone (a professional) might help disentangle those thoughts. Or if you don't really have any worries (which, this post kind of implies you do), it's really up to you with what you want to do with your life going forward. It is your life. You should be and feel in control of it.
@Jushiee
Jushiee this is a really tough one to answer and I'm glad you're asking yourself these questions.
There is no definite right-or-wrong answer as far as I can tell, but there are some details about your situation that concern me.
1. You were very young when you got involved with your husband and you didn't necessarily have the wisdom, experience or perspective to make good lifelong choices at that point.
2. You were isolated and in pain, and didn't get a chance to heal from that before you became dependent on your husband.
3. You never had enough freedom to ask yourself what you would really want if no one else was influencing you and you could be happy on your own.
All these factors gave your husband a lot of POWER to influence you, power that he may not have had if you had been more mature or grown up in a lot of ways. It is very concerning that he chose to love someone who had so little power compared to him.
That said, it's impossible for me or anyone else to judge you or your husband's actions and choices. If you are happy then good for you. I just hope that you continue to develop yourself and mature. Also, I hope you do not stay with him in the long run if you feel you could be happier with someone else. You were not very old when you made this choice, and it's possible you will miss out on better options because you made it so early on. Don't let yourself be cheated out of your best life.
The hard facts of your situation is that he was 31 when he engaged in a romantic/sexual relationship with a 16 year old teenage girl. No matter what, that is a massive problem because any grown man that can cross that boundary with a 16 year old teenager is already engaging in sexual abuse of a child by law.He also did it with you as an emotionally vulnerable teenage girl that already was feeling isolated from your family. No doubt, at that age you are susceptible to attention from an older man which results in emotional dependency.I think if this went to court, it would be seen as grooming.I understand you won't leave him now as you just married him and you have feelings of love for him. However, if you are questioning actions and whether or not you were groomed, as you get older you will begin to appreciate the seriousness of what he did and this might impact you in ways you never expected it to. You might have a 16 year old daughter one day and feel devstated to learn she was inappropriately engaging in an illegal relationship with a much older man. I'm Indian and I understand that this ia a cultural practice that is historically normalized, but clearly the laws are now trying to change that by making situations like yours a criminal offense.Good luck, I hope perhaps you can find a professional that can help you navigate this situation