- Date posted
- 1y
Relationship / age gap rumination
I’ve asked about this before on this app and I was told I wasn’t doing anything wrong and same thing in real life but when I go online I start to freak out bit. For context I’m in the UK and basically on the 2nd March, I (female) started dating my best friend (male). We’re both actors and met at my drama group when I was 14 he was 13. He turns 16 in two days but at the time we started dating two months ago he was 15 with me being 17 (I’m one year group older but nearly 1.5 years older in age). Now when I started to worry about liking him I asked basically all the people in my life if I would be doing anything wrong by dating him and they all said no and the age gap is basically nothing. This might sound daft but even then like I knew I was in love with him and vice versa, both of us have said we’re each other’s favourite people and we’ve never had such a great emotional connection with another person before, so I didn’t wanna ruin something that I knew would be great for us both by worrying about something that literally everyone told me not to worry about. So irl everything’s fine, but sometimes when I look online (Tik Tok videos usually) for reassurance when I start to worry “what if” , most comments don’t really bat an eye at like a 1 or 2 year age gap (I know ours isn’t actually 2 years but I figure if 2 is fine then 1 is as well) but every now and then they’ll be someone saying about how it’s like grooming or the persons a victim and while rationally I try to tell myself that they’re just chronically online it still gets to me and focus on the more rational seeming people who usually are there disagreeing with them. Logically if there was anything wrong I know that neither of our parents would be so supportive of it as they have been and neither would our friends (mutual or individual), they’d tell me something was up. He knows I have moral scrupulosity and tried to comfort me but I always think as the younger one it’s just kinda easy for him to say that it’s fine lol. Really I always said and thought I’d be with someone older so that could be it, didn’t think I’d mentally be able to date someone younger for this very reason. But he is literally the best person I ever met so I pushed through the worrying, and even my mam has warned me not to freak out and ruin something so great. I won’t go into detail but physically all we’ve done is kiss and that was mostly cos while I knew it worried me I just didn’t wanna mess up any of the romance or the natural part of the course of a relationship and have the memory of us at the start of our romantic relationship just be me freaking out all the time and messing everything up. I’ve told him I wanna take it slow and will not be doing more than that any time soon which he totally gets. Genuinely have no bad intentions whatsoever I just love him for the person he is and most of all out of everything just want to spend quality time with him and make sure he’s happy. I’m just grateful he understands and is patient with me not really initiating anything like that (not just cos of silly age rumination also cos of worries about doing the wrong thing anyway like consent wise, want to have no doubt that I’ll be causing no harm, just thought I’d clarify). Sorry for this being so long (believe me I could’ve made it longer lol) I’ve just been feeling extra compulsive recently. If anyone needs me to clarify anything just ask, I’m just grateful for any help I can get <3