((TW: POCD)) I matched with someone on tinder who’s 18 and I’m having serious anxiety about it because they just turned 18 last Saturday and I’m about to turn 22. I know it’s legal and I shouldn’t be worrying but it does make me uncomfy. I’ve had people lie about their age to try and talk to me years ago and it makes me feel really fucking gross even though I blocked them immediately. I’m so against talking to minors it’s insane.

Hey, so I wanted to ask about something that is trying to bother me right now. I just thought to come on here before letting my mind ruminate over and over and over. So a year ago when I was 22, I did not have many people to talk to aside from my roommates who were either not home during the summer or just to themselves so I decided to try out Omegle. I talked to a few different people on there, but there’s two people in particular that kind of made me worried. There is this one girl I was talking to from Canada and she told me the story about her and her friends smoking weed, and I told her about how my female roommate used to sleep in my bed. But the way I told her that was by asking for her Instagram so I could DM her that rather than say it out loud because my roommate was in the next room. At some point during our conversation, she told me that she was 16, and I’m not even sure how we came about that but she told me. Before I continue, we were not flirting at all. We were just sharing stories, that was it. My intention was to not flirt at all with anyone because of age and the fact that they probably nowhere near me. Also, I just kind of thought it would be weird too. But now I can’t remember if she told me her age before I told her about my roommate or after I told her about my roommate, but I feel like it was before because I kind of felt like I should’ve unfollowed her after. And what made it worse is that somehow my roommate saw her Instagram handle and followed her as well. Another instance was when this girl was being very goofy and playing the character and I was joking back and I ended up being invited into their Instagram group chat, where I found out they were also 16 so without saying anything, I left the group chat. So my worries if this was inappropriate or was it just a conversation that I probably should’ve cut short. I’m not sure but it’s starting to worry me. And just for context, I have no idea that girl or anybody else since that day and it NEVER went sexual at all. So yeah, that’s the story

I have this old friend I became friends with online at like 15-16 years old and they are a bit younger than me. I’m 18 and having a younger friend just triggers the pocd I have and I kind of don’t want to be friends with him anymore unless he’s 17. I don’t know if I should talk to him about this because I don’t want to ghost him as a friend cause I been through that shit. I don’t know what to do. We been friends for a long time.

Ever since POCD hit, I've come to a point where I've gotten desensitized on what's right and wrong. I think fiction and porn hasn't helped either. The only thing I worry about now is if I'm attracted to someone below 18 or view sexual content of someone below 18. And I think perhaps this has made me numb to situations that are wrong, even in cases for myself. In the past week, I've seen two posts about people just turning 18 and relationships/sexualization of them. The first post was someone on Twitter talking about this person being a predator. It was a screenshot of a Tiktok where a woman who is 23 said the kid she used to babysit at 13 just turned 18 and if she should ask her out. And to be honest, I felt nothing. I didn't regard it as wrong. My thought was "well, they're both adults now so whatever." The next post I saw today, and I feel like this was life trying to tell me something. I'm 18 and just turned 18 a few months ago. At 17 I realized I was become desensitized and justifying morally wrong things as a teen from porn and stuff, and POCD hit so I decided I wasn't going to be attracted to minors or sexualize them even if we're the same age. But I was thinking about the morality of stuff, like people turning 18 and being an adult and everything. And I was just kind of like, well as long as someone is 18 it doesn't matter and it's okay right? Well, today a KPOP Idol, Han Yujin, literally just turned 18. I was checking the Enhypen group out and the members ages now. Specifically Sunoo and Sunghoon because I had crushes on them but I did the rest of the members too. I did know Han Yujin was 17 before, but I checked his age and it said he was 18. And my first thought was, "oh, it's okay to like him now!" And then I saw he literally just turned 18 today. It made me feel weird, but I was thinking, well he's 18. He's an adult. So it's fine, right? Well, I opened Twitter and a Twitter post called for someone to report an account. I saw that the account in question had posted on Han Yujin's birthday. The post was "Han Yujin is 18 now. It's okay to sexualize him!" Or something along those lines. Something I myself had JUST thought about. The post had 24k likes and a few comments, with people saying it was gross, disgusting, predatory, etc. Apparently the person who made the post about Yujin was 18 though, maybe even only a few months older than Han Yujin. But no one cared and said it was disgusting and predatory/pedo either way. And now I'm sitting here, thinking about myself and my own morality. My morals seem to stop at someone being 18 and that's that. But that doesn't seem very moral, does it? Especially with the posts I saw and what just happened. I have this mindset and I'll still have it when I'm older and basically be a groomer and a pedophile. Everyone else seems to see and understand that dating someone or sexualizing them the moment they turn 18 is grooming, pedophilic, weird, gross, etc. but I don't have the same view and see it as okay. There are many more situations similar to this too. Where I've justified real relationships and fictional ones where someone knew someone as a minor, kid, and even in cases where they raised them. My argument every time is "nothing happened before 18, and they're an adult now." For fiction, I justify it so I can enjoy the fictional content, relationship, and sexual content of them. It just seems like I have a predatory and pedophilic mindset, and I don't think it will change with age.