Thank you for posting this. It helps give me the courage to post here. If you can do this after so many years then so can I.

lapchinj

How is all going We haven't heard from you for a while. There are few that have garnered such a great response in the past while, as you did.

Please check in with all and let us know how you are doing.

Heal well
Martin

Hi Lap
I Also "Loved" my perps. By the time I got the Long time perp I was also 12 or 13. It was because of my family situation that I was in, that I went out looking for the Love that I so desperately desired. My Perp took advantage of my situation and MOLESTED me. even at 13 I did not understand adult love, we are not supposed to, and I was abused, make no mistakes.
I hope you find healing, it is only when we accept things that happend to us that we begin to heal. We need to accept that it was not our fault, and then we are able to process the abuse and move on with life.
It is never to late.

Heal well
Martin

Lap,
It’s a tricky situation when you’re getting love, affection and nurture as a teenager from an older man who’s having sex with you. (I was in a similar situation. I even initiated the sex.) The attention is what you need, and the sex might seem like a small price to pay. You may even grow to look forward to it, but even as a kid you know something’s wrong there. You have something to hide. You start telling lies. That’s part of the price you pay. Your ability to live openly and honestly as a regular teenage boy is taken from you, and later in adulthood your life is so screwed up you can’t even cuddle your own children or grandchildren. When those innocent kids need and deserve your affection, you can’t give it to them. That’s a horrible, horrible price to pay.

The point is the man who loved you when you were thirteen should not have been having sex with you. He should have given you the things you mention, replacing your mother and father, taking you to the fair and the movies, etc., like you say. That would’ve been healthy. Love, affection, nurture--that would’ve been healthy. But he shouldn’t have touched you sexually. That was wrong of him. He made a decision that was wrong. Even if you begged him to have sex with you, his responsibility was to say no, set boundaries and still love you. You say he was a surrogate father for you. You say he was great. That’s the tricky part. He probably really did give something of value to you at a time when you desperately needed it. But he also took something from you, and what he took, and the price you’ve had to pay for it seems far greater. Why couldn’t he have just loved you without luring you into sex? That he pimped you out probably tells you more about him than you’ve been willing to admit to yourself.

Okay, maybe I finally get what you’re saying. Is it just wishful thinking that boys in your situation (our situation--mine was similar) can get love and affection from a man without sex? Perhaps it’s only the lucky kids who get that. If the choice is to have nothing (to be completely alone and hurting) or to have a man who genuinely cares for you, takes care of you in many good ways, but also requires sex from you, then... ? What am I trying to say here? Maybe the line we’re trying to draw between abuse and not abuse is fuzzier than we think.

I can’t help wondering, though, if such thinking might be fodder for potential abusers, men who are looking for excuses to befriend boys and then molest them. They can convince themselves that what they’re giving the boy is better for him than nothing. Is that true? If you knew of a 13 yr old boy in your town who was in a similar situation that you were in, what would you do about it? If you knew he was having sex with an older man, and you were in a position to stop it, would you? Or would you just let it slide, thinking that what the boy was getting was better than nothing? Is every situation different? If some situations are "not abuse," then why are the consequences in later life so dire?