What I Couldn't See at 17: A Reflection on First Love and Manipulation
The truth behind the 'fairytale' I lived at 17
When I was 17, I thought I was living a love story. My first boyfriend, my first everything, was 22. At the time, the five-year age gap didn’t seem strange to me. I was naïve, enamored, and entirely unprepared to see the dynamics at play. Now, as I’ve grown older and work with teenagers who remind me so much of my younger self, the realization hits me harder each year: 17-year-olds are still so clueless. I was clueless. And he knew it.
We were together for three years, married for less than one. I had broken up with him at one point because the relationship was starting to feel “off.” I couldn’t articulate why at the time, but I knew I needed space. Instead of respecting my boundaries, he manipulated me into coming back. He said he’d been in a car accident. Then he told me he’d been to the doctor and might have skin cancer. Each story seemed like an urgent call for my care, for my love. I interpreted these tactics as romantic gestures — displays of how deeply he cared for me. I didn’t know anything else. I didn’t know how to separate manipulation from love.
I was part of his collection, a blank canvas for him to project his fantasies onto. He took pride in showcasing me to his friends, boasting about my age, my inexperience, and my body in ways that reduced me to an object.
Looking back now, I see the moments I ignored for what they were: inappropriate, controlling, and, frankly, creepy. He would tell me things that felt strange even then but didn’t register fully because of how much I trusted him. Once, he told me how one of his friends had pulled him aside the day we met to say how “hot” I was and how lucky he was to be with me. At the time, I felt flattered. Now, I see how deeply inappropriate it was — a grown man objectifying me, a teenager, and my then-boyfriend sharing that with pride.
Worse were the details he shared about our private life. He bragged to his boss about our sex life, recounting intimate details I wouldn’t even have shared with close friends. I found out later that he talked about me in this way often, as if I were an extension of his ego rather than a person. Once, I ran into his boss at a restaurant on my 18th birthday. I was there with my family, and when I went to the bathroom, I found myself waiting for a stall right in front of him. He had never met me before, but I knew who he was. The way he looked at me — his eyes running over my body with an appraising leer — made my skin crawl. Back then, I didn’t know how to name the discomfort. I thought his attention was a compliment. I thought this was normal.
I had been conditioned by my husband to believe that older men’s attention was something to aspire to. I had grown up in a culture where age gaps were often dismissed with “Age is just a number,” even when the reality was far more troubling. It wasn’t until years later that I could name what had happened to me: I had been groomed.
I feel sadness for that girl — for me (…) who thought she was living a fairytale but was really being manipulated into giving away parts of herself she hadn’t even learned to protect yet.
For a long time, I carried guilt and shame over the way the relationship ended. I cheated on him. It’s a choice I regret deeply, but I no longer punish myself for it. Instead, I feel sadness and compassion for the 18-year-old girl who believed she was the luckiest person in the world to have a 23-year-old boyfriend who flaunted her like a trophy. I was never his equal in that relationship. I was part of his collection, a blank canvas for him to project his fantasies onto. He took pride in showcasing me to his friends, boasting about my age, my inexperience, and my body in ways that reduced me to an object.
“Look at my beautiful, freshly 18-year-old girlfriend,” I imagine him saying, his pride carrying an edge of perversion. He spoke of my virginity like it was a prize he had won, a secret triumph he could dangle in front of others. “Have I told you how tight she was?” I can still feel the weight of that humiliation, the way his words turned me into a thing rather than a person.
I don’t feel guilt or sadness for cheating anymore. Instead, I feel sadness for that girl — for me. For the teenager who thought she was living a fairytale but was really being manipulated into giving away parts of herself she hadn’t even learned to protect yet.
To my younger self, I want to say this: It wasn’t your fault. You deserved better. You deserved to be seen and cherished for who you were, not displayed as an ornament of someone else’s vanity.
As for him? He can go fuck himself.
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