When I was 16, I briefly dated someone online who was 13, and I feel really terrible about it.

Before I continue, I’d like to say this. I have high-functioning autism, and I struggle heavily when it comes to social situations. I remember once at an IEP meeting my teachers all said that I was “a few years behind” maturity-wise. I also have bipolar disorder, and I was going through a manic episode when I decided to start dating this person. When you’re in a manic state, you tend to make poor decisions, you don’t think before you act. With that being said, let’s get to the reason I made this post.

In November 2018, I became friends with this 13-year-old guy online, specifically Twitter (Let’s call him Travis). I knew Travis had a crush on me; he kept dropping little hints. For example, during one of our conversations, he said that he had a crush on some other 16-year-old boy who turned him down because of the age gap. When he said this, I felt like I was put in a position to be like “well I don’t mind” because I wanted to seem cool. So I lied and told Travis that I liked him, Travis responded and said he liked me too, and we started dating.

We dated for like 3 weeks, and during those three weeks, we shared lewd pics of each other. At the time I wasn’t aware that it was weird for a 16-year-old and a 13-year-old to date; As I said earlier I’m autistic and I struggle with social situations, and I had never dated anyone before so I wasn’t well-versed in the rules of teenage dating. I didn’t really want him to share any pics of himself with me, but I didn’t say anything because

1. I thought it was normal
2. I was worried he would get the impression that I was calling him ugly or something.

So I just decided to go along with it. I complimented him, called him cute, etc. After about 3 weeks of dating, I told Travis that I was breaking up with him because I was uncomfortable with the age gap. He was totally understanding, we broke up and went back to being friends.

I don’t why I’m just now starting to feel guilty about it. It’s been almost 2 years and up until 2 months ago I was completely fine just living out my life. Until suddenly, BAM, I was hit with a wall of guilt and self-loathing. I was terrified that I may have accidentally taken advantage of him or groomed him or something, so I apologized to him. Travis told me that it was totally fine, that I never manipulated him or was controlling of him, that I was never abusive and I never forced him to do something that he was uncomfortable doing. He wasn’t harmed by my actions, he said so himself. You’d think that hearing this directly from him would make me feel better, but I didn’t. I’ve apologized to him multiple times because I keep expecting it to make me feel better, but it never does. All it’s doing at this point is just making Travis annoyed (he told me that it’s ridiculous that I still feel bad about it).

For the past two months, I’ve been wallowing in my own guilt and shame, I haven’t been able to get anything done, I’ve even considered killing myself because the guilt is so overwhelming. I hate myself for being so unaware and stupid, and I feel like I’ll never be able to go back to having a normal life. I feel so disgusted that I ever had the potential to do something so creepy and wrong. Mood swings are frequent, I feel like I completely ruined my own life, how could I have been so stupid? I’ll be talking to a therapist about it soon, but what if it doesn’t help me? What if I’m doomed to live the rest of my life with his horrible guilt weighing me down?

This has been going on in my head for the past two months. It’s so hard to keep going when every single thought is one of self-hatred. I don’t how to end this post so I’ll just stop typing.