In addition to ‘you’re so Mature for your age!!’ and ‘I don’t really feel like an adult though!’, another ‘maturity’ related grooming tactic that adult abusers tend to use on their younger victims is the idea that an age mismatch is a good thing, because an older adult can ‘teach’ and ‘guide’ a minor about sex, how a relationship should be, etc.
Someone who uses this tactic isn’t really bothering to disguise their desire to be controlling – they’re just trying to romanticize it and sexify it. These abusers will not teach you more or better than you can learn from a more equal partnership.
They rely on you trusting their word for How Things Should Be in order to maintain control, which means instead of a mutual exploration of both your interests, like you’d get in an equal relationship, you just get trained in How This One Specific Person (who refuses to learn anything from anyone else so they usually don’t know much) Likes Things. And what they like is to get their way, always.
In a relationship like that, you don’t get to learn and grow and work together in partnership. Your choices are restricted more and more as the relationship continues, and your abuser will decide they want to break more and more of your boundaries. Whether or not you’re interested in something doesn’t matter to them. They’ll tell you they have to make your choices, For Your Own Good, while isolating you from people who might protect you and from opportunties to grow and learn.
Teenagers and kids, you deserve to be safe as you learn at your own pace what YOU like. An older person who promises to ‘guide you’ and ‘teach you what to do’ isn’t interested in your emotional well-being, they’re only interested in finding a malleable target for abuse. Please be very very wary of any adult who is interested in a minor more than a year or so younger than them, or any person who talks like this about relationships (like dating) that should be equal.
Abusers can sound very convincing, but they’re wrong.
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