TL;DR I was in a short relationship with a 35 year old woman when I was 20, my sister thinks this was abusive for this woman to be with me, and I don’t feel the same way.
My sister and I are both in our late 30s now. I don’t know why I never told her, but recently I decided that I would. I’ve told plenty of other people. It came up naturally in conversation recently and I guess never has before. When I was younger, I showed it off a little to my friends but not much. Not that this is a good reason to show off who you’re sleeping with, but I was pretty much just a dumb young guy.
The older woman (at the time) and I met where she worked. I went in to buy something and she walked it out to my car for me. I thought she was cute but I didn’t really think anything beyond that in that moment. Then she asked me to call her if I wanted to, so I told her I would but I didn’t get her number and drove off. I called the store later to talk to her and got her number.
We ended up going out, and we were together for about 4 months. I ended up being the one to end it with her because frankly our age difference gave me the impression there wasn’t a future and I kind of just wanted to get on with my life and hopefully find someone that I had a real future with. She didn’t try to get me to stay. We were both sad, but it was the right thing to do.
My sister is telling me that what she did was abusive because of our age difference. I was an adult and I made all the real moves. I didn’t do anything that I didn’t want to do, and I wasn’t talked into anything, and it ended amicably enough. She didn’t offer me alcohol or anything like that. The older woman and I haven’t talked since, so it’s been almost 20 years at this point.
I admit that it probably wasn’t the healthiest thing in the world, but it doesn’t feel like either of us did anything wrong. However, I will say this: being now in my late 30s and seeing 20 year olds, I would feel like a creep if I slept with one of them. Even if there was zero manipulation. So I don’t think what she did was 100% appropriate, but I don’t really feel like I personally did anything that warrants getting therapy for it.
To be clear, I’ve been to therapy for other things. I’m not anti-therapy. This just seemed like another relationship at the time, and one that I ended when it didn’t feel like it was going anywhere. That’s all.