m00m33mii wrote:First of all truly ‘bad people’ don’t care about or analyse their own behaviour, secondly you were a child. There’s an age of consent for a reason, reason being that people below that age are not deemed to have a grasp of sex/convent and it’s consequences.
I hope that future generations will have far less of these issues with how much more available education there is on sex and consent, and discussions being had in the mainstream media.
But honestly for a lot of older people, we were hugely failed as kids when it comes to these issues. All I was ever educated in was STDs... nothing about relationships, or the law or how much of anything actually works.
I say all that to say that being an ignorant child entering puberty with hormones firing off and little to no understanding of intimacy, these things are upsetting to think about as adults. But they happen. And no sane person would hold a child to a standard they haven’t even been educated on, and certainly no sane person would judge a fully grown adult for their childhood indiscretions.
Kids are really weird, sometimes cruel, mostly curious. Adults are supposed to guide and educate, but they can’t be there all the time and they too drop the ball. Stuff like this happens. Your brain has decided to cherry pick this childhood moment as a way to take on blame for someone in your life you’re feeling bad for. And honestly, if you’re good enough of a person to as an adult have to rifle through your childhood to find something to feel bad about, you’re one of the better people out there in my opinion.
I second all of this. I think it’s very important that different conversations are had when a child does this behavior vs. when a full grown adult does this. You were 13, and way below the age of consent. I honestly don’t think you fully processed or understood what you were doing in that moment and to scrutinize yourself now as an adult is unnecessary. If you REALLY feel bad for it and REALLY feel like what you did was horrible and terrible or that it had a lasting impact on your brother then maybe sit down and have a conversation with him about it. To be completely honest I don’t think he even remembers so it’s probably best not to do that.
I would also like to share a personal story of mine that may possibly make you feel relieved. When I was about 10 or 11 my brothers and cousin molested me in my sleep and made a joke about it. The thing is, they were also kids too. That doesn’t make what they did right but I have a lot more sympathy towards them than if it was an adult who did that to me. I would never think of bringing it up or having long-lasting resentment towards them for that because they probably also didn’t fully understand or process what they did at the time and were clearly not educated that such behavior isn’t ok. If they were in a similar situation as you and were worried about what happened I would be telling them the same thing me and this other poster have said thus far. Technically, what they did was worse because they actually made fun of me for it when I woke up and realized what was happening. I don’t look at them as they are now as adults and think they’re predators or deserve pain though.
I think you’re being really hard on yourself and the fact you’re worried about these things proves you are a good person. I feel like this thing is a lot more common than people would like to admit and a lot of those ppl probably don’t even think about it.