Telling others your darkest secrets...

Shortly after I dropped out of college, I went through a long period of depression, where the only social outlet I had was online forums and chatrooms (including this forum, from time to time). Eventually, I met someone online who I got along with well enough that when she asked for my phone number, I gave it to her. Obviously this was a bad idea, because she could have turned out to be a serial killer or something, but at that point I was lonely and bored enough to throw caution to the wind.

It turned out she was waaaaaaaaay younger than she had portrayed herself online, but instead of being honest and simply saying "you're too young for me, come back in a couple years," I got scared. I was afraid if I upset or insulted her in some way, she might decide to tell someone about the "dirty twenty-something" that was flirting and talking dirty with her online (I had seen plenty of episodes of To Catch a Predator, I knew how that sort of thing works out in the end), so I just played along. This started a pseudo-relationship with a jailbait teen that I kept up for almost two years. I would try to justify it with the fact that we never met each other in person, or that she was always the one to instigate any kind of sexual roleplay online or over the phone. I eventually found out that she had other "guy-friends" she would roleplay with regularly as well, and she would often tell me about her past and then-current relationships. In a certain way, because I was older, she sort of started depending on my more mature view of things that were going on in her life, especially in regards to dating other guys, who had a tendency to leave her.

Still, that didn't diminish the shame and guilt I had about playing part in some young woman's adolescent fantasies, especially since it was almost entirely one-sided. She used to ask me if I loved her, and if we would ever meet in real-life, and I would always duck the question. And that is the one thing I feel most guilty about: I strung along a fake online relationship with a teenage girl for almost two years out of sheer loneliness and boredom. And by the time I felt that the relationship needed to end, I just started ignoring her phone calls, abandoning her just like so many other men had done to her in the past.