Scarleteen

I'm a college-age person on the asexuality spectrum, and I maintain a lot of online friendships because of how frequently I move around. I'm really fulfilled with both in person & online friends,but one thing has been bothering me. A couple of my online friends are actually a couple decades older than me, and we met in unrelated contexts, but ended up having great, frank conversations about life as a sexually active queer adult. It's fun and engaging but even though I never lie about myself, they assume I'm in their age group. On one hand, I don't think anyone online has a right to know anything about my personal life, on the other I'm conflicted. people my age tend to find frank sex talk gross and uncomfortable and hold conservative opinions about sex & kink that I just don't want to deal with. So being able to talk to these people is a relief. However, especially when they expressed that they feel attraction to me (even though I'm firm in that im flattered but not looking for a relationship) I start to feel guilty. I can't help but feel like they might be embarrassed or ashamed if they ever found out about my age somehow, or that if I told them that they would shut me down and start talking to me like a child (and I am very young. But if I feel like if they know from experience I can hold an adult conversation I deserve the chance as an adult, to do that) I feel like I have learned great & helpful things about care & confidence in my sexuality from our relationships as they are, and even if it is taboo I think I would, hypothetically, feel comfortable having sex with these people. That's also part of where the guilt comes from I think.

Am I betraying their concent by acting off of their assumptions? Am I making a mountain into a molehill or doing something awful?

Hi maybellinerr,

I'm glad that you've been able to find a space and people in it who you're able to talk about these things with and, it sounds like, ultimately feel comfortable around!

I want to start by saying I don't think anyone in this equation is doing anything wrong, let alone awful. It doesn't sound like you're going out of your way to lie, or being dishonest about your age in order to gain entry to 18+ spaces. It sounds more like your age has never come up, and so they've just defaulted to thinking of you as approximately a peer; that's at worst a misunderstanding, the kind that can happen when we form connections with people who we may not know face to face and, therefore, lack certain kinds of context for.

For the record, I also don't think you realizing you'd be comfortable being sexual with some of these friends is anything to feel guilty about. It sounds more like you've realized that they posses qualities you like or find attractive in a partner, or that you feel close enough to them that you feel a level of comfort or trust that makes it easier to imagine that scenario and feel okay with it. I'm also assuming that when you've said you're not interested in their expressed interest in you, they've been respectful of that, but please correct me if I have that wrong.

I do also want to say that, even if they don't know your exact age, some of them might be able to tell you're younger than them, especially if you have conversations about your respective lives. I'm on a few Discords where there's a spread of ages (all over 18), and often I've been able to tell if someone is in a very different stage of their life than I am, which often tracks to an age difference. Too, if you wanted to be open about your age, talking about certain things in your life (like school) would be a way to test out that conversation and see how folks react. Does that make sense?

Yes that does! And yes, they are always very respectful, it's all around uplifting and nice. I imagine there are ways that they could guess my age (like the schedule I travel on, and all the programs I mention doing) so that reassuring to hear.

I'm glad it's such a positive community for you! And I will say, the more--when you float that information, or just flat out mention your age in the course of talking about something--in a way that treats it as no big deal, the less of a big deal it's likely to be, because you're indicating that you don't see it as really changing anything about the space or the connections you've formed.