do you think you would walk away from it damaged somehow?
Keep in mind, this is NOT a question of if it’s right or wrong. I think we can all agree teachers shouldn’t be boinking their students. Just, do you think having a sexual encounter at 16 with a teacher who you found attractive, would you walk away from it emotionally damaged?
(Poll is public)
I said “yes,” because of the four, that’s the answer that’s closest. However, I see a difference between “screwed up” and “damaged.” I would have lost a certain amount of respect for teachers, and the institution and its rules, but it’s not like I would have been sacrificing small animals by the dark of the moon.
This being a hypothetical scenario and all, it’s kind of hard to say, isn’t it? I mean, there’s sort of a lot going on there.
It’s definitely what I wanted at that age, and I imagine I would feel some small shame about it now, but really, I think it would only have been damaging in the following senses:
[ul]
[li]If it just hadn’t gone very well (i.e. inexperience met with derision)[/li][li]If it had caused some kind of scandal/trouble[/li][/ul]
I’d say 20% I had respect for, 40% were acceptable, and the last 40% should have had more restrictions placed on them than pedophiles in regards to access to children. No respect for institutions that allowed the later 40% to remain employed.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure it would.
I’m going to have to go with splunge. It would really depend on the circumstances around the entire affair.
I said no, but I suppose it depends. If it was just for sex and that was known up front with no strings attached, and no one else found out about it, then I think it would have been fantastic.
I can see it turning into a challenge if it was a long term thing and serious emotional attachments were formed.
It guess it would depend on what my motivation was at the time.
If I found her attractive and the purpose for me was to have a sexual encounter that I desired then “no”, I don’t think I would be damaged.
If it was for some reason like I was failing Algebra, my parents were going to kill me, and some teacher who smelled like coffee and cigarettes promised me passing grades if I slept with her then “yes” I’d probably be pretty damaged.
I’m pretty sure I would be fine. As a 16 yo I spent my time looking (more looking than succeeding) for meaningless sex and, quite honestly, was not particularly choosey about who it was with.
I agree with Mangetout that if some sort of scandal came about that would probably be more damaging than the sex.
It would probably have caused me a little stress and result in a total lack of respect for the teacher. But as long as there were no STDs or pregnancy as a result, it would overall be a highlight of high school experience and give me confidence.
I think it would be a great confidence-booster.
Oh, and this. It depends on the teacher. 20s and hot? No problem.
I picked #2 but, as mentioned earlier, that’s for varying levels of “Screw me up”. Remembering myself at 16, I’m sure I would have thought of it as more of a relationship than random fun-time sex and would have come down hard from my illusions that the teacher was my “girlfriend”. Would it have been worse than any other failed relationship between my actual peers? Obviously I have no way of knowing but I’d suspect so.
I’m pretty sure it would have changed my life dramatically, but I can’t say whether it would have been for good or ill. For although I am a man, my hot teacher would not have been a woman, and since I was deeply in denial at that age, to have had sex with an adult male would have jerked me right out of my internal closet.
True story: when I was a senior in high school (so 17, not 16) my male English teacher had a southern accent and in general a mildly effeminate manner. However, I understood him to be married with children. He was, I think, in his 30’s. Anyway, one day near the end of the school year he offered me a ride to my house, so I accepted. Instead of just letting me out at my house, he stopped for a minute, and I think he asked if anyone was home. Then I got out and he drove off, but I wondered then and have always wondered since if he was considering making advances. The biggest difference between this and the OP’s scenario is that he was not remotely attractive to me at the time, and I have no idea how I would have reacted. On the whole, I think it’s better that nothing happened.
Yeah, I don’t think the passage of two more years would have granted me any magical ability to deal with it. I realize they need to pick an age, and that’s what they picked, mostly, in some jurisdictions, if they’re more than six months apart in age, unless… yeah.
I’m a chick so I can’t vote, but I know a guy who slept with a teacher when he was 14, and generally wished that it hadn’t happened.
Less the extra two years and more the “Attractive older woman in position of authority picks me” aspect of it.
Unless you meant an 18 year old student but then I believe many states have laws prohibiting high school teachers from having relationships with even their ‘adult’ students.
But then I disagree with the “what difference does two years make?” point that always comes up in these discussions. People go through a lot of changes very quickly during that period in their life and I was definitely a much different person leaving high school and ready to enter college than I was two years prior. But each person is different and maybe you feel differently about how you matured as a teen.
Given the question, I can’t help but think of my high school history teacher, who was the sort of woman who deliberately used sex as a weapon, and if she were sleeping with a student, I’m pretty sure it would have been with the explicit aim of screwing him up. Which, really, seems to me like the most plausible scenario under which a high school teacher would be sleeping with students.
At the least it would leave me thinking that it was ok for adults in positions of power to fuck their subordinates/students/underlings/whatever. That would certainly screw up my worldview.