I listed abuse as the 2nd option because I’ve read stories of abused kids (boys and girls) acting sexual towards men the age of their abusers. Their sense of self is warped and they try to get affection from the same type of men who are abusing them. And I didn’t say she was abused. I just listed it as one of the possibilities.
Even if you weren’t abused, your behavior was pretty dangerous. What if your dad wasn’t there in the cab and you sat on that guy’s lap? What if he decided to take it to the next level? Regardless of if there’s current abuse, that behavior is something which should be kept an eye on. A tween who’s flirting with guys 20, 30 or 40 years older is playing with fire.
I’m at my parents house for Thanksgiving. LOTS of family there. My 13yo cousin is there. There was no touching involved but she was talking to me a lot. I thought it was a bit strange as there was a house full of children there that would be more fun to talk to than my old ass. That said, I really didn’t give it much thought.
FF towards the end of the day, most of the family members have left. My cousin is still there. My mother and I are sitting on the couch talking. My cousin comes along and plops herself in between us. There really wasn’t enough room there for another person so now we are all scrunched together. (Her legs are touching both of ours.)
The three of us continue our conversation. At this point I’m still oblivious as to what this girl is doing. Anyway, we’re all still sitting on the couch but my Mom gets distracted and starts talking to someone else. When she did my cousin lifts up her shirt showing her midriff and says “I think I’m getting fat.” and she just sort of looks at me with that “Look”.
It was at that point I finally realized what the hell this girl was doing. I immediately got up and avoided her until she finally left.
When I was 15, I was incredibly attracted to guys in their mid to late 20s. Ricky Martin was the sexiest man alive in my little eyes and he was 27. That’s normal, I think, because he was still a young, hot man who was old enough to be exciting, but still young. A 13 year old hitting on a 48 year old-- someone just about old enough to be her grandfather is weird.
I know a couple 13 year olds like the one described in the OP and by Shakes, but each of those girls is hyper sexual and they were abused when they were younger. Correlation and causation, anecdote and data, I know, I know.
No, seriously I’m not. It was just a really creepy experience. I didn’t grow up with older sisters, so the whole teenage hormonal thing is totally foreign to me.
As for my comment that my income was many times what most people in my hometown earn, it’s really more a case of being gainfully employed in a corporate position as compared to a town where fast food jobs are highly sought after as a good job. My salary is only huge in comparison to a town that has the highest unemployment in Virginia.
I’m curious how you reconcile that opinion with these kinds of responses:
I was the recipient of pretty obvious (but not sexual) flirting from a 15-year-old when I was in my mid-30s. The girl wasn’t abused. She grew out of it pretty quickly.
How do teenage boys have the confidence and lack of fear to jump a skateboard 4 feet in the air and slide it down a railing over naked concrete stairs? They share the same inability to conceptualize possible consequences, focused on different pursuits.
Which is why I got a bit of a chuckle from the responses saying she must have been abused because why would she assume flirting with an older man she’d just met is safe; teens have very different ideas about safe. It’s why they have so many close calls.
On the age front, I’d say there’s also an explanation for the folks saying they wouldn’t flirt with someone old enough to be their grandparent - young people see age exactly from that perspective: their examples are family. Unless grandpa isn’t Brad Pitt (who’ll hit 50 this year), they see it differently than just the number.
I flirted with older men, too. I don’t think I ever flirted with someone older than their thirties, but I never wanted to go any further. It was just a way of testing my limits. I’d say maybe it’s a little on the edge of normal - I was a few years older before I was that confident, but I wouldn’t say it’s completely abnormal.
Older guys exude a sort of confidence when you’re in your teens that guys your age, the clunky things, just don’t have. Even if they are not confident. Plus, they are kind of safe (mostly).
IME when this behaviour is the result of abuse, it is very, very serious abuse. They receive attention for sexual behaviour. Of course it’s possible (hell, I’ve seen it way too much), but it’s pretty unlikely.
Much more likely is that she suddenly found out that she has a super power: men notice her! She’s testing it out, seeing how you react. I remember when I got my super powers!
Another possibility is that she is picking up on other, friendly cues that other family members are giving off, and then just mis-applying them. Maybe tickling someone’s foot in passing is something that they do affectionately amongst themselves, and she just applied it to a person she didn’t know well enough. After all, you were apparently sitting comfortably with your feet up and out. Being thirteen, and trying to be an adult, and trying really not to be a kid, is really hard and confusing.
This. I had it happen to me with a 14 year old Niece and I was about 40 at the time.
The folks saying ‘That’s almost grandparent age’ are using MATH to describe an EMOTION.
It was harmless, she was testing the waters with a safe target, it was no big deal.
I had a similar experience when I was 17 or so, getting flustered when an older friend of my parents was ‘flirting’ with me. It wasn’t serious, Mom was in the same room, and her husband was in the next room. It didn’t turn into a torrid Mrs. Robinson affair and was pretty harmless.
There IS a spectrum here…it’s not all incest, wedding bells, and/or Sexual Predation.
Unintentionally Blank reminded me of something with my niece. Family reunion right after my 25th birthday; she was ten. My nephew had just warned me about her habit of peeking at guys’ underwear when she did exactly that.
Young teens do do this and they don’t necessarily know it’s inappropriate yet. I and my close older male relatives discussed that a certain newly young teen was getting too personal with the us. The next time we got together and it started it was made clear by us that she was to old to do that now. The behavior was stopped by the next time we got together, and I assume her mom had a talk with her about maturing.
