The OP’s profile says Chicago, which means she is too young to give consent.
Legal dopers may be able to corroborate or refute, but when I became an adult (1981, in Illinois), some people said that if a policeman found me and my gf in my car and she had her shoes off, it could be bad news for me.
My WAG: if police can show that suspects were undressed, that would constitute some significant evidence toward demonstrating that sex had taken place. But there are degrees of undress. If a couple sees the cops approaching and start hurriedly throwing their clothes back on, they might be 99% dressed by the time he knocks on the window. Naturally you’ll cover the torso and you have to put your pants on before your shoes, so…shoes are probably the very last thing.
Are you a lawyer, OP? That sort of thing, which non-lawyers wouldn’t foresee, could cause some major problems.
Age of consent is 17 in Illinois. I’d say you should wait until she’s 17 before being alone with her – in a car or otherwise.
It’s not exactly the same thing, but my parents encouraged a casual relationship with a man more than twice my age when I was 19.
The thing is, he was a committed Christian and they were family friends, and they had absolute trust he would not violate physical boundaries. They trusted that by the fact of his age, he wouldn’t be tempted like a teenage boy would be. They did not necessarily want me to be romantic with him, but they wanted me to get out, experience the world, get introduced to friends, etc.
I wasn’t attracted to him, so I was squicked out by it all and wondering if my parents lost their minds, but looking back, it made a certain kind of sense. He was a good man and a better influence than the stupid online friends I was hanging out at the time.
But the key point is that my parents made a judgment call that this guy, though attracted to me, would never do anything to violate any physical boundaries or otherwise make untoward comments, and end up being a greater good for me. Their judgment call turned out to be correct, and I suspect that the parents of the teenage girl in the OP are making a similar judgment, for similar reasons (Mensa and comics probably don’t add up to someone who’s exactly a social butterfly).
In theory, it sure sounds creepy. In practice, it may well not be, especially if you listen to the wise advice and keep things legal physically.
But I have to echo what some other people have said about age differences, and when it’s okay to have them. I started dating my boyfriend when I was 17 and he was 22. We were at the same school and had the same social group, so it wasn’t weird, nor illegal, and my parents met and liked him. We’re still together more than 8 years later, but I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t caused problems.
I was a young 17 year old with very little life experience, and basically settled down at the age of 18. I never got to be an irresponsible teenager, and that’s reflected on my behaviour in my twenties. Not to mention the kids issue - six years difference is more than enough to have different timelines for children, eleven can be even worse.
To sum up - maybe you should go for it, maybe you shouldn’t. But don’t kid yourself that because she’s mature, this could be an ideal experience.
When I was 18 and still in hot contention for the title of “Mr. Emotionally Immature,” college freshman division, I met an unbelievably lovely and smart 15-year old girl on spring break (she lived in my cousin’s housing complex in Florida, which is where I met her, but she came up frequently to the place I attended school). She was everything I’d dreamed of having in a girlfriend, and she seemed to be just crazy about me, but after a few months, my “Mr. E.I.” status notwithstanding, I told her we really couldn’t date, for all the reasons enumerated here in this thread. I just didn’t want that sort of responsibility, to be the grownup in a relationship, and if I could have figured this out at 18, despite the fact that just thinking about this girl makes my teeth ache nearly forty years later, why is this is so hard for you, freejooky? Or do you just require a few weeks to mull it over?
And on the off-chance that she’s reading this–Hi, Sally Crawford! Miss you! xxxx
Ah, the age differences.
I had a buddy who was in the same situation–he was 27, she was 16, they were in love. Well, five years later, he’s out of jail and on the sex offender registry for the rest of his life, and she doesn’t speak to him anymore. Tread cautiously.
On the other hand, there were two times in my life (once when I was 19 and once when I was 21) when I ended up dating a 16-yr-old girl who was attending college as a freshman. In both cases, the age issue was not brought up immediately because I was making an assumption about the age of a freshman at college. In the first case, I was still legal (in PA) but it still freaked me out when I called to wish her a happy birthday over the summer and she was raving about her sweet sixteen party. The second time, a mutual friend accused me of taking advantage of “that poor young thing” (to which I said, what do you mean, she asked me out?) and I broke it off tout suite due to legalities (which she understood, and the fact that she knew it could have cost me my ass and didn’t at least warn me was a large part of my decision to break it off rather than hope it’d work out.) and never looked back.
My personal bottom line is that if she’s mature enough to be worth dating, she’s mature enough to be close friends with until she’s of legal age, and she’ll understand–what’s a year or two compared to a lifetime commitment?
Heh, my first story is married with two kids, and I couldn’t have been happier to hear she’d found someone good for her after she put up with the brunt of my college asshole days.
Bullshit. I still have a point. Asking for the advice of other people doesn’t require that all the advice received be obeyed. He’s only received about 20 different opinions on the matter.
People in this thread are just whining that he didn’t take theirs, and mystified that he could make a decision without checking back.
There are a bunch of reasons people solicit opinions, many of which don’t require a binding contract.
I don’t think anybody’s annoyed because he didn’t take their advice, but because he’s making creepy posts about perving on a teenager.
Well, I don’t know all the details; as a friendly witness in the state trial, a certain amount was kept from me by the defendant’s lawyer. Also, the nephew himself has intimated he didn’t give me all the details – whether that’s due to embarrassment or something more sinister, I don’t know, but he’s plenty embarrassed. Note, however, that the specific charges were narrowly limited, so I doubt anything more sinister was going on. Also note that he made some mind-bogglingly poor choices (the highlight, really, was deciding he could defuse things by telling everything to the parents…and then to the authorities, without a lawyer present. Yes, honest to God.)
He had two young girlfriends at different periods. Bear in mind that when the families turned against him and were furious, efforts were made to paint him as a villain, and so a lot of effort went into deliberately confusing the timelines; I think one was 15 when he was 18-19 and one was 16 when he was 20. He knew these girls years before they became romantically entangled, enabling the family to use the not-cross-examinable Victim Impact Statement to darkly refer to events when the girls were 12 and 13, completely ignoring the truth that he wasn’t dating them then, they were just family friends.
The real source of his downfall was when the underage girl he was currently dating became friends with the one he’d previously broken up with. As allies, they were able to work against him when the relationship crumbled.
Anyway, he took hot pictures and video of one of the girls. That enabled one federal child porn charge; nothing else was charged, federally, because the feds decided the girls’ statements wouldn’t stand cross-examination. As the pics were recovered, he pled to that. After the plea, the families used the VIS to paint him as a forcible rapist, and an angry judge, apparently unconcerned that he had not been charged, tried, convicted, nor pled to, any such rape or even sexual contact, threw hard time at him, including lifelong sex offender status. Whether or not it’s fair to get thrown in jail for taking naughty pics of your 16-year-old girlfriend when you’re 19-20, it’s not at all cricket to be sentenced for assertions you did not plead to and cannot challenge.
Again, because he “makes poor choices” (I’m trying to be nice about a family member) he decided to show his disapproval of the histrionic exaggerations the mothers of the victims made in their emotional appeals by giving them his most contemptuous “you disgust me” glare. *Right before the judge passed sentence. * Yep. Of course the judge then said “I’ve watched you carefully during the description of the suffering you’ve caused, and I see no remorse,” and hurled the proverbial book at him. Gah.
Then the state charged him with having sex with a girl who was of the age of consent (16).
That’s right, she was of legal age for sexual consent in our state. However, he had the wrong kind of sex. You know how, years ago, Time Magazine (iirc) and other news outlets talked about how high schoolers are having a lot of anal sex? Well, they’re still doing it. But in our state, for some reason, the age of consent of is different – higher – for anal sex. Probably to punish teh gay. So it was legal for him to have had sex with her but not anal sex. Needless to say, he had clarified to the authorities exactly what they’d done BEFORE talking to his lawyer.
So now there’s state time too.
Gah, the whole thing is sickening.
I have to disagree with you on this one. With the parents consent or not, I don’t see this relationship as very healthy for anyone involved.
Where did we put the pukey smilie at by the way?
This is a bad, bad idea. It’s like you’re saying, “Fiddle-dee-dee, I’ll deal with all the problems of dating a 16YO after they become a problem”, which seems short-sighted and self-destructive.
You’re giving me the impression that you’re attracted to this girl not despite the fact that she’s sixteen, but because of the fact that she’s sixteen. You marvel over her intelligence because it seems so novel, like a dog wearing clothes and walking on its hind legs. Ask yourself: would her words have been as captivating coming out of a 27YO woman’s mouth?
So, what are you thinking of?
Don’t kid yourself any further than you already have: concealing the fact that you’re crushing on their teenaged daugther in a way that you haven’t felt since you were her age *eleven years ago *contributed to this trust. You’ve apparently convinced yourself that this girl’s mom has given you her blessing to date her minor child based on the fact that she doesn’t mind you being friends with her, which is a pretty big leap to make.
Please re-read the posts about men who ended up in jail or branded for life as sex offenders before you date this girl, “chastely” or otherwise. For her sake and your own.
Wait until she’s 18. Can you be friends with then until then? Sure, but only if you have enough self-control to keep it purely platonic.
When I was 24, I dated a 16 year old.
I was dealing with drug addiction, largely brought on by chronic depression, and met her around the time I was dropping out of law school and moved in with my mom, so there is no doubt that I was emotionally immature for a 24 year old.
A month after we broke up (17 by now), she moved out of the house and supported herself with 3 jobs. A month shy of 23 now, she’s already been married and divorced (to a man 15 years her senior). So, there is no doubt that she was precocious for a 16 year old.
I suppose that meant we met in the emotional middle.
Also, (I like to believe) we were in love. She was (is) incredibly aware and resilient, has a biting sarcastic wit, and a fun playful side. She was (is) also gorgeous. We had a relationship that was, technically, illegal, but it was definitely sincere.
But, looking back, it wasn’t a healthy relationship, largely due to my dysfunction, but also due to the social factors that allow a 16 year old to date a man so much older than her. She lived with a flaky mom, routinely skipped school, and had a fake ID (she easily passed for 22). A lot of my appeal as an older man, I think, can be attributed to the fact that I could accompany her to all of the bars and clubs she liked to visit – guys her age couldn’t keep up.
Ultimately, I broke it off after almost a year. It was step one in getting clean, sober, and healthy. The irony, though, is that she just recently tracked me down. Now, she’s 23 and I’m going to be 31 – the age difference doesn’t seem so big, and certainly not scandalous (I don’t know why the “halve your age and add 7 years” formula works, but it does).
Although the OP is taking it one step at a time, those steps can progress rapidly. I never progressed to any further level of sexual congress unless and until she asked me to, but I also always acquiesced to her requests. Her hormones are raging, too. If the OP is not just delusional, and he does end up dating her, she will be eager for sex as much as him.
That, of course, does create a legal risk that most people don’t want to tolerate. The conviction stories in this thread attest to why that is so.
Better to keep in touch where she’s inched the relationship – online. Not in a pervy, Chris Hansen is coming to talk to you, way. I’m suggesting you stick to Facebook, sending her emails and posting on her wall. If you click at that level for the next few years, then ask her out.
Did this advice (wise though it is) make anyone else think of the Jailbait Wait Celebrity Eighteenth Birthday Countdown website? Heh.
Unless things go very wrong (and we have no reason to believe the OP will go that way), I think the OP is the most likely victim of this whole mess. Chances are that he will grow more in love with this wonderful little young lady while she does what 16 year old girls do best, change their minds and decide to look for love elsewhere. Then he will be dealing with his friends not only making fun of dating a high schooler, but being dumped by one. Ouch.
He has yet to post anything creepy or pervy. Regardless, I think the intent was clear-- the OP was soliciting opinions, not permission.
Oh yes, the wily little jailbait whore! Taking advantage of a grown man like that!
There aren’t enough :rolleyes:s
This.
Unfortunately, the situation reminds me of my 18-year old nephew and his 16-year old girlfriend. No big age difference there, but they fell in LOOOOVVVVVVE and decided to get married. Incredibly, her parents signed the consent forms. They had a nice church wedding (in another state, because she was too young to get married in her home state even with consent.) My wife referred to it as “Barbie’s Dream Wedding.”
After about 9 months, her parents discovered she had been out partying while my nephew was at work. They sat her down and said basically, “you wanted to get married, you got married, and now you want to party. You need to descide whether you want to be a wife or a teenager.”
She chose teenager. My nephew is 30 now and hasn’t had a serious, long-term relationship with a woman since.
16-year old girls can break hearts. The only ones who should be exposed to it are 16-year old boys who have time to get over it.