I joined Threads recently and have seen a lot of conversations based around men only wanting to date women 25 and under. While I don’t really have an opinion either way – unless they are targeting children – it has brought up my own experiences of dating older men when I was 25 and under.

As I have been working on healing and building myself, I have come to understand exactly what these “relationships” were. So, I am here to tell you about them and what I’ve learnt! Maybe my stories will help someone else.

Relationship #1 – Arthur

I met Arthur in a chatroom when I had just turned 14 – he was 23, going on 24 that year. I thought he was funny. He was very witty and liked to troll the other chatters. We became friends quite quickly.

We would talk about our lives. He was living with his mother. He was a firefighter. He seemed like a nice, genuine guy. I was only 14, what would I know really!

At that point in time, I never gave out any real information about myself, but he made it feel safe to tell him things I normally wouldn’t tell others I spoke with.

We talked a lot. Every now and then he’d say things that were inappropriate and tell me that he liked me and stuff – I just shrugged it off.

After a year and a bit of chatting, I guess he grew tired of me because he ended up moving on to one of the other girls I spoke to in the chatroom. She had just turned 17 – he was about 25. They ended up dating for a short time. It caused a lot of issues between my female friend and her family. The relationship didn’t last long.

I believe that Arthur may have ended up assaulting this friend. She did come to me to warn me about him. She never said directly what happened. After that, she was rarely online. I didn’t talk to Arthur for some time either.

Arthur and I reconnected just before my 19th birthday. At this point in time, his sexual advances were more prominent, and I let him know repeatedly that I was not interested. He begun to send me inappropriate photos and pestering me to watch him masturbate on webcam.

Instead of just blocking him, stupid, naive, younger me allowed it. I never watched it. I hide the MSN messenger window behind everything else I had open on my desktop and made sure I did not click on it. I did not want to see it. I had no sexual interest in him.

It didn’t just happen once. He became relentless and made me feel like I couldn’t say no.

I know now that I could have. I could have just blocked him and put him on ignore in chat. I think a piece of me always saw him as the “nice, genuine guy” I had met at 14.

Eventually he ended up meeting someone else. I’m not entirely sure how they found each other. She was 16 – he was approx. 28-29. He left me alone for about 2 or so years. During that time, he had two children with this girl he’d met. After the second one was born, she fled and left the two boys with him.

He messages me to let me know what has happened. Stupid me, then 21, feels sorry for him. At this point, the girl’s parents had come in and taken the children from him, so he had a fantastic sob story. He was going through court to get them back. He had never done anything wrong. He didn’t know why she’d left. He didn’t know why her parents took the children. He was a “nice, genuine guy.” Why would these things happen to him?

Somehow, even after everything that has already taken place, he manages to convince me that we should a) start dating, and b) meet in person. I had no attraction to this guy. I think I felt sorry for him and that alone made me say yes to his requests.

We ended up meeting. He lived in New South Wales and I was in Victoria. He came down to me and stayed at a local motel for a few days. After that, we met up again twice – I went to him, and then he came back down to Victoria. After the third time of seeing each other, he managed to convince my mother, my brothers, and I into letting him move in with us. As I’ve said a few times, he was a “nice, genuine guy.” He was charming and knew exactly what to say to weasel his way in.

It didn’t take him long to move in. For a while it was fun. He got on with my family, and my friends at work. He’d drive down and see me at work. He’d buy me small gifts. He’d have dinner waiting for me when I got home. It was nice.

I was working two jobs and saving to buy us a house. In the beginning he wasn’t working. It took him about a year to get a job. It took my mum threatening to kick him out for him to actually get a job. I had to apply for jobs for him, and my mum and I lied as references just to help him get one. He had never worked.

He hated working. He couldn’t handle the pressure of basic adult life experiences. It caused a lot of tension between him and my family, my family and I, and ultimately, him and I.

I threw myself into working. I was working 70+ hours a week between two jobs, just to get us into our own place. Meanwhile, he was off having lunch dates with a 15-year-old from work. I didn’t know this at the time.

Eventually I got sick of driving the 30-minute drive home at midnight from my supermarket job, so I applied to transfer to the store he was working at – which was in the same town we lived in. Our relationship became an absolute nightmare from then on. Everyone knew our business – because he’d tell them. I caught him several times flirting and having lunch with a couple of the young girls working there. One of them was 15 years old. She didn’t even know we were together.

Once I called him out on it, he promised there was nothing going on – they were “just friends.” I knew what he was doing. I still stayed.

He started to ensure that he’d meet up with me on my lunch breaks when he wasn’t working. One day he came in and was waiting in the staff room for me. It was a busy day, and we were extremely understaffed in my department, so I was late. He was left waiting about 20 minutes past the time I was meant to go on break. As I entered into the staff room, which was packed full of other team members, he stood up, slammed his fists on the table, and with his face bright red with rage, yells, “ABOUT FUCKING TIME!” Everyone – EVERYONE – just turned to look at me. I have never felt so small in my life.

We went out and sat in my car. I just sat there. Then I let him have it. I was so much stronger back then. I hadn’t been completely broken yet and I could somewhat defend myself.

When I went back into work, my second-in-charge pulled me aside. We had never got along up until that point. She said, “I know we are not friends, and I know this is not my place, but you need to leave him. I have seen this before and I am scared for you. It doesn’t get better. It only gets worse.” That was my wake-up call.

It took me a short while after that to formulate some sort of plan. Our relationship was dead. I wasn’t sure how to get him out of our house. He wouldn’t leave. I told him that we were over. My mum sought advice from the police and issued him with an eviction notice. He refused to go to work. He refused to leave the house because he knew we’d change the locks while he was gone. He refused to look for anywhere else to live.

During that time, he was a total nightmare. He caused a fight with my youngest brother. Accused my brother of assaulting him and had my brother removed from our house. My brother, who was only 19 at the time, had to spend a week living on his own in a motel. In order to get him to drop the charges, I had to agree to get back together with him and my mum had to agree not to kick him out.

After that, it just continued to get worse. My mum and him would fight constantly. My mum would have a go at me for not defending my family. Although, I was stuck with him for my brother’s sake. The amount of stress it put me under actually made me sick. I ended up in hospital and still not a single one of them gave a shit.

Eventually, I broke down in front of my grandmother while at work. I told her everything that was going on. I went home and spoke to Arthur and told him that I couldn’t be with him anymore and he would need to find somewhere else to live by the end of the week. As my grandparents owned the house we were living in, my grandmother also told him he needed to be out by the end of the week.

My grandmother and I searched for somewhere for him to live. He ended up finding somewhere on his own, thankfully. And he moved out.

Unfortunately, his behaviour didn’t stop there.

After we split, I changed my shifts to weekends and mornings, so I wouldn’t be working at the same time as him. Once he realised, he asked his manager to change his shifts. He would come into my department and slam things and speak very rudely to myself and my teammates. He spread lies around work. He turned pretty much everyone against me. In the end, the only person I had on my side was my second-in-charge. I put up with it for almost a year. Management did nothing. Eventually I ended up leaving because my department manager, who knew everything, decided to roster him on in our department.

After I left, he used Skype numbers to harass me constantly. He put nails under my tyres. He would stand outside my house. He would call me at all hours. He was relentless.

About 18 months later, I met the guy I would marry. I fell pregnant early in the relationship. I still had people on Facebook who knew both my ex and I. So, when I excitedly put up a post on Facebook about me being pregnant, they told him. I thought the harassment was bad before, but this new stream was the worst.

He would send hundreds of messages a day. One after the other. Telling me I cheated on him. I was going to get fat and stay fat. He hoped my baby would die. My relationship wouldn’t last. I was a slut. He’d apparently spoken with the men around town, and they’d said they’d slept with me, but they weren’t the father.

It was just ridiculous!

I went to the police. They wouldn’t do anything.

The father of my child, who would eventually become my husband, was also no help. Instead of actually helping me, he threatened to kick me out of his house. We will get to that story, eventually.

In the end, the only person I received any sympathy from was the customer service officer at Vodafone when I called to change my number. He was literally the only person that cared and told me that what he was doing wasn’t right.

Perhaps I should have married him!

Anyway. after I changed my number, I pretty much stayed in hiding. I avoided the town where he worked and stayed away from any areas I knew he’d frequent. It pushed me further into that sense that to stay safe, I had to isolate.

The difference between this situation and what lead me to isolate last time was, I didn’t feel fear of my friends, or my brother, or even my father, but I feared what this guy would do if given the opportunity. I feared for my life and the life of my unborn child. It was the first time I had felt this fear, and it was terrifying and a feeling I’ve never forgotten.