When I was 13, I entered into a sexual relationship with an 18 year old woman that lasted around eighteen months.

At the time, I did not consider this unusual. The woman I was seeing was trapped in an abusive sexual relationship with her father, which began after her mother’s passing. He gifted her a sex toy for her 18th birthday.

When I look back, I consider this woman’s interest in me as a way of regaining control over her autonomy and of her lost innocence. I do not consider her an abuser, as saw and treated me as an equal. While the relationship was wrong, I think it captures how devastating child sexual abuse can be and how it warps victims’ views of healthy relationships. I think in me she saw a way to connect with someone of a similar emotional maturity, and through me she could explore the type of relationship she should have had at what was then my age.

If she ever reads this, I hope she knows that she is not, in my eyes, a predator. I understand that she was hurting.