#a girl in my high school who in hindsight I'm 90% sure was in a cult

[thatrandombystander]

It is distressing how often you hear that someone was raised in a cult.

[diamondeyes-deluxe]

Sometimes I think about this old friend I used to have. I think he was 6 years older than me? And in hindsight this friendship was like a buffet of red flags but nothing really came out of it?

Cw for talk of grooming and mentions of drawn csam

I literally met this guy on 4chan, so... Yeah. First red flag. I was 14 and really into mlp and i drew fanart for it, and he wanted to put together like a fan art collection for a specific niche on the board. We exchanged contact info on it (I know) and just started talking and being friends. So I'm pretty sure he was 20 at this time.

We'd talk about sex pretty frequently? Like not in regards to doing it with each other at all just, sharing turn ons and offs and casually sending each other nsfw things. I was always really open about that kind of stuff even from a young age and they're like the same kind of convos I had with people of my own age too at the time that don't seem unhealthy to me in hindsight. Lots of just raunchy humor too. But I have to wonder if the age gap between us put those conversations in a different context for him.

I even specifically remember him sending me an nsfw drawing one time of a character from a 90s kids cartoon. And I was like "woah isn't that character only like 9 or 10?" And he was like "yeah but it's fine cuz it's a cartoon" and I, at like 15, didn't really know much about this topic and didn't want to argue and possibly push away someone who had become a close friend to me but it felt icky so I was like "hmmm I just don't like that so please don't send me nsfw art of children characters" and he backed off. Years later I realized this is a tactic used by groomers to normalize the concept of underage ppl having sex. But like I had already been sexually active with ppl my own age at this point and just was not attracted to him? So the only thing I felt was "ew please don't do that again."

He'd commission art from me a lot. I wasn't very great at art but he'd consistently commission me, mostly nsfw. I had no problem with that but again in hindsight I wonder if there was an extra layer of enjoyment for him knowing that a 14/15/16 year old was drawing his porn. He even asked me like a few days after I turned 18 if I could draw nsfw art of him and his gf (yeah he had a gf this whole time too) and send me nude photos "for Reference" now that I was "legal". I was like sure and he sent them but I never ended up drawing them.

When I was like 17 or 18 we actually started hanging out irl after realizing he lived close to a family member who I visited every summer. (My family was so paranoid about me "meeting up with a guy you met on 4chan???!!!" And I was like girl relaaaaax it's fineeeee I've been talking to this now 24 year old for 3 years. Lmao. Sorry fam I get it now.)

Nothing ever really happened on these hangouts? He even took me to his house twice but didn't do anything. There was the same raunchy jokes and openness about sex but he didn't ever touch me or afaik try to flirt with me. EXCEPT one time he said something like "you know i always thought if me and [gfs name] weren't together that you and I would go out" n I was like "huh? No silly we're just friends and you're too old for me lol. I've never thought of you like that!" And he never brought it up again.

Anyways we didn't talk as much the next few years because I just kind of ghosted EVERYONE after high school (no object permanence and bad mental health) until eventually when I was 20 he randomly blocked me. Welp. I'm 25 now and haven't heard from him since. Anyway that's my story of how I was probably definitely being groomed but was saved by the power of autistically not realizing he was showing interest in me.

[estoyeepy]

@scorpiathevirgo thinks thoughts but this time it's sexuality stuff

I consider myself allosexual/alloromantic (specifically bi)

Back in late middle school / early high school I was 90% sure I was bi, but felt I needed to develop a crush/feelings for a girl to know that for sure. I had this close friend at the time that I cared about a whole lot (let's call her Alexa) that I would be "jokingly" gay around, but like. I wasn't particularly physically attracted to her, if at all. I just cared about her so damn much, to the point where I wrote her a letter telling her just how much I cared about her. I denied "liking" her at the time, because... I didn't "like" her, at least not in the way I would usually crush on people, which normally involved some degree of physical and sexual attraction. But the most I would've wanted do with her was like. Cuddle. And maybe kiss. The way I described that feeling to her was "I don't 'like' you like that because our friendship is like we're already dating or something [because of my "ironic" flirting, which was never reciprocated, btw] I love you, as my friend". I eventually developed a crush on this other girl in my class, and I stopped thinking about the Alexa thing for a while. (this all mostly happened in sophomore year, btw).

Fast-forward to senior year (I had moved to a different school at this point), and I meet this person, who I'll call Ash. Ash and I became pretty tight pretty early on, and I started really caring about them, in the exact same way I did with Alexa. I wasn't particularly sexually attracted to them, I just think they're really pretty and I like their vibe. And then they confessed to having feelings towards me (a comment that didn't age well in hindsight, but that's not the point). We talked about it the next school day, and I admitted that while I didn't really know exactly where I stood on the whole thing, "I do love [them], in a sense". After about a week or two of dating, I realized that what I was feeling was love. Like "in love" love. I had fallen in love with Ash, and then it hit me that I had been in love with Alexa back then, too. It had taken me so long to figure it out because I thought complete sexual attraction was a requirement for me to be in love, because I'm actually capable of that type of attraction. I think the horny part of my brain takes a back seat whenever my priority is making sure the "love of my life, apple of my eye" is safe, happy and healthy. Like, it's still kinda-sorta there at the back of my mind, but it's just waiting for an appropriate time to show itself. It's kinda like... reverse demisexual, but not really. I don't identify as a-spec, but I do seem to experience this type of "borderline-asexual alloromantic" attraction in certain circumstances.

TL;DR: I'm allosexual, but this kind of "circumstantial asexuality" tends to kick in for a bit when I'm in love. Or maybe I just hang out with people I don't experience sexual attraction to and then happen fall in love.