Anon444

Thank you for your positive words and advice. It is going to be difficult for me to not feel guilty or ashamed over this whole situation and is probably going to require some major therapy hahah. Tomorrow I'll send the text and this will all be over. From now on I'm going to try to be very secretive online, if I ever decide to talk to people on there again. With college coming up, I'll be even more focused on school and in person stuff as I am now. Thank you again.

My mom is super duper supportive of me and everything regarding my mental health. I've seen 2 therapists in the past and my school even put me in the group therapy there, but I don't go to it because the sessions are during my classes, plus, I'd rather it be one-on-one. We've been trying to get therapy for a while now with someone else outside of the school.

I have not shared my ID, or documents like that, I should clarify. It has been practically two and a half years of on and off talking, and every time I cut off talking with him, he did not do anything in retaliation... I am aware and anxious of issues, but he has never done anything malicious or been angry with me for stepping away ever, just accepted my disappearances. I think I will be okay if I cut off contact with him, as I think he will step away from it as well as he has done in the past.

Yes, he has everything. He has shared incredible personal identification to me and I have shared it to him as well. Based on your question I'm sure you're concerned that he will try to find me, but we live a couple thousand miles away from each other, and he honestly couldn't afford to do all that. I don't think he will go to such a length. When I went ghost on him before no-contact, nothing happened and he didn't contact my family or anything of the sort. He has my family's social media because, well, it's very easy to find someone's family online.

He knows practically everything to know about me to be honest, and I know practically everything to know about him.

First off, I just wanted to say thank you for your sincere reply. It makes me feel a little better about the situation, and I'm filled with anxiety as I type this. I do know a lot of personal things about him. I've seen his license, his face, I know about his job, his family, I know his address-- everything to know. Moving on, I don't talk to him often, as I have been slowly distancing from him purposefully. I have been busy with friends and in person activities in my own life, like school, and I try to stay busy as an excuse not to talk with him when he texts sometimes. It would not necessarily be too hard to cope with that loss exactly, but I'm not sure how to recover from this whole situation. Any advice about opening up to a close friend about it? It would help, but I'm scared of how they would think of me, especially since this has been occurring up until very recently, and it's not just a thing of the past. I think I will take your advice and take the "need to focus on life" approach. Thank you once again, I just needed some encouragement and some perspective to help me have more confidence about this..

I hope that's how it goes.. I just am scared that he might contact my family through their socials (which I know he has) and expose personal stuff about me in retaliation.

I want to so badly, I'm scared of what will happen when I do. He knows a lot about me. How should I slowly cut ties with him..?

Hey, this is my first post and I don't really know how it works here but I thought I'd share a problem I've had for a couple of years. The entire story is jam-packed full of details and I don't even want to get into the entire thing but I'll share the most important bits. So basically I met this guy (let's call him Z) when I was 15 (so in early 2021), and he was 20 on a Discord server. If you don't know what Discord is, it's like a messaging platform with different "servers" of people, where you can text and also call people. We became acquainted as we often interacted in the server and initially hated each other because of "drama" within the server, but then became friendly. We talked more and more and eventually became friends. However, the relationship took a quick turn and it became sexual for about 3 weeks, during which I (regretfully) sent pictures of myself and started talking with Z romantically. 2020-2021 was a very dark time in my life, and so was Z, especially with online school and the pandemic, and I think this is why I ended up doing such a thing with someone like him. Z ended this relationship and said it was a mistake and that we should just be friends, and I agreed. I knew it wasn't right the whole time, I don't know why I did it, and he knew too. I still feel guilty to this day because I feel like I encouraged it all to happen. A few months later, I'm about 16 at this time, I confessed to his brother (18 at the time?) who also used Discord what had happened between me and Z earlier that year. His brother confronted Z and told his whole family. Z went ghost and went offline, and we didn't speak for a couple of months until the next year early 2022, when he reached out to me randomly. I found this very strange, but responded back to him, who is 21 at this time. We started talking once again, exclusively as friends, with no weird interactions whatsoever. Z is a funny and nice guy, we have things very coincidentally in common with each other and talk like good friends. Everything is fine, and we casually talk, but eventually, I feel guilt eating away at me again about what had happened a year before and I decide to just go ghost on him out of nowhere around mid-2022. However, a few months later, I reach out to Z because I felt guilty for just leaving with no explanation. He forgave me for my sudden disappearance and now we've been talking ever since. Now it is about mid 2023, I'm 17 about to turn 18 and Z's 22 about to turn 23. I have not had any romantic or sexual relations with Z since early 2021. I know the age gap is weird, I've been knowing, but I don't know what to do anymore. I have never told anyone of this situation in fear of what they would think of me. I was fine with talking to him for the last few months, but now guilt is eating away at me just like it was before. Is it weird if we continue to stay friends? I am turning 18 very soon after all, but is that still weird? Should I just cut it off? How should I do it if I do? Besides what happened in the past, he's always been a very good mentor and friend to me, so if I did cut ties with him I wouldn't know how to cope. Or, I don't know how I would react actually. I don't know. Thank you for reading, I'm sorry for the long post.