my ex (for this post i’ll refer to him as D) broke up with me last month, i have told my friends everything since they were really surprised because we were together for so long and “seemed so in love/happy” and after telling them the truth, they think i was groomed by him. that news really confused me and i still do not know what to make of it, i always thought i was smart enough to not fall into a trap like that but maybe i guess i was wrong. i cant directly quote what he said when we broke up since it was through text and he has since deleted his messages.
we were together since november 2020, i was 13 when we met and D was 15. i am 15 now and he is 17, he turns 18 next year in jan and i turn 16 in feb. when i put it into perspective i think its really weird he would go after someone who was in middle school and who was ltierally 13. we met either july or june of 2020, and then in november he confessed that he had a crush on me, but said he liked me since october and only then got the confidence to tell me. i was 13 and i thought nothing of it at the time, i remember thinking that dating someone older than me would be cool. skip ahead a few months and in february 2021 my depression was really bad because of things i was dealing with in my personal life.
i did anything i could to try and feel something other than the sadness and anger i felt at the time, so i broke up with D briefly for about four or five days. it just felt the same, and eventually his posts on instagram and his status updates made me feel bad, like i was responsible for his feelings so i went back to him and apologized and made up some bullshit excuse because i never really told anyone about my depression up until a few months ago this year, because i still am struggling with it. D has depression himself, but i still thought he wouldnt understand the reasoning behind my choice to break up with him and i still havent told him, as far as i know he believes the lie. D used to have problems with disordered eating and i would always be fucking exhausted, i felt like i had to deal with it because he would say things like “youre my s/o and i tell you everything, i would appreciate it if you helped” etc and i was/still am struggling with anorexia and those things he would basically make me deal with made it worse and trigger it, but i never spoke up about it and gave everything to help him. he would give me the support i needed only a few times but even then it was half-assed and he would repeat himself like a broken record every time.
D did something to me in march 2021 that still affects me to this day and i try not to think about it because it was awful. and that should have been my thousandth red flag. after this point, for the rest of the relationship i was super unhappy and it felt like every month that went by it made my mental health worse and worse. i have only brought it up a few times over the course of our relationship/during arguements and he would always turn it back on me (“i was in a really rough place”, “well you broke up with me”, etc) but i still stayed and i dont know why. but even now i still feel like what happened in march was my fault and that i deserved it. this whole ‘maybe i was groomed’ thing feels silly to me because i cant accept that maybe it was what happened, even though my friends are telling me that i am a victim of it. there are many many more examples of how shitty he treated me and how bad he would make me feel, but this is all i can think of and i dont think anyone would even attempt to read this if it was just me listing off all the things he said/did.
before anyone asks, i do have him blocked on everything we would talk to each other on/followed each other on (instagram, discord, twitter, etc) and i gave him a very nice FUCK YOU message before doing so. i am so angry at him, i wish nothing upon him but misery for how he made me feel and how i wasted almost three years of my life because of him. i have so many emotions about it but all i can feel right now is anger. seeing him post on social media about how he is the victim in this just makes me more angry because he will be an adult next year and he needs to act his age. honestly he deserves everything he feels right now because thats his fault for dating someone younger than him.
TL:DR i am very hurt and scared because i might be a victim. the stuff above is context/information; i just want advice on what to do/how to deal with this realization.