Me and my cousin (both female) are very close in age.
When my cousin and I were younger (10 or so) we experimented and wanted to know how certain things felt. Over the last 15+ years this topic was never brought up… until this week.
She told me that I stripped her of her innocence and molested her as a child. Mind you, never once did I force her to do anything and we were dumb little kids doing dumb things. We would go on Omegle together, make singing videos together, etc. In addition, We had older brothers who played GTA, watched explicit videos and whatever little boys do.
Prior to this, we talked almost every single day. We spent half of our childhood together and distanced because of me and my family moving. After a couple of years we talked like we never stopped. I’ve been there for her when she needed it and vice versa and now this gets brought up? We both had a rough childhood but now blames me for “stripping her of her innocence.” She said “it never gets brought up but it lingers and whenever we would talk about our personal intimate lives with our partners or anything from our childhood, it brings back bad memories.” She claims that she looked up to me and that I abused that power and that she did whatever I wanted…
Im stuck because I can’t help but think that I am guilty for her mental instability now because of all the things we did as kids. My cousin has a big impact in my life and I love her so much but I can’t help but overthink and what makes it worse is that I can vaguely remember my childhood. We had a rough childhood. It makes me want to die knowing that she thinks that way about me even though I know in my heart that I would never put my cousin in harm… I guess i’m just posting here because I have no one else to confide in.
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Childhood exploration is very common as well as within families, I’m sorry you’re feeling so conflicted. Sounds very tough
You need to have s genuine conversation with her. Not one where you try to defend yourself, but one where you listen.
What you two did may have been experimenting to you, but it could’ve (and probably was) horrifically traumatic for her.
If you feel genuine guilt, apologize. Communicate, and work through it.
If you guys were both around 10… you were just as innocent as her. I wonder if something else happened with someone else in the family (someone she would be more ashamed about/assault from an adult) and she is projecting.
You’re being quite vague about your actual ages, “10 or so” isn’t enough information to make a judgement. How old exactly were you? Or are you now? So we can see the actual age difference. Are you a year older? 2 years? 3? Or are you slightly younger?
Hard to pass judgement without knowing those details, they matter.
It looks like she is feeling bad about things she did or saw that she wasn’t supposed to when she was a kid and now she found someone to blame. Don’t humor her, don’t give her any weapons she can use to drag you down. Neither of you knew what you were doing and if she needs someone to put the blame on, she can blame the adults who were supposed to supervise the both of you, not you, a literal child.
depends on actually how close you are in age but in maturity too. if you’re 1-2 years older but still had the same kind of maturity as her, I don’t necessarily see that as being risky when it comes to predatory seeming behaviour.
although it doesn’t exactly have to mean you were intentionally trying to harm her, it could be a traumatising or uncomfortable thing for her to think about or live knowing, no matter if you were molesting her etc
Children are curious creatures. I feel like the only grounds she could ever have the right to point fingers is if you brought up wanting to explore first. Who was the ring leader? Who brought up the topic? Who basically started it? She may have been a willing participant, but as a victim, I fully understand the absolute fear of disappointing someone who you love and look up to. That’s how I became the target of abuse…but mine was a knowing adult.
That said, she can’t technically hold you accountable because you were a child and didn’t have malicious intentions. Quite literally a curious dumb kid. I certainly don’t place blame on your shoulders. But again, if you started it, I can understand and see why she would target the experience and see herself as a victim.
You both would benefit from therapy. It’s an unfortunate situation all around.
Whether or not you did anything wrong is irrelevant to me (I’m not sure you did). But she feels this way. If it were me, I’d swallow my pride and apologize. Let her vent, listen earnestly, and try to soothe her. Even though you were the same age, it is possible that she only went along to please you. Hear her out and don’t be defensive.
Child on Child SA is still deeply traumatizing, and it could be that years of having conflicted feelings of enjoying being around her cousin is directly at conflict with remembering abuse. Your intent as “just kids exploring” is kind of irrelevant, you know how you remember it, but you have no way to know what she remembers, the thoughts and feelings she had during, ect.
I was SA’d by my older cousin (both F, only ~2 years older) from the time I was like 6 or 7 until I told her to stop when I was like 9. We stayed really close until we were both teens and she moved away, I’m sure she was being abused by another family member, and for all intents and purposes we were “just two kids experimenting” except we weren’t, because the things she did made me feel awful and gross for decades after, I couldn’t consent I didn’t know what that meant, I wouldn’t dream that my older cousin, who I looked at like a sister, would do something to harm me, and it fucked up my relationship to sex, to my family, to what I thought sex and love was supposed to be or feel like, and my general thoughts and ideas around intimacy. I’ve gone through significant therapy to understand and deal with it, and one of the things I have really come to understand is she may have never *meant* to abuse me in the way we imagine rapists and molesters do, but the intent doesn’t change that I was still abused. I still had things done to me by a beloved older cousin, who probably knew it was wrong in her gut just like I did, and those psychological scars are something I have had to live with for the last 30+ years of my life.
I only “confronted” her once about it, and she dismissed it, claimed not to even remember because of all the crazy shit that happened in her life, and I believe her, she had a rough childhood. She even made the point during that confrontation that she had been abused, and I lived a pampered, spoiled life, so even if she had it didn’t matter. But again, something insignificant, meaningless, and non-traumatic to her was something that profoundly effected my youth, my young relationships, and ultimately gave me an early impression of my worth and value that I still struggle with.
You can’t live her experiences, and maybe you did or did not contribute to her life being shit. But does not intending to cause harm negate the damage done? You can hold the truth that you didn’t mean to molest her, it was just experimenting, but at the end of the day it wasn’t normal, it caused her harm that as an adult she is now wanting to work through, and the only real thing you can do is apologize. If you think you did nothing wrong, that’s a problem. A child was molested and you did that. Do you have younger cousins, siblings, or nieces? Would you think it was normal and ok if they were touching each other now that you’re an adult? It’s ok to apologize for the action with the understanding that you were a child and didn’t know better. You’re an adult now and hopefully you do know better and can understand the complexity of unintentional harm. If you care about someone and hurt them, even unintentionally, the normal and emotionally mature thing to do is still seek forgiveness, not dismiss their pain.