@paperplates

I think my girlfriend was abused as a child.

So last night I was talking to my girlfriend and she was talking about her ex boyfriends. She had mentioned that she only had two before me, one was five years older and one was three. She then mentioned her she had her first boyfriend at thirteen and I made a joke saying I hope it wasn't the guy who was five years older than you then. Which she replied yes..... So she was 13 and he was 18. I lost it.
.....
To me that is fucked up. No right minded 18 year old should be in a relationship with a 13 year old. To put in perspective, that is a college student with 7th/8th grader.

...

Now the hard part. My girlfriend is now defending this guy. She says he is normal, a nice guy, they were more "friends", there is no way he would have been with another girl like that and that they still keep contact with each other. To me that sounds like the typical manipulative behavior of someone who is a sex offender. To me if feels like she is in denial over the whole thing, while displaying other traits that abuse survivors show such as having zero trust in relationships (she is unbelievably jealous of other girls and constantly thinks I am cheating on her), her self-confidence is non-existent (she is stunningly beautiful but thinks she is ugly and fat at a size 4), she has really bad anxiety and cannot face any sort of confrontation without going silent or trying to redirect the conversation.

@maruh

well, the first thing which comes to my mind is: I had a girlfriend who was 14 when I was 18. I also had no sex with her..but kissing and stuff was on, like the things she / you described. I was just late in my development, nothing of pedophilia there. Later on, with 15, my gf was pregnant...luckily the father wasnt me (since we hadnt had sex anyway) so that was that...^^

@"The flowering Sunset"

People like you, actually do the most harm in cases like this, by badgering and bullying someone into believing they were abused.

Every study has shown that the damage is caused not by the contact, but by the ensuing chorus of people demanding that the child believe they were abused and to act like they were abused for the amusement of the child's supposed rescuers.

In closing, if you are cared about her, you would end the relationship as you don't have the ability to understand the situation and are too brainwashed by society to accept the fact that 13 year old girls find older men attractive.

We create the problem. here is no reason or evidence to suggest that sexual contact - something inherently beneficial that we've evolved with for millions of years - is inherently bad because it occurs between two people of significantly different ages. Hell, bonobo mothers rub clits with their toddlers - you don't see them being scarred for life, utterly mentally destroyed. It's the echo chamber that forces victimization onto these people that really does the damage, making them into pariahs and removing their agency.