QuelquePart
Registered User
- Joined
- May 2, 2019
- Messages
- 5
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Hello, everyone.
I have a not exactly cheerful testimony to give.
I have Asperger’s. This means I have naturally poor social skills, a naturally diminished understanding of what others take for granted because it’s basically in the air for them (not always so for me) and, as many people with Asperger’s, I have some secondary mental issues, too. Generally, as to my psychology, experience and practical issues, I am always several years younger than my ID seems to show. In my early twenties, I was in a mixed teenage-adult state. My de facto home on the Internet was a now-closed social network for teenagers and young adults up to 21 – the most practical way to find social contacts for me at the time.
One day, I stumbled upon a very interesting girl’s profile. It was unlike many others in a positive sense, showed somebody obviously intelligent, humane, kind-hearted and involved in social engagement – a very likable 15-year-old female person (I was 21 then). She saw me in “Last visitors”, looked at my profile as well, developed a similarly positive impression about me and wrote me. Soon we were friends. Yes, I know, some people say “Internet friendship is not friendship” and the like, but I feel there <i>is</i> a kind of “Internet chemistry” and I do know that the bonds and feelings of friendship do come into being via Internet. To me, given my difficulties, this possibility is a godsend. At the time, we were two equal youths befriending each other. We never met, but even on the Internet, this was the way we felt towards each other and treated each other. She was somewhat naive, of course, but so was I and she was one of the few people I felt I could really be myself with. Nobody was in love with the other and there was no eroticism whatsoever. She was not even single (at any point), but even if she had been – underage or even borderline underage sex was obviously nothing I would ever do. I was (and am) far too decent a person for that. One day, however, she just disappeared and stopped answering without warning. Writing to her other friends didn’t shed much light on the possible reasons. They honestly tried to help but just didn’t know anything useful. So, our friendship probably had been just episodic and I put up with that.
Nearly a year later, she reemerged. It turned out that her parents had made her block me to prevent us from meeting in real life. To them, there was too much risk that she would just take a train, go to me and then… who knows. Whatever. I, for my part, knew exactly that I did not wish her any harm and did not intend to cause her any harm. I was really glad that our friendship restarted – for another third of a year. Because… well, the “because” is the really interesting and the really sad part.
She liked tickling. I knew that since the first phase of our friendship because we were in the same tickling group on the social network in question. An utterly non-erotic tickling group with teenagers and young adults mixed, just like the very social network itself. However, I never started talking to her about tickling and soon practically forgot about this point. Our friendship was nice and fulfilling enough with plenty of other topics. She was the first person to start talking about tickling, mentioning the cybertickling that she practiced. This was at some point near the end of the first phase of our friendship. Or at some point deep into the second phase? Here I’m not positive any more. What is certain is that she led us into cybertickling each other at some point in the second phase. After a couple of such sessions, however – when she was a few weeks shy of 17, I think – I found myself blocked without warning a second time.
Why? Had the old story just repeated itself? Had her parents just made her block me a second time? If so, did they do so because the cybertickling had made them consider me a minor molester? Or was it actually her opinion now that I was a minor molester – whether convinced by her parents or coming up with this idea herself? If the latter – what had made her believe it? I restarted attempts to clear up the situation, to find out the situation’s true background and to prove the truth about me if necessary. I was willing to do anything demanded from me to prove I was innocent, including talking to her parents. And if I had seen it was truly her decision not to have any more contacts with me, I would have accepted that. However, this time, nobody even tried to help clarify the situation. However I wrote them. Whatever I formulated in my letters to them. Any attempts to find anything out just made everybody whom I addressed silently block me. It was obvious that all of them – all of her acquaintances, perhaps all of her high school, possibly even all of their town – had been instructed not to answer any messages related to this particular person in any way. Whoever had done this – her parents or herself. Either way, I saw that any attempts to find anything out and change the situation would be pointless at least until her 18th birthday. I let the matter drop for the then-near term, but I still was harboring feelings of friendship in my heart. I wasn’t forgetting the issue definitely as long as there was the slightest possibility that she still hadn’t completely stopped being my friend.
Years passed. For the last attempt to re-befriend her, now via Facebook, I waited well into her twenties. It could work or fail, but, at least, either possibility would be really her decision and I would finally know the truth about what happened back then. I also hoped that, even if she actually had mistaken me for a minor molester back then, she would think twice when she would see me wanting to re-befriend her when she was long since adult. Like: “Suppose he <i>is</i> a minor molester, but what minor molester would have a dirty interest in somebody who is certainly no longer minor? It doesn’t make sense. Probably he is not the type of person we suspected back then, after all.” This was a non-verbalized argument that I hoped would emerge in her head. What I did verbalize one evening is about the following friendship request: “Hi! Do you remember me? We understood each other so well back then. Now I see your profile and see that you still [have all the wonderful qualities she had then and what we still have in common]. Perhaps you consider me a weird guy, but it will be easy for me to prove the opposite. Would you like to be my friend again?” <i>Weird guy</i>. What kind of euphemism for “minor molester” is that… The topic is so touchy that I wondered how to talk about it at all without messing everything up, whether directly after the second phase of our friendship or years after it. But I couldn’t pretend to be more stupid that I actually am and had to show I had an idea on the kind of suspicions that had separated us...
After a while, I saw Facebook’s notice “<i>Firstname_Lastname</i> accepted your request” and rejoiced. I genuinely rejoiced. But after a few moments, it occurred to me that “You and <i>Firstname_Lastname</i> aren’t connected on Facebook”. Something was wrong. She had accepted my request to have a chat with her, but not (yet) my request to become friends with her again. My worst suspicions from back then could still prove true. She wrote, wrote, and when she was done writing… well. The truth at last. Her true view on the whole situation, to be precise. Here are the very words she wrote (my comments – in italics, the really crucial part – in bold):
<color = "mediumslateblue"> “You <i>(the really polite “you, sir”, not the “you, my friend”)</i> were not my friend back then and you are not my friend now, either. I was a young, naive girl and you shamelessly took advantage of it. You stalked me and not even let me in peace after I had asked you to do so. <i>(I never received any message after my second block, not one with the sense of “yes, it is my genuine opinion we shouldn’t have any contacts any more, please stop trying to contact me”, either. If I had, I would have complied)</i> We have nothing in common. <b>You are not a “weird guy”. You are ill. You are a mentally ill man with fantasies about tying up a little girl.</b> Reach out for professional help, but leave me in peace once and for all. I do not wish any kind of contacts with you. If it turns out that you still have not understood it, I will gladly ask the police to reinforce it. Besides, I have got a loving husband who takes care of me and protects me, so people like you are clearly not the friends I need.
Please do not reply to this message. Forget about my existence. I will not give you any more answers at any rate.”</color>
Well. My worst suspicions proven true, indeed. Not surprising, but had to be excluded (or ultimately proven). Not pleasant (still an emotional shock, to be honest), but at least now I know why. I <b>am</b> a mentally ill man. There is no denial. However, if this situation has to do with my mental illness, it does so in another way that she thinks. As you see, the “tying up” is the keyword that ultimately messed up everything. Indeed, I did mention some minor moments of tying up during our cybertickling sessions, in the kind of <i>*tying your feet together*</i>, for example. However, it was meant as tying up for the commodity of the tickling, like another kind of holding in this context. Nothing more, nothing less. And most certainly without any fetish background (I think I don’t have to explain anybody here that not every tying up for the commodity of tickling has anything to do with a fetish for the tying up itself) I thought it should be obvious to her if she was so much of a tickling specialist that she knew what cybertickling was. I also deemed it obvious that cybertickling is much more easily to take that real tickling and not everything that happens in cybertickling has to happen (or even is acceptable at all) in reality. At any rate, there would have been a thorough talk about the tickling conditions before any real meet-up with a possible ticklish outcome. Any of us would have only done anything where there was complete and utter consent from both sides. I would most certainly not have objected to any safety measures and any feeling something is going wrong would have led to discontinuation. Probably, there would not have been any tying up after all – neither of her nor of me. Because one single “no, I object – tickling, yes, but no tying” would have ended any talk about the latter forever. In terms of tickling, all we wanted was exchanging nice, soft and perhaps intense (as far as desired) non-erotic tickling as friends – nothing more, nothing less. You can use or not use mild variations of tying up for it – if at least one side prefers not to use it, the topic is closed. However, she did not make the link that I had thought she would – the one between the tickling and the fact that the tying up was only meant for the comfort of tickling. Rather, she thought somewhere along the following lines which were probably more natural for her: “The young man wants to tie me up. This is scary. Who would want to do such a scary thing as tying up a minor? Only one who just has a fetish for tying up minors and wants to practice it on me. A minor molester.” And, of course, if you think you have just talked to a scary minor molester, you will be scared and act as a scared person, whether your suspicions are right or wrong. This is why she (and/or somebody she asked to) basically instructed everybody to just block me if I ask any questions somehow related to her. And if you consider somebody no longer a friend, but a minor molester – then, yes, then his attempts to restore your friendship indeed start to look like stalking. And the former friendship itself like taking advantage. And the police and loving husband part (although I do think the latter is true) as a deterrent start making sense as well.
In her final message to me, everything could have been right – if the basic premises were. But, fortunately, they are not. I do not have any fetish for tying up minors and am not a minor molester. All I ever harbored for her – in the first phase, in the second phase, in this my last try to re-befriend her – were feelings of warm, affectionate friendship. And the same – until some point – she did for me. I did not mean her harm and I would not have done her harm. And neither did and would she. In terms of tickling, all we wanted was exchanging nice, soft and perhaps intense (as far as desired) non-erotic tickling as friends – nothing more, nothing less. And everything went well until… well, until I made the mistake of mentioning something I probably shouldn’t have mentioned altogether. And thus our friendship failed. Alas, it failed irreversibly, after the message above, blocking her on Facebook in my turn was obviously the only thing left to me. “We’re sorry you had this experience”. Well, I am not. I am grateful I had this experience. I really am. I’m only sorry about how it ended. “You’re right, social networks are for getting to know people, and I don’t feel I would regret it with you.” This is what she wrote me on the very first day. She estimated me rightly in the beginning. But still wrongly regretted getting to know me in the end.
The purpose of my posting my testimony here is not restoring the friendship. Whether the person in question visits this forum or not – reconciliation is obviously next to impossible. What I do intend is to spark a discussion about a problem of life which affects many people and, I’m sure, many tickling lovers among them. That adults (especially young adults) who are genuine friends to teenagers do exist. That, of course, minor molesters do exist, too. That the former does get confused with the latter. How to keep the former and avoid the latter. How the younger person can distinguish the former from the latter. How to make sure you’re safe with somebody when you’re meeting him/her. How to spot actual signs of danger and draw the line in time. How the older person can really prove (because you can pretend a lot, that’s true) that (s)he is no minor molester. How, at last, the older person can avoid being mistaken for a minor molester without being one. This is what I would like to have discussed and to discuss with you here.
I have a not exactly cheerful testimony to give.
I have Asperger’s. This means I have naturally poor social skills, a naturally diminished understanding of what others take for granted because it’s basically in the air for them (not always so for me) and, as many people with Asperger’s, I have some secondary mental issues, too. Generally, as to my psychology, experience and practical issues, I am always several years younger than my ID seems to show. In my early twenties, I was in a mixed teenage-adult state. My de facto home on the Internet was a now-closed social network for teenagers and young adults up to 21 – the most practical way to find social contacts for me at the time.
One day, I stumbled upon a very interesting girl’s profile. It was unlike many others in a positive sense, showed somebody obviously intelligent, humane, kind-hearted and involved in social engagement – a very likable 15-year-old female person (I was 21 then). She saw me in “Last visitors”, looked at my profile as well, developed a similarly positive impression about me and wrote me. Soon we were friends. Yes, I know, some people say “Internet friendship is not friendship” and the like, but I feel there <i>is</i> a kind of “Internet chemistry” and I do know that the bonds and feelings of friendship do come into being via Internet. To me, given my difficulties, this possibility is a godsend. At the time, we were two equal youths befriending each other. We never met, but even on the Internet, this was the way we felt towards each other and treated each other. She was somewhat naive, of course, but so was I and she was one of the few people I felt I could really be myself with. Nobody was in love with the other and there was no eroticism whatsoever. She was not even single (at any point), but even if she had been – underage or even borderline underage sex was obviously nothing I would ever do. I was (and am) far too decent a person for that. One day, however, she just disappeared and stopped answering without warning. Writing to her other friends didn’t shed much light on the possible reasons. They honestly tried to help but just didn’t know anything useful. So, our friendship probably had been just episodic and I put up with that.
Nearly a year later, she reemerged. It turned out that her parents had made her block me to prevent us from meeting in real life. To them, there was too much risk that she would just take a train, go to me and then… who knows. Whatever. I, for my part, knew exactly that I did not wish her any harm and did not intend to cause her any harm. I was really glad that our friendship restarted – for another third of a year. Because… well, the “because” is the really interesting and the really sad part.
She liked tickling. I knew that since the first phase of our friendship because we were in the same tickling group on the social network in question. An utterly non-erotic tickling group with teenagers and young adults mixed, just like the very social network itself. However, I never started talking to her about tickling and soon practically forgot about this point. Our friendship was nice and fulfilling enough with plenty of other topics. She was the first person to start talking about tickling, mentioning the cybertickling that she practiced. This was at some point near the end of the first phase of our friendship. Or at some point deep into the second phase? Here I’m not positive any more. What is certain is that she led us into cybertickling each other at some point in the second phase. After a couple of such sessions, however – when she was a few weeks shy of 17, I think – I found myself blocked without warning a second time.
Why? Had the old story just repeated itself? Had her parents just made her block me a second time? If so, did they do so because the cybertickling had made them consider me a minor molester? Or was it actually her opinion now that I was a minor molester – whether convinced by her parents or coming up with this idea herself? If the latter – what had made her believe it? I restarted attempts to clear up the situation, to find out the situation’s true background and to prove the truth about me if necessary. I was willing to do anything demanded from me to prove I was innocent, including talking to her parents. And if I had seen it was truly her decision not to have any more contacts with me, I would have accepted that. However, this time, nobody even tried to help clarify the situation. However I wrote them. Whatever I formulated in my letters to them. Any attempts to find anything out just made everybody whom I addressed silently block me. It was obvious that all of them – all of her acquaintances, perhaps all of her high school, possibly even all of their town – had been instructed not to answer any messages related to this particular person in any way. Whoever had done this – her parents or herself. Either way, I saw that any attempts to find anything out and change the situation would be pointless at least until her 18th birthday. I let the matter drop for the then-near term, but I still was harboring feelings of friendship in my heart. I wasn’t forgetting the issue definitely as long as there was the slightest possibility that she still hadn’t completely stopped being my friend.
Years passed. For the last attempt to re-befriend her, now via Facebook, I waited well into her twenties. It could work or fail, but, at least, either possibility would be really her decision and I would finally know the truth about what happened back then. I also hoped that, even if she actually had mistaken me for a minor molester back then, she would think twice when she would see me wanting to re-befriend her when she was long since adult. Like: “Suppose he <i>is</i> a minor molester, but what minor molester would have a dirty interest in somebody who is certainly no longer minor? It doesn’t make sense. Probably he is not the type of person we suspected back then, after all.” This was a non-verbalized argument that I hoped would emerge in her head. What I did verbalize one evening is about the following friendship request: “Hi! Do you remember me? We understood each other so well back then. Now I see your profile and see that you still [have all the wonderful qualities she had then and what we still have in common]. Perhaps you consider me a weird guy, but it will be easy for me to prove the opposite. Would you like to be my friend again?” <i>Weird guy</i>. What kind of euphemism for “minor molester” is that… The topic is so touchy that I wondered how to talk about it at all without messing everything up, whether directly after the second phase of our friendship or years after it. But I couldn’t pretend to be more stupid that I actually am and had to show I had an idea on the kind of suspicions that had separated us...
After a while, I saw Facebook’s notice “<i>Firstname_Lastname</i> accepted your request” and rejoiced. I genuinely rejoiced. But after a few moments, it occurred to me that “You and <i>Firstname_Lastname</i> aren’t connected on Facebook”. Something was wrong. She had accepted my request to have a chat with her, but not (yet) my request to become friends with her again. My worst suspicions from back then could still prove true. She wrote, wrote, and when she was done writing… well. The truth at last. Her true view on the whole situation, to be precise. Here are the very words she wrote (my comments – in italics, the really crucial part – in bold):
<color = "mediumslateblue"> “You <i>(the really polite “you, sir”, not the “you, my friend”)</i> were not my friend back then and you are not my friend now, either. I was a young, naive girl and you shamelessly took advantage of it. You stalked me and not even let me in peace after I had asked you to do so. <i>(I never received any message after my second block, not one with the sense of “yes, it is my genuine opinion we shouldn’t have any contacts any more, please stop trying to contact me”, either. If I had, I would have complied)</i> We have nothing in common. <b>You are not a “weird guy”. You are ill. You are a mentally ill man with fantasies about tying up a little girl.</b> Reach out for professional help, but leave me in peace once and for all. I do not wish any kind of contacts with you. If it turns out that you still have not understood it, I will gladly ask the police to reinforce it. Besides, I have got a loving husband who takes care of me and protects me, so people like you are clearly not the friends I need.
Please do not reply to this message. Forget about my existence. I will not give you any more answers at any rate.”</color>
Well. My worst suspicions proven true, indeed. Not surprising, but had to be excluded (or ultimately proven). Not pleasant (still an emotional shock, to be honest), but at least now I know why. I <b>am</b> a mentally ill man. There is no denial. However, if this situation has to do with my mental illness, it does so in another way that she thinks. As you see, the “tying up” is the keyword that ultimately messed up everything. Indeed, I did mention some minor moments of tying up during our cybertickling sessions, in the kind of <i>*tying your feet together*</i>, for example. However, it was meant as tying up for the commodity of the tickling, like another kind of holding in this context. Nothing more, nothing less. And most certainly without any fetish background (I think I don’t have to explain anybody here that not every tying up for the commodity of tickling has anything to do with a fetish for the tying up itself) I thought it should be obvious to her if she was so much of a tickling specialist that she knew what cybertickling was. I also deemed it obvious that cybertickling is much more easily to take that real tickling and not everything that happens in cybertickling has to happen (or even is acceptable at all) in reality. At any rate, there would have been a thorough talk about the tickling conditions before any real meet-up with a possible ticklish outcome. Any of us would have only done anything where there was complete and utter consent from both sides. I would most certainly not have objected to any safety measures and any feeling something is going wrong would have led to discontinuation. Probably, there would not have been any tying up after all – neither of her nor of me. Because one single “no, I object – tickling, yes, but no tying” would have ended any talk about the latter forever. In terms of tickling, all we wanted was exchanging nice, soft and perhaps intense (as far as desired) non-erotic tickling as friends – nothing more, nothing less. You can use or not use mild variations of tying up for it – if at least one side prefers not to use it, the topic is closed. However, she did not make the link that I had thought she would – the one between the tickling and the fact that the tying up was only meant for the comfort of tickling. Rather, she thought somewhere along the following lines which were probably more natural for her: “The young man wants to tie me up. This is scary. Who would want to do such a scary thing as tying up a minor? Only one who just has a fetish for tying up minors and wants to practice it on me. A minor molester.” And, of course, if you think you have just talked to a scary minor molester, you will be scared and act as a scared person, whether your suspicions are right or wrong. This is why she (and/or somebody she asked to) basically instructed everybody to just block me if I ask any questions somehow related to her. And if you consider somebody no longer a friend, but a minor molester – then, yes, then his attempts to restore your friendship indeed start to look like stalking. And the former friendship itself like taking advantage. And the police and loving husband part (although I do think the latter is true) as a deterrent start making sense as well.
In her final message to me, everything could have been right – if the basic premises were. But, fortunately, they are not. I do not have any fetish for tying up minors and am not a minor molester. All I ever harbored for her – in the first phase, in the second phase, in this my last try to re-befriend her – were feelings of warm, affectionate friendship. And the same – until some point – she did for me. I did not mean her harm and I would not have done her harm. And neither did and would she. In terms of tickling, all we wanted was exchanging nice, soft and perhaps intense (as far as desired) non-erotic tickling as friends – nothing more, nothing less. And everything went well until… well, until I made the mistake of mentioning something I probably shouldn’t have mentioned altogether. And thus our friendship failed. Alas, it failed irreversibly, after the message above, blocking her on Facebook in my turn was obviously the only thing left to me. “We’re sorry you had this experience”. Well, I am not. I am grateful I had this experience. I really am. I’m only sorry about how it ended. “You’re right, social networks are for getting to know people, and I don’t feel I would regret it with you.” This is what she wrote me on the very first day. She estimated me rightly in the beginning. But still wrongly regretted getting to know me in the end.
The purpose of my posting my testimony here is not restoring the friendship. Whether the person in question visits this forum or not – reconciliation is obviously next to impossible. What I do intend is to spark a discussion about a problem of life which affects many people and, I’m sure, many tickling lovers among them. That adults (especially young adults) who are genuine friends to teenagers do exist. That, of course, minor molesters do exist, too. That the former does get confused with the latter. How to keep the former and avoid the latter. How the younger person can distinguish the former from the latter. How to make sure you’re safe with somebody when you’re meeting him/her. How to spot actual signs of danger and draw the line in time. How the older person can really prove (because you can pretend a lot, that’s true) that (s)he is no minor molester. How, at last, the older person can avoid being mistaken for a minor molester without being one. This is what I would like to have discussed and to discuss with you here.
