A
female
age
30-35,
anonymous
writes:I met him in August of my sophomore year, when I first sat in that desk in his class room, he called our names, learning who we were. He got to mine, last on the list of the twenty or so kids in my class. My last name being German, he spouted off sentences in the language. I was shy and unknowing, easily embarrassed. I blushed violently and mumbled, "What?" "Don't know any German?" he asked. "...no?" I said I quietly. He went back to giving the syllabus for our class, talking about his rules and all the things we would cover that year. He often joked with all of his students, creating real-life situations for us to think about and have discussions about rather than just reading monotonously out of a book, lecturing. I hated him at first. As time went along, I found him funny and a good teacher. He picked on us and our "significant others" jokingly, our school being quite small and rumors and reality spreading like wildfire. I began dating my first boyfriend, a senior, that year. My self esteem had always been low, and I did as much as I could to be invisible, taking the artist/goth route as far as the tiny cliques we had went, my boyfriend being one of the "weird" kids. My teacher used me and my relationship as an example as much as anyone else's, but for once, I enjoyed the attention. I stayed with my boyfriend for almost two years, even while he was at college, and the relationship turned emotionally abusive. Although I remained, and still remain a virgin, I am a hypochondriac and had myself convinced I was pregnant after messing around a littler farther than normal with my boyfriend when school started again the next August. My panic attacks lasted for two months until I finally decided to ask someone about it to settle my nerves. While we weren't close yet, something drew me to my teacher. I explained the situation to him, awkwardly and finally he calmed me down and we talked about other influences on why I would feel that way. About the abuse in the relationship, about my subconscious and my fear he would leave me for his ex (which he eventually did) and that those things were making me afraid. No one had cared about the things I had to say, or questioned them, or intellectually pushed me the way he did. I became addicted to letting him know me. Addicted to feeling like someone cared. I began staying after school talking to him more and more a few times a month after school, sometimes staying from 3:30 when school ends to 6:00 at night or later. Just talking. When my boyfriend broke up with me I vented and we talked about everything. Bad things happened...I went back to the same abusive boyfriend, letting him cheat on his girlfriend with me, and my teacher and I stopped talking to each other. I was more upset than I had been about anything else and confronted him, apologizing for the way I was, for knowing I just wanted someone, just didn't want to be alone and I couldn't stop, crying and being a baby about it. We both skipped lunch and stayed in his room talking about it. He walked over to me and rubbed my shoulders while I laid my head on my desk crying. Normally I would have done anything to push him away because I hate being touched. But I didn't protest this time. We patched things up, and at the end of the year I wrote him a letter telling him how much I enjoyed him being my teacher and him being there for me when I didn't have anywhere else to turn to. How I owed him for all the time spent talking after school, which I jokingly referred to as my "therapy". When school started again this year, my senior year, I had a job and couldn't stay after school whenever I felt like it anymore. I solidified my interest in BDSM and fetish (not just sexually, but psychologically) and began talking to people interested as well. I found out he knew of it as well, which greatly surprised me and it instantly became part of our flirtation. I took the last two classes of his I hadn't taken yet, and stayed after to talk when I could. My best friend graduated early and I had no friends my age left at school. I think there was always the flirtation there. I never saw it that way before, but...this year, I knew the moment it crossed beyond inappropriate, and I couldn't admit to myself that I had feeling for a man who was 36 years older than me, and also my teacher. I never expected anything to come of my feelings so I pushed them away and kept them there as fantasy. I met someone on a BDSM social site. It took nearly a year to get over my ex boyfriend, but I was finally thinking I was falling for someone else. My friend who graduated really has up and down times and she sometimes gets all wound up and hyperactive and loses all mental and verbal censors she has. We went to a basketball game that our teacher had also come to watch. He had told me a week before he had had a dream and she had been in it. I sensed he had been joking and didn't think a thing of telling her about it. All of a sudden at the game, she blurted it out. He walked away and by the end of the night it finally dawned on me that maybe he was actually mad at me. I decided it would be best to leave him alone for a while. It hurt every day that he would talk to others, and not even look at me or talk to me when it was necessary to talk to him. Finally a month later, just a few days ago, I approached him after class. He seemed less angry and moody than he had been acting, and I was having a hard time trying to focus. "Can I talk to you really quick after school?" I asked him"Of course," he replied, "I'll be here."In my last class, I called in to work and said I would be late because I needed to take a test after school. When the final bell rang, the halls cleared out and I went in to his room to find him sitting at his desk. We looked at each other for a moment before I attempted to speak, which I was having trouble doing. "Do you want to shut the door?" he asked me. I walked over to shut the door and turned back around. I apologized for what had happened, telling him I hadn't known he was serious about what he had said. I told him shyly that I loved and cared for him, not saying it in any kind of seductive sense. I truly do love and care for him and always will. He retorted back angrily. After some time, he finally exclaimed quietly "I'm so stupid! This is completely ridiculous. I think about you more than I know I should. I wonder where you are, what you're doing. Who you're with. I think about spending time with you. I mean, what would people say...'he's got a thing for one of his students.' There must be something wrong with me." he said, exasperated and angry. I was stunned at what I was hearing. I couldn't find words for long minutes. Finally my voice wavered and cracked but I choked out "then there's something wrong with me too. I just...I just don't understand!""What do you mean?" he asked"I don't understand how...this is stupid. I don't understand how anyone could like me..." The only sentence that could come out of my mouth."Are you kidding me? You're an amazing artist, you're stunningly intelligent, a gifted musician. You're kind and compassionate and more mature and understanding than any of these kids around here. But you're and 18-year-old woman for crying out loud. You're about to go off to college and see and experience things far greater than anything you could around here. I have no doubt in my mind you'll graduate college and go on to graduate school. You aren't going to want to drag the *old* guy along with you. I have never felt this way about a student. I don't know why I feel this. But I haven't felt this way in a *long* time. This is so wrong. And it's all my fault because I should never have let it get this far." I couldn't keep eye contact with him. I couldn't believe this was actually happening. "Don't say it's all your fault. It's not like I don't realize the things I do." I mumbled, embarrassed. We talked until I knew I really needed to get to work. I wear a collar made of a thick ribbon with a metal ring in the middle as a statement that I'm in to kink (not that anyone understands that symbol around here). I got up to leave and he followed me on the way to the door. I turned to look at him and say goodbye and say I was sorry one last time because of how awful I still felt. We talked about silly little things for just moment and he turned and grabbed a hold of the loop on my neck. "What's this?" he asked me. "Meant for control?" He tugged on it. I'm not a touchy person, and I felt my stomach flip-flop and my heart race, and my arm automatically sprang up and grabbed his hand in mine, pulling it away. "Yep," I said shortly, then smiled so he knew I wasn't angry. We said goodbye and I went to work, feeling like I was in a dream. I work at a fast food restaurant. My teacher talks all the time about how he hates fast food, especially the place I work. That since he moved here, the two times he ate there it made him sick. An hour after I arrived and was put on my break, he walked in. I waved at him, smiling. I couldn't help but smile. Something was wrong with *me*...I knew he had to be there to make sure I was okay...or something. I don't know what I'm supposed to do, I don't know what I feel. I just know I haven't been able to talk to the guy my own age who is interested in dating me and being my Master. I've been ignoring him or distantly responding to him, my heart not in anything I say. My ex is fighting the new guy for me and I don't want him to. I can't stop thinking about my teacher. I wish all the problems would just melt away and I was left with him. He's married, and has kids older than me. A part of me is screaming at myself for even thinking about being with a married man. He and his wife live hours away, and he's lived alone for four years here in our small city. Part of me wonders if he's only acting like this because I'm interested and he's alone. I would feel like I was ruining his life, and while I don't think so, he feels like he'd ruin mine. I'm so confused. I was the girl who never had a boyfriend. Then I only had one in two years. A bad relationship. I never felt like I could relate to anyone my own age. Now suddenly, I'm confronted with all of these options at once and I can't make sense of what I'm going to do about it. One option is logical, one is safe, one is emotional. And I want to follow my instincts...but that's the most morally wrong, in my opinion. I refuse to play it "safe" and go back to what I've always known - my ex. And I don't know if I want to start something new with someone while my own age, somewhat immature and inexperienced. I just feel like a bad person for having the feelings that I do.
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best friend, broke up, emotionally abusive, flirt, his ex, immature, married man, my ex, my teacher, never had a boyfriend, self esteem, shy, violent Reply to this Question
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Fancy yourself as an agony aunt? Add your answer to this question! A
reader, anonymous, writes (27 February 2011): This is verified as being by the original poster of the questionThanks for the advice. I guess I wouldn't say I would plan on doing anything inappropriate with him while still in school. I have thought about after I am no longer a student. He also would not have to register as a sex-offender, seeing as I'm 18, the legal age of adulthood. Yes, it would look bad as a teacher/student, but I agree that nothing should happen... *while being a student*. I agree that it would ruin things. Even after my graduation, no matter how long after graduation that may be, two weeks or two years, if anything happened, I would most definitely not care to tell anyone about it just because of how I know others would react to that. And oh man, I know about the therapist thing. That could really screw somebody up! =O
A
reader, anonymous, writes (27 February 2011): This is verified as being by the original poster of the questionThanks for the advice. I guess I wouldn't say I would plan on doing anything inappropriate with him while still in school. I have thought about after I am no longer a student. He also would not have to register as a sex-offender, seeing as I'm 18, the legal age of adulthood. Yes, it would look bad as a teacher/student, but I agree that nothing should happen... *while being a student*. I agree that it would ruin things. Even after my graduation, no matter how long after graduation that may be, two weeks or two years, if anything happened, I would most definitely not care to tell anyone about it just because of how I know others would react to that. And oh man, I know about the therapist thing. That could really screw somebody up! =O
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A
female
reader, GeeGee255 +, writes (27 February 2011):
 I understand how confused and alone you must feel right now, but you must not go any farther with your teacher or your right, it will ruin his life! And mess you up in the process.
If anyone ever finds out he would lose his job and never be able to be a teacher again. He would also have to register as a sex offender in your state for the rest of his life. And he sounds like a great teacher who really cares about his students one that trys to make learning fun for them.
Would you really want to be the reason he lost all of that?
You don't do that to people you care about. Someone who tried to help you. And he sounds as mixed up and confused as you are right now to confess his feeling for you like he did.
Tust me I understand how the lines can be blurred when it feels like he is the only one that gives a damn about you.
So unlike many other answers you will probably get I am not going to go off on him for getting to close to a student.
Because I understand what its like. I grew up with an abusive father and when I was younger I turned to my teacher for help too. And it didn't take long before I developed feeling for him. Luckily he was stronger then your teacher appears to be, maybe because I was only in 8th grade at the time. But in anycase he never allowed it to cross the line. And later I was proud to be the only student he invited to his wedding.
So what you need to do, is tell him that you can't talk to him or see him alone anymore that you don't want to be the reason he loses everything he cares about. And then DO it.
Walk away and STAY until you have got these feelings under control. Because they will pass, it is not true love that you feel its just an infatuation.
This situation is the reason why there are laws against therapists dating their patients. It's just to eay for a young mixed up girl to become confused and vunerable when she bares her heart to an older man in an authoritive position. Most of them end up feel used and sue them for it.
Try to find someone else you can safely turn to for encouragement and support until you graduate. Another woman would probably be best. Less confusing for you. And you can always find us here for a long as you need us.
Good Luck and keep in touch...
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