Fell in love with an underage girl
23M, Melbourne. This is embarrassing to post but I genuinely have no one else to talk to about this...cause everyone i know will judge me
Met a girl at a climbing club Christmas meetup late last year. We clicked immediately, like proper clicked...spent the whole evening talking, exchanged numbers. At some point that evening age came up casually while talking about younger people being better climber these days than older gen and she said she wasn't that young and she was 20. I had zero reason to doubt her, we were at a members event, everyone there was an adult. We started meeting up regularly for bouldering after that and a few weeks in I asked her out properly. She literally said she was waiting for me to ask.
She works at Sephora, seemed confident, independent, mature. Nothing about her read teenager.
Last week she sat me down and told me she turned 17 in February. We've been dating since April. I thought she was taking the piss. She pulled out her red P's and showed me her DOB and I swear my stomach dropped. I genuinely thought I was going to jail. Like I was spiralling so bad I had thoughts I'm not proud of.
She stayed calm and told me the age of consent in VIC is 16. I looked it up right there. She was right.
I still ended it. Partly the age gap, partly because she didn't just omit her age..she actively told me she was 20. She said she knew I'd have walked away otherwise and didn't want to lose me before I even gave her a chance. I get it but... that's a deliberate lie. That sits differently.
We met at a cafe to say goodbye yesterday and I was an absolute mess. She held it together better than I did which somehow made it worse.
I just finished uni, just started my career, this was the first real connection I've had since moving to Melbourne and now it's just... gone.
Fyi we never had sex. I'm a virgin and she said she is too. It's been a week and I desperately miss her but I know it's wrong even though it's technically legal here. But 7 years age gap is too much.