Family help: My Husband(tom) is 21. - Help.com

Well, yes in that I don’t believe there’s something “wrong” with Tom. But it clearly had an impact on Tate, and although Tom’s probably innocent of wanting to do anything wrong, Tate’s feelings and perspectives have to be respected as well. What I’m saying is, well, the situation sucks, and they’re both hurt. But respect Tate’s feelings, even if it was innocent curiosity on Tom’s part. Hope that makes sense.

totally, my kind of convoluted point was that if Tate feels bad about it, she has a right to, even though Tom didn’t mean anything by it. As much as it might pain you guys, you might want to respect her space.

yeah, that’s probably true. hopefully it’s something she’ll grow out of. maybe she’s feeling taken advantage of or “exposed” by something else in her life right now. it’s probably good that she talked to you about it; maybe you can be a bridge to her, but you can’t force her relationship with Tom. she’ll have to get to that when she’s ready.

Yeah, that’s a really shitty way for her to say it. I’m a peer counselor, and we talk about our experiences, but one of the first things we learn is to not do it so it seems as though we’re “one-uping” the other person. That’s the best way to invalidate what the person has been through. Yeah, her experiences don’t come close to yours, and I hope she isn’t just bringing it up to be hurtful. It’s terrible that someone would try to play the victim in that way; I can see now why it upsets you. It’s kind of like far-fetched help.com posts. You almost always have to take them seriously, even though you question their authenticity. And then people who are making things up or wasting our time just make it that much harder to take the next one seriously. I guess that’s my analogy for victimization.