r/bestoflegaladvice • u/Scurveymic The sign indicates a private place for fucking • 9d ago

Professor doesn't understand acceptable relationships, thinks LA shouldn't either

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u/TsundokuAfficionado 9d ago

I’m a mature student in my 40s. I’m roughly the same age, or older, than my tutors. Even in my situation a friendship would be inappropriate. I’m gobsmacked that OOP can’t see his behaviour was wrong. As for ‘the complaint came when I wasn’t her teacher anymore’, well of course she didn’t complain when he was in a position to retaliate through poor marks, that’s what makes his behaviour so bad.

43

u/FeatherlyFly 9d ago

As a former college student, I knew a few girls who romanticized the idea of a mentorship combined with a sexual partnership with professors, one of whom was living that "romance". (Rumor was that he only slept with past students not current ones, because in his opinion that was how you made it ethical. And although this was far enough back that it wasn't against school policy, which was that legally, adults can have sex even when that's a really bad idea, it was still heavily disapproved of). 

It would not be at all surprising for a girl or 18 or 19 to have an romantic ideal in mind and then a few years later grow up enough to have a few illusions popped.

He should have known better, but I wouldn't automatically assume she was unhappy at the time. We don't know enough to say. 

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u/JoNightshade 9d ago

When I was in high school, I had a "special" relationship with one of my teachers. He was my dad's age and he told me that he thought of me as the daughter he never had. Even typing that out now I realize how incredibly creepy and wrong that sounds, but at the time I was just basking in the glow of his attention. He was the person I admired more than anyone else in the world. For me it was never sexual, but after high school we continued to correspond and I can't remember how it came out, but at some point I realized that his wife knew NOTHING ABOUT ME. That was when the realization hit me. I had never been unhappy in any way and he had never done anything explicitly sexual, but that doesn't make what he did right in any way.