So all my friends have said no. Even my mom. My current boyfriend is 4 years younger than me. He is 18 years old and I'm 22 and it's a given that the way things happened at the beginning was selfish on his part. We net online and have known each other IRL for almost a year now and are together. It took a lot of time for me to form that trust again with him and after decided that I liked him back and make the move since he was stuck in the friend zone knowing that it had been a consequence of his actions. So to make things short, we met over gaming in an RP server. We started talking through discord and he knew I was 22, as most people on this server knew each other. He however was a bit more reserved with his personal info understandably bc well, it's the internet. When we were finally in the friend stage say 3 weeks into gaming together and d-ming and stuff, I asked for his age and he always made it a game to not tell me and told me to wait. (He was 17 going on 18 in a month so he wanted to turn 18 or be legal before revealing his age in fright that I might ghost him for being legally a minor). He kept trying to change the subject when I asked and it got to a point when he really liked me and thought he might lose me if he didn't say so he said 18. I believed him at first but got sus just because 18 on the dot was very sus. He stuck with this lie for about a month. I would jokingly ask him if he was really 18 and he would say yes, and he once said, "don't you trust me." Eventually, he couldn't bare it because of all the questions and he came clean about 2 weeks before his birthday and even had a friend join the call because he was so scared of what my reaction was gonna be. I was heartbroken by the lie, as I had feelings for him too after believing he was 18, and it took me several weeks for me to talk to him normally again and he understood and gave me space. Never texted me until I did, and never denied how selfish it was of him to do so.
Was this manipulation?
Updates
1 y
After almost a year of friendship, we started dating and all my friends including my family love him and he loves me so much and treats me like a queen. He never denies what he did wrong and owns up to his mistakes and is so eager to please. After knowing him my mom and friends all say it was a stupid lie out of fright, but is it considered manipulation? I am not too sure of the difference between simply lying and actually manipulating. If it was manipulation, should I move on?
