Hi everyone 37F here, I’ve been struggling with the thoughts of my future relationships and sex life recently and would love to hear some advice.
I haven’t had the best relationships in my life and got out of a 5 year long one around a year ago. After that I’ve stopped myself from serious dating as it never seems to work out and started focusing on being happy with myself. This involved me having more casual relationships and hookups with men who were a bit younger than I am (around 21-30) as it made me feel more confident, free and in control of my life.
I had been doing that for around 10 months and I started feeling a lot better about myself and my life until I was talking to someone last month. We met on tinder and started talking and everything was going pretty well and we had decided to meet up, before this we decided to send each other some nude photos which I had done before so I didn’t think anything about it.
When we met up the chemistry was fine but nothing special and the sex wasn’t amazing so I stopped messaging him after that night as I didn’t want to meet up again. He kept messaging me saying he wanted to meet again and I just gave him some basic excuses not to make him feel bad like I was sick or out of town. He continued to message me for about another 2 or 3 weeks and at that point I had just stopped responding all together and blocked him which I know isn’t great to do and I could have just told him no but I wasn’t thinking too hard about it.
I then started getting messages from a different phone number but clearly from him calling me a slut, whore etc etc… I thought it was just more sad for him then anything so I would look at the messages and just have a laugh but then he sent me a link that he had posted onto an image sharing website that was the photos and video of me that I sent him with a bunch of people commenting and viewing them. It made me sick to my stomach and made me want to die knowing that thousands of people had seen those photos but I was eventually able to get them removed.
This whole situation completely ruined me and made me lose any self confidence I had before and also made me never want to have casual relationships with people again. I’m still a very sexual person and don’t want to have zero resemblance of a sex life but I don’t want to commit to a long term relationship and have lost trust in people that I only have known on a sort term basic. Does anyone have any advice on how to get over this or alternatives
17 comments
I think you should not connect photos being shared and the ability to have a healthy sex life. Don’t trust people with your photos. You can still go on the dating apps. I wouldn’t share any photos with anyone other than a seriously seriously long term relationship and even then I would be paranoid about them being accidently shared.
So sorry this happened to you. My advice: Never send nudes or let someone take nudes unless you want them out in the world.
I’m sorry this happened to you. This is awful stuff to deal with. You should ask the websites that are hosting this to remove the photos.
Beyond this, I don’t have any other useful advice unfortunately.
35M here
Honestly i would care but maybe its just me
Whoever did that acted childishly, and that behavior has nothing to do with you. Bad seeds are everywhere
Maybe you have to be more careful and choose who to share things with or not.
I also dont see the point of sending nudes before even meeting the person IRL
I’m sorry this happened to you, I hope the photos/videos didn’t show your face. Unfortunately, avoiding showing your face is really the only way to protect yourself besides not sending any at all. I would document everything, check your state’s revenge porn laws, send the website a takedown notice, and perhaps look into legal action against him if there are revenge porn laws and consider taking out a restraining order. Definitely tell him in written form to never contact you again and to take it down so that it’s on record
What he did could be illegal. It is in my country since 2021. Look into this. It’s not OK what he did.
If sending nudes again , no identifiable features in them
If revenge porn is illegal where you are, you can take this to the police.
Yikes, imagine how absolutely sad and pathetic this dude’s life must be to get THAT upset over someone from tinder that he met one time. That’s the definition of fragility right there. Somebody get this man some therapy and some hobbies, stat.
I don’t want to minimize how you felt at all, but honestly there are a million nudes on the internet. The fact that yours were out there for a little bit doesn’t say anything about you as a person. I would chalk this up to a learning experience – in my sending nudes phase, I never put my face in them, and I also had a good mental chat with myself beforehand about how bothered I would feel if important people in my life somehow saw them (answer: not very). You don’t have to send nudes ever again, and honestly probably shouldn’t if you feel traumatized, but take the power away from them! It’s just naked bodies, who cares.
I have gigabytes of nudes/videos of my ex
And as much as I am upset and disappointed with her (she had an affair that destroyed our family)….I will never release them – ever.
Revenge porn is illegal I think in most parts of the country. Plus, I like to think I am just better than that.
I’d call the police if I were you. The fact he sent the link to you is easily traced back to him and should be enough evidence to bring the hammer down.
If he does this to you, he’ll do it to someone else too (maybe already has)
Dont let him get away with it
First, what happened was absolutely not your fault. I’m so sorry that this happened. I’m glad you were able to get them removed, that’s a great step. If you would be interested in pursuing it legally, check to see if there are laws where you live about “revenge porn” aka non-consensual porn. This is what you experienced and more and more places are rightfully making it a crime.
I know this is a big hit to the ability to trust people. Are you able to speak with a therapist or other mental health professional? You experienced a traumatic event, and talking about it with a pro could really help.
I don’t think this has to be the end of casual relationships for you. To feel safer, you could tell new potential partners that you don’t send nudes (or if you’re really into that, never include your face, and use something like Snapchat where messages automatically disappear). Don’t let a new person know where you live until you’ve established some trust (always go to their place first). Maybe seek out a fwb instead of a totally casual fling, that way you can get to know someone a little bit before you get physical without going all the way to serious relationship. These are just a few things that come to mind. I hope you find something valuable in the comments here and that you don’t blame yourself. Good luck!
Thought I would add some extra details I didn’t know how much I could write with people still being bothered to read it 🤣 I was able to get all the images/videos removed after a couple of days of trying so that was good. Thank you for the comments about legal action but sadly it was something I had researched a lot and where I am from there isn’t strong enough revenge porn laws for it to really matter mainly because they were anonymously posted and after I had the link sent to me I block the new phone number and deleted the conversations from both phone numbers. So basically all I have is their first name and what they look like and an anonymous post which isn’t enough to do anything with. It happened a couple of weeks ago so I have had time to calm myself down over it and realise that it’s not the end of the world but it is still hard as it’s made me very untrustful of casual relationships even outside of sharing nudes. And yes I will also never share nudes again.
If you’re going to send photos leave your face out of them. For video I suggest that you avoid your face. To me that’s the only way to protect yourself when doing that stuff.
You can learn from this. Don’t share risky pictures/videos with anyone in the world. There’s no need nor benefit to share those. I believe you can ask particular authorities to have your pictures removed from websites.
Well next time don’t send nudes to strangers🤷🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
If you don’t want everyone to see something don’t send it to people because nobody can be trusted
This is no longer a case about relationships but definitely a case for the police! Please take this asap, save everything you can. Hell. Maybe even get a lawyer too.
Let this also be a lesson. This is why you shouldn’t share things with people you don’t trust.
Any time you share pics there is a risk he’ll show someone else, tbh for most guys, he most likely has shown his friends. You have to weigh the risk vs the benefit. As a rule of thumb, Never include your face or tattoos and you can easily deny that it’s you.