A 26-Year-Old Man Proposed to a 16-Year-Old Girl

Even though I wanted nothing to do with him, my parents demanded he still be a part of our lives.

In tattered jeans and a Bible study T-shirt, I arrived home to a beautiful three-story house nestled in a gated community of the no-man’s-land of Pasco County, Florida. I had just spent two months in Bethlehem, where I sweated out my summer days shoveling gravel to pave a parking lot for a Bible college. I was 14 years old, cute, chubby, and still figuring out how eyeliner was meant to be applied.


I was just adjusting to my life back home when my mother called me downstairs to tell me that James was stopping by because “he was in the area” and “had something he wanted to tell you.” Something felt off — I could sense it. I was just about to tell my mom that I was going to walk to my sister’s house, but something told me to leave without mentioning it to her, so that's what I did.

A few hours later, I arrived back at home, no James in sight. I walked in the door, still feeling the undisclosed tension in the air. My mother looked at me and said, “Don’t you see what you’re doing?” she shakes her head. “James came over here to tell you he’s in love with you.” I immediately broke down in tears.

James was a family friend of ours. My parents met him the previous summer at our church. James had many good qualities; he was smart, kind, calm, many would say handsome. On top of all of these positives, he was willing to come to our family dinners and talk about church shit with my parents, stealing their loud Greek hearts like no one ever had before. James was the perfect bachelor for someone who cared about the opinions of her family the way I did.

There was just one huge problem: James was 24 years old.

Soon after I learned of his feelings, I found out that my whole family had known all summer and no one told me. No one warned me of this tidal wave that was about to crash into my life.

I sat on a barstool in the kitchen, crying over this news, when my father walked by and said “Who could blame him?” His comment, misguided and inappropriate, crushed me. I just felt lost; no one had taught me the skills needed to reject a grown man’s romantic advances. I assumed my parents would do something about this and not just leave me to fend for myself.




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