We are still in high school and very immature, we say lewd jokes about our friend's gfs to tease our friends or piss them of. I have said it in some of my messages, examples of what I said were, "Fck your gf, I will put my tongue inside your girlfriend, I will put my dick inside your girlfriend" and stuff like that, they were all jokes and the humour of the boys in my school so I gradually got the same humour, my friend's girlfriend is 14/15 at that time when I said that I was 15/16/17 can't remember. And now the girlfriend's parents and family have seen the texts and really mad at me, my friend's girlfriend is also crying right now because of my messages. What do I do? I feel like I'm wrong even though some people say I wasn't but that's beside the point, I know I should apologize but I don't what kind of apology and not sure if it's enough. what do I do? I just want to really resolve this right now.I'm 17 right now and need help from you parents on how to solve this.
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3I’m voting to close this question because it isn't really about Parenting as defined in the help center. Maybe this fits better on Interpersonal.SE?– BecuzzOct 5, 2021 at 15:45
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This isn't about parenting; it's about consequences of your behavior with someone else's parents. VTC.– anongoodnurseOct 5, 2021 at 16:57
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1@Becuzz Interpersonal Skills SE doesn't take "what do I do" or "what should I do" type questions, so please don't send those to IPS... Interpersonal Skills is a site for questions about the behaviors you use to interact with others and achieve certain goals, but it's up to askers to define what they want to do, and their goal, and IPS can then answer the 'how to do it'.– TinkeringbellOct 5, 2021 at 18:37
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This question isn't on topic as per our site scope.– Rory Alsop ♦Oct 5, 2021 at 19:55
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1@Becuzz Don't feel too bad about it, but be careful in general when recommending SE sites that you've never been to yourself. I've made it a habit to leave comments when I find out someone was erroneously redirected, as a lot of people misunderstand IPS, usually they miss the 'skills' part of interpersonal skills and the site is treated a bit like r/relationships. Migrations were a bit of a problem for a while too, but the last migration the site got has been a while back, so that seems to slowly fix itself too. (I like to think it's because of the comments I write :P)– TinkeringbellOct 6, 2021 at 11:39
3 Answers
Xavier - you're learning a hard lesson through this, but you are not alone. We all have made mistakes that have painful consequences that we wish would just go away. What I'm about to say comes from my own experience and lessons learned.
You need to understand two things:
- Your choices that got you to this place did not take into account how others would perceive and feel and your apology is at risk of coming off as just trying to make yourself feel better.
- You may not be able to fix this and make things better.
As you apologize, you need to put your own interest of fixing things aside and embrace that you hurt not just your friend's girlfriend but her parents.
If you really want to start healing this situation and also grow as a man and own up to your mistake, my recommendation for you would be to offer to meet her parents and your friend's girlfriend and apologize directly to them. If you do, your apology should not include include any justification of your actions and don't defend against accusations, true or not but express that you were swept up in a mistake and you see that it was wrong and want to make amends.
The consequences of your actions will be what they will be and you no longer have much control over that, but you do have control over how you learn from your mistakes.
I believe you can be a courageous man that comes out of this stronger than you came into it.
You are not immature. What you posted was a very serious case of sexual harassment. If it was my daughter, I’d hand everything to the police. Other parents would look for extrajudicial punishment.
There’s really no way you can apologise for this.
PS. If anyone tells you you were not wrong break up any contact with them immediately. You were wrong. The kind of wrong that gets you fired from a good job if it comes out ten years from now. The kind of wrong that can cause you lifetime damage.
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2This obviously has nothing to do with sexual harassment and sending texts to the police because someone's girlfriend was insulted is just ridiculous.– OrbitOct 14, 2021 at 12:46
Sadly, there's not a lot you can do in this particular case to make things better. You can and should should apologize to all affected parties, including the friend's girlfriend and family. A good apology should acknowledge how you hurt the person's feelings and it should also show you sincerely mean your apology. But the best thing you can do is to make sure you don't hurt someone else in the same way going forward.
"I am so sorry I said such horrible things about you. They were incredibly hurtful and I was totally out of line. I'm reevaluating my choices now and my goal is to never say such hurtful things to another person."
Listen to their complaints about you and feel shameful for what you've done. Don't try and justify why you did what you did: "I am young, I didn't think you'd see them, everybody else makes these type of jokes" etc. She doesn't want to hear your excuses, and they're bad excuses.
Most importantly, learn from your mistakes and don't make them again in the future.
Making jokes with your friends is fine, but it might be worth reconsidering what type of jokes you make and where you make them. With digital communications it is easy to think they're secret, but as you just learned they can be read by everyone. Think before sending a text "would I say this in front of the person I'm talking about?" If the answer is no, don't text it.
It's also important to realize that the type of vulgar jokes you make as a teen are actually pretty horrible. I did the same thing when I was a teen and cringe thinking back on some of the things I said. Rethink what type of jokes you feel comfortable making. Really think about what type of person you want to be in the future and figure out if the jokes you make reflect those goals. If they don't, remove them from your rotation of jokes. You can still have jokes, but change them up so they aren't hurtful to other people.
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