When I was in high school in the early 80s, teacher student relationships were rife.
My art teacher (who one day heartbreakingly and carelessly told me my legs were like those of a soccer player) was living with a former Year 12 student. Our history teacher regularly declared his love for my best friend much to her disgust and derision, and I nursed a terrible longing for my English teacher. I recently met him again at a writer’s festival. He told me that he remembered both my ill-concealed crush and my vulnerability. He said that he was grateful that he was able to see that vulnerability; because he can’t imagine the regret he would feel now if he had acted like his colleagues.
At the heart of his decision to ignore my 15-year-old adoration, lies the meaning of what it is to be an adult. That we see something or someone we desire and that we are able to make a choice to forgo that desire for the safety and wellbeing of another. We are able to hold the vulnerability of others in a dutiful and responsible way. We can postpone not only desire, but also power. This is what separates us from animals and from children. It is the essence of real humanity.
Our fascinated responses to adult child relationships point to our confusion about what it means to be an adult, to our own struggles with sexuality, abuse and power, and to our sense that these relationships are often more complex than those of predatory sexual abuse and assault.
Many years ago, one of my friends was stood down from her 30-year teaching career for a relationship she had with a former student 20 years earlier. The relationship had been a long and loving one, and after years of subsequent friendship, the former student filed a complaint against my friend. She is now no longer teaching, is listed on the register of sex offenders, cannot work with young people ever again and is still fighting to regain her confidence.
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