Eleven years ago, this 26-year-old woman had a crush on her high School Teacher. She was fully aware of how crazy her crush was; she knew nothing would ever happen since it was against the law, and also her teacher was married with children.

Fast forward to now; her 45-year-old former teacher sent her a follow request on Instagram, and that small act fanned the flames of her crush.

They had a few friends in common, and she accepted his request. From there, he liked one photo of hers, and she liked one photo he had on his profile. Then, her old teacher sent her a message simply saying hi.

“I started off by saying how he was my favorite teacher from high school and how much I loved his class…and he actually apologizes and says he didn’t remember me,” she explained.

She responded that it was fine since she knew he taught a lot of classes, and she was very quiet in high school, so she was not exactly memorable.

Their entire exchange was quick and polite. On her end, she wasn’t positive if he was still married, and she thought he kind of acted uneasy about her being a student of his from the past.

Later on, one of her high school friends mentioned to her that her old teacher got divorced five years ago.

“One day, I started posting some songs on my story, and it caught his attention because he’s a big 80s-90s music lover, and we started hitting it off with what songs we liked,” she said.

“Then he pulls me with a “Can I take you out for a drink sometime?” I was a little hesitant because I had just gotten out of a Relationship a month prior, and I didn’t want to rush and also asked him if he was still married (to which he said no), but also told him that I did have a crush on him in high school and politely rejected him.”

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Her old teacher was so tenacious that she finally relented and agreed to a date with him. And their first date was actually incredible.

Her old teacher did address his concerns about their large age gap, but she reassured him that she wasn’t a stranger to that and used to date a guy a decade older than her.

Things got more serious, and she has since been dating her old teacher for the last four months. Her family knows all about him, and his family knows about her as well.

She’s also gotten to meet his friends and children, who all have been super welcoming of her. Her old teacher’s friends are teachers too, and they don’t care that she used to be one of his former students.

While there’s no judgment there, she is incredibly worried about making their relationship public and putting it out there for everyone on social media to see. Although her old teacher has shared photos of her on his social media profiles and doesn’t care about being judged, she is afraid of what people will think.

“I told him that I was worried about getting judged by my former classmates, and he reassured me that we weren’t doing anything wrong,” she added.

“He said that he didn’t even remember who I was and that I’m of age. We simply and technically just met on social media. For another reassurance, I asked him if he ever dated a former student before, and he said no. He usually follows former students just because he knows them, and if they were in his class before, he would always set boundaries with them. He just followed me because he thought I was cute, but genuinely had no idea who I was, lol.”

“I asked him what made me different and he said that he was surprised that we had a lot of things in common and that he was amazed with how we conversed just through messaging each other online.”

He also let her know that she was only his third-ever serious girlfriend. His first serious relationship was with his ex-wife, and his second was with a woman whom he dated for a year.

Following the end of his last relationship, he spent three years single before dating her seriously. So, she has a lot of green flags to go on, but the fear of being judged by her former classmates is holding her back in her relationship.

She did post a group photo on her Instagram featuring the two of them and a bunch of other people, as she was concerned that people would gossip about her.

She has not yet worked up the courage to post a photo of just the two of them since she’s so hung up on what people will be talking about behind her back.

“I don’t want him to think I’m keeping the relationship a secret,” she continued. “He claims that there’s nothing wrong with our relationship, but why do I feel in a sense that it may be wrong?”

“We’re both consenting adults anyway. I like him a lot, I just don’t want others thinking otherwise about him.”

What advice do you have for her?

You can read the original post on Reddit here.