"I thought I was so grown up. In fact, I just had nowhere to go," says a man about his relationship with a partner thirty years his senior

He was 17 when they met. He was fifty-two. They met on a simple Internet dating site. "He wrote to me first. He showed me pictures from his travels, he looked calm, mature. I was a small-town boy who was just finding out who he was. And suddenly I was interested in someone who already had his life figured out," says Marek, now 30, whose name we changed at his request.

The news quickly stretched into late-night conversations. Petr worked in a creative profession, lived in Prague, talked about theatre, books, wine. For Mark, it was a different universe. "I had the feeling that he was taking me seriously. That I wasn't just a guy, but a partner. That was intoxicating."

The first meeting was inconspicuous - coffee in Anděl, a walk along the Vltava River. "He was gallant. He opened the door for me, paid. He asked questions, was interested. I felt like an adult. That I was no longer someone who was asked what he was going to do after graduation."

He didn't see the age difference as a problem at the time. Rather, it was proof of his own uniqueness. "I thought, if I was a regular kid, he wouldn't want me."

"I felt important."

In a few months, he was almost always there. Eventually he moved in. In an apartment in Vinohrady - high ceilings, old furniture, books. "I told my parents I was going to Prague for school. I didn't tell them I was living with a man in his fifties. Somehow I didn't have the balls."

He describes his beginnings as intense. Trips, weekends away from the city, dinners at establishments he would never have gone to on his own. "He taught me to drink sugar-free coffee, to eat things like that that I hadn't eaten before. He laughed that I was a villager."

He doesn't say this with bitterness. Rather, he states. "I thought it was cool at the time. I felt important. Like I was someone he chose."

Gradually, though, the little things began. When he went out with friends from school, Peter remarked that they were "kids." When Mark wanted to buy a coloured sweatshirt, he rolled his eyes. "He said something like: Wow, how old are you?"

"He didn't yell. He wasn't ugly. More like amused. And I thought, I must really look like a jerk."

Where did my people go?

Mark stopped coming home. He wrote less and less to his friends. "They were dealing with graduation, part-time jobs, trouble at school. I was worrying about where we were going to dinner tonight and whether we should go to Portugal in the summer."

He was studying, but not working. Peter paid for everything. "It was comfortable. Suspiciously comfortable."

The money, the flat, the friends, the whole social life - everything went through him. "In retrospect, it sounds stupid, but at the time I didn't think so. It just was."

Gradually, he began to notice that he was guarding himself a lot. What he says. How he talks. What he thinks. "He corrected me a lot. Like, if I said something wrong: No, that's not the way to say it. Or: "You'll understand when you're older."

Once, in an argument, he used a phrase that stuck in Mark's head. "He said, 'I actually raised you. And he laughed."

"I didn't realize it until that night. I didn't think it was a joke."

Money as an argument

Control didn't come in the form of bans. "When I went out, he texted me when I was coming in. If I didn't write back, he was cold the next day. Normally he barely talked to me."

Mark started coming back early. Automatically. "Not because he told me to. But because I didn't want him to be upset."

The break came over the laptop. His old one broke, he needed a new one for school. "We had a fight. And he said something like: Look, you don't have any money. I pay for everything. So act like it."

"And my stomach just clenched. I was standing there and I realized I didn't really have anything. Not even that stupid laptop. Not even an apartment. If I left, I'd have a backpack and I'd be done."

Shortly after that, he started texting with a kid from school. Ordinary messages. Jokes, complaints about exams. "It was so weird talking to someone who was dealing with the same shit I was."

Peter noticed. "He said to me: "This type of person will drag you down. "

I left with just a backpack

The breakup wasn't dramatic. "We didn't yell at each other. I just told him I was going home for a few days. And I never came back."

He took his backpack. A few things. IDs. "Everything else I left behind. It felt weird to take it. It was his stuff, his life."

He slept in his parents' nursery for the first few weeks. "I was 20 years old and I had the posters I had there when I was 15. Quite a slap in the face."

He describes the first months as empty. "I didn't know what I liked. How I dressed. What I was listening to. Really."

He was looking for a part-time job, new friends, his own regimen. "It was weird. I felt very small and very old at the same time."

"I think he liked me."

Today they don't talk about Peter as a bully. "He wasn't a bad person. He really wasn't. I think he liked me. He was just used to being in control. And I was too young to watch my boundaries."

The relationship gave him experience, insight, confidence in some things. "I'm not afraid to talk to people today who are older. I do."

But he also thinks it took something away from him. "Just the normal chaos of being 18. Stupid part-time jobs, drunken mistakes, living with friends. I skipped it."

If he could have said anything to himself at 17, it wouldn't have been any great wisdom.

"Probably just: watch out when everything in a relationship is based on one person. When he's got the apartment, the money, the experience, the connections... and you've only got him. That's a terrible way to find out who you are."