'Better live' is more like it.

I know that you will shrug-off all advice without response and repost the same just a few weeks from now. But really.... * sigh *

If living to please others is so very important to you, then by all means abandon your loves to fit in.

Of course if your love isn't actually reciprocated then telling family and friends to go f**k themselves over a one-sided crush may be ill-advised.

It seems to me that you live so much in a land of "what ifs?" that it keeps you from living in a land of what is.

And btw, there is no borderline "on the law." If she's legal she's legal. Your "friends" might condemn you for bringing home a young adult, they might condemn you for bringing home a love who's not the right ethnicity or religion. ( Really, its not a Ped or Hebe thing. Its a when-are-you-planning-to-start-living thing? )

Me, I get crushes all the time. Reciprocal love is too durned rare for me. But I do know how to pick them. And all my loves have charmed the socks off my folks and friends. And you know what? The one they'd shove me over for in a rush to adopt was my then 16 year old Beatrice. And if its really love, rather than mere infatuation, you may find that she still matters when you're 50 and she's older too. ( That age gap which looms when its 26/16 seems less so when its 50/40 or 100/90. Ten years doesn't get any more or less as time passes. But judgemental idiots seem to act as though it does.)

The degree of worry about hypotheticals and of repetition suggests to me ( and correct me if I'm wrong ) that you aren't facing an actual 17 year old who feels the same about you. And I think that when you do, that you'll stop repeating yourself and start living.

Dante