Is it bad to value things? Valuing things is called being materialistic. It’s usually used in a negative way, but it’s not so bad if you don’t let it control everything you do, and you have other values that keep it in check.
Let’s say you really value your clothes and makeup. Are you a bad person? Nope. But what if you value clothes and makeup so much that you won’t be friends with someone who doesn’t wear the “right” clothes? Now that’s being shallow. You’d miss out on a lot of great friends if that’s all you based your friendships on. If you value clothes, makeup AND honesty, independence and kindness, then you’re working with a fuller set of values that will make you a happier person and a better friend to others.
These examples show that there are lots of different types of things that we value. We can put them into categories to make it easier to understand. You can value:
People and relationships—friends, family members, crushes and boyfriends, pets (sure, pets can be considered people, but if you think about it, it’s probably the way your pet makes you feel and depends on you and even loves you that you value most)
Actions—horseback riding, drawing, sports, playing or listening to music
Ideas—honesty, trust, loyalty, humor, fairness, popularity, independence
Things—books, stuffed animals, bicycle, special piece of jewelry, your hair
Think about your values and the values of the people you know.
Do you see similarities in this chart? We bet you do! That’s because most people choose friends based on similar values and beliefs. You might have some differences from your parents, but they have definitely influenced you.
But Why?
Now, remember we told you that you are old enough to start knowing WHY when your parents tell you what they think or want. Let’s think about your own whys. Why do you value the things you listed?
So where are we going with this? As you enter the world of crushes and romance, you need to have a very strong idea about what you value in relationships. Your friends and family have helped you make that list of values. Now it’s time to think ahead about what you would value in your relationship with your true love. Are there certain things and ideas you dream of having in your relationship with your true love?
Some of them will be simple. Let’s look at the categories:
People and relationships: Duh, that’s your true love you have to value.
Actions: Spending time together in nature, studying together, going to a concert together, riding bikes together, gazing into each other’s eyes.
Ideas: Honesty, loyalty, trust, respect.
Things: You might value the bracelet he gave you or a note he wrote you.
What else? What other things are really important in a relationship? Think hard . . . how about your body and his body?! That includes your physical and emotional health.
Value Your Body! It’s the Only One You’ve Got!
But wait . . . do YOU value your body? That’s a tough one. We know that a lot of girls DON’T feel good about their bodies. WHY? Is it because magazines have made them feel they don’t look like toothpicky models?
What about you? Do you feel okay about your body? Have kids at school told you your body isn’t good enough? Are you taking care of your body like you should by eating healthy (veggies, water, avoiding fast food and junk food), exercising (sports, walking, getting off the couch and away from the computer), and protecting it from harm (wearing helmets, seat belts, avoiding drugs and alcohol, abstaining from sex or protecting yourself against pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections)?
If you don’t take care of your body, who will? If you don’t take care of it, you lose respect for it. What a shame! Our bodies are amazing things. Think about the five senses (touching, smelling, seeing, tasting, hearing) and the things like music, nature, textures, food and beauty they allow you to experience. Remember all the stuff about growing a baby? Your body is miraculous and helps you DO incredible stuff! Bodies are powerful!
Respect your body, and make sure your boyfriend shares that value. Your boyfriend will never become your true love unless he shares your values. If you have a boyfriend who doesn’t share your values and pushes you to do things that you are not comfortable with, it’s time for the big dump, the breakup, the drop off. You can never truly be close to someone who doesn’t share your most important values.
It’s never easy, but it’s a rule we all need to live by: Choose boyfriends who respect your body! Now that’s a decision that gives us girls power and strength!
Decision Time
Okay. So what happens when you’ve stuck by your rule to choose a boyfriend who shares your values and respects your body? Good job! He’s looking like Mr. Perfect, true-love-wannabe. You feel emotionally intimate because you’ve gotten to know each other. You are definitely having those warm, tingly feelings of sexual desire. It’s thrilling, exciting . . . and overwhelming. Yikes! Where do you go now?
A big part of growing up is figuring out how you will handle situations that involve being close with another person. That means figuring out what you expect of yourself when it comes to having sex and doing things that are sexual. Maybe you haven’t really thought about it yet, but you need to start deciding when it will be okay to do some sexual things.
Why now? Now, because you are smart enough to figure out what is important to you. Now, because you are becoming independent enough to make good decisions. Now, because you are growing up and becoming the type of girl who sticks to her values in lots of different situations—when it’s easy and when it’s hard.
Plan It Now
It’s time for you to start thinking about your future and making some promises to yourself . . . maybe you can even make some promises to your future true love. Isn’t that dreamy? If you decide and promise yourself now, you’ll be more likely to stick with those promises, even in the “heat of a romantic moment.”
Girls who have a plan about when it is okay to have sex are more likely to stick with that decision and not let some smooth-talking guy change their plans. There is a lot of power in having a plan!
So, What’s Your Plan Gonna Be?
You’ll hear lots of different answers, especially to the question of when it is okay to “go all the way” or have sexual intercourse. You’ll hear things like:
• When you are married
• When you are dating steady
• When you are 18 years old
• When you have been dating a boy for one year (or maybe six months or even three months)
• Whenever you feel like it
• When a guy says he loves you
Talk about those mixed messages!
Your plan for physical closeness with a guy will involve a lot more than just sexual intercourse, but let’s start there since it is the most important decision.
WhyWait?
There are plenty of good reasons to wait to have sex: We’re going to sound like parents for a minute (and uh . . . we are parents), but here goes. If you wait until you are an adult in a mature, long-term, committed relationship before you have sex, then:
• There is less emotional“baggage,” such as guilt, disappointment and fear.
• You will have a more mature relationship before you have sex.
• You will have better sex with your eventual husband when you don’t have memories of sex with other guys.
• You can accept pregnancy as a consequence and become a parent when you will be excited and prepared for it.
Now we’re going to sound like doctors for a minute (remember, we are doctors, too). More good reasons to delay sexual activity are:
• Girls who have sex at a younger age tend to have more sexual partners during their lifetimes.
• You will have less risk for cervical cancer if you have fewer sexual partners. Every new guy you have sex with increases your chance of getting a virus that can cause cervical cancer.
• The younger you are when you have sex, t
he higher your risk for sexually transmitted infections. Infections can cause infertility, cancer, pain, even death.
• You can’t get pregnant if you don’t have sex. Pregnancy in middle school or high school is not what most girls want or need.
And finally we’re just going to sound like girlfriends (we are female and we do care). More good reasons to delay sexual activity are:
• Young guys aren’t typically interested in the relationship as much as they are interested in getting sexual experience or pleasure.
• Many young guys don’t feel the same emotional attachment with sex that girls typically feel. The emotional part seems to come at a later age for guys.
• Teen boys can be great friends, but they are often awkward or self-centered when it comes to sex and making girls enjoy the sexual experience. They make themselves feel good, but they don’t really understand how to help you feel good and enjoy sex.
It’s a Big Deal!
Sex is a big deal. It can be awesome with the right person, but it takes a mature relationship that most girls don’t experience until they are adults, so why waste it?
So what do you do in the meantime? The wait can be fun! Once you have a romantic interest, someone you trust and want to be with, you’ll need to decide how far you will go. If the intimate feelings are there, there are lots of different things you can do to physically enjoy each other or to show affection.
There are some risk-free things that are fun, like holding hands, hugging, giving a back rub or shoulder massage, and playing with each other’s hair. Things like this allow you to spend time comfortably together without feeling pressured to do sexual things.
There are some activities that are more intimate but still not so risky, like kissing. Some teens can kiss for hours without going any further. Before you even think about going further, spend some time perfecting your kissing skills. That can be fun.
The thing is, once you go past the kissing stage, it can be really, really, really hard to stop! Your body is made so that all the touching gets you more and more sexually excited. In fact, when men and women plan to have sex, that’s exactly what they do to get their bodies ready for sexual intercourse. Remember the foreplay stuff?
So if you don’t want to go all the way . . . some types of touching, massaging and kissing each other’s bodies is really confusing. Your brain knows that you have decided not to have sexual intercourse, but you are doing things that make your brain want to tell your body to go for it! See how important it is to decide when you will stop before things get all hot and heavy?!
How Do You Decide?
Setting your sexual boundaries is important, really important. It puts you in control of your body, your emotions and your relationships. It’s one of those choices that can be tough, but if you stick to your boundaries, you can be proud at the end of the day (or night).
The time to decide on your boundaries is:
• When you have time to think
• When you have a chance to discuss it with trusted adults and friends, if you want to
• Before you get in a sexual situation
• Maybe even before you have a boyfriend
The time to decide on your boundaries is not:
• Before you have time to think
• When you feel pressured by a boyfriend or your girlfriends
• When you are already in a sexual situation (like heavy kissing or touching)
Now, down to the specifics! Look at the following list and spend some time thinking about when you think the activity will be okay for you.
When Is It Okay To . . .
• Hold hands?
• Go out together in a group?
• Hug?
• Kiss on the lips?
• Go out on a date alone?
• French kiss?
• Let your boyfriend touch your breasts through your clothes?
• Let your boyfriend touch your bare breasts?
• Touch your boyfriend’s penis?
• Undress in front of each other?
• Have oral sex?
• Have sexual intercourse?
• Have a baby together?
Some of these are easy answers. You can hold hands with your boyfriend any time, risk free! Other answers are tough and will be unique to your values and comfort level.
With most of your boyfriends and even with some guys you think are true loves, you’ll never get to a lot of the things on this list, and that, my friend, is good! Many of these things should be reserved for adult, real, live true loves and some for the person you marry.
What’s Okay When?
You have to ask yourself:
• What is healthiest for my body? (Check out the “we’re sounding like doctors” list on.)
• What is healthiest for my emotions? (Check out the “we’re sounding like parents and girlfriends” lists on.)
• What things will I do with a crush? A boyfriend?
• How do I know he’s a crush? A boyfriend?
• What will I do with a true love?
• How do I know he’s a true love?
• Will I save something special for marriage?
Boyfriends and crushes are pretty easy to figure out. They give you that twitterpated (did you ever see Bambi?), butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling, even though you may not know them well (or even know them at all!). True loves can be trickier. You have the same butterfly feelings about a true love, but you also have to know a true love well. You have to share values, time and experiences together.
Believe it or not, you may think you have many “true loves” in the next ten years. You might think one’s a true love, but then you get to know him better and find out things you don’t like. Or maybe you just develop a crush on another guy, and suddenly your former “true love” doesn’t give you the butterflies anymore.
That’s all okay. Just remember that when you decide what sexual things you will do with a true love, if it’s too much, too soon, you’ll just end up embarrassed and feeling disappointed. We don’t know any girl or woman who has ever regretted waiting to have sex. But we see tons who are disappointed and mad at themselves for having sex too soon with someone they thought was a true love but didn’t turn out to be the one. Chances are you will not end up marrying the boyfriend you have at age fourteen, so wait it out. Get to know what you like and don’t like in a relationship, but save the sex for much later.
It’s Too Late for Me
What if you’re reading this thinking, “Oh, great. This doesn’t even apply to me. I’ve already let a guy touch my breasts/touched a guy’s penis/had sexual intercourse. I didn’t have a good plan before, and now I’ve blown it.”
Hey! It’s okay! And we promise you it’s not too late.
We all make mistakes. You are not alone. Most young teens are not satisfied with their first sexual experience. You didn’t have a plan then, but you can make one now! Just because you’ve gone farther than you wanted to doesn’t mean that you have to go that far with every guy you date from now on.
Reset your boundaries. Make a promise to yourself to stick to your plan. Learn from your mistakes and make changes to protect your body and your emotions. This is where that strong character you have developed by choosing values and sticking with them comes in. Once you have crossed a boundary it will be hard to reset. We know that. But we also know that sticking to your promises to yourself is important even when it’s hard. And we know you can do it!
Now This Should Be Interesting . . .
If you really want to have some fun, give the “When Is It Okay?” list to your parents and have them fill it out. There’s an interesting conversation!
Talk with your mom or another trusted adult female about this stuff. See if you can get your dad to talk with you about it. Dads have important opinions, too! Are your answers different from your parents’? Ask your parents not only WHEN but WHY. Make them explain their reasons for their answers. Do they make sense? Beli
eve it or not, parents know more than you think about this stuff.
Parents probably feel awkward talking with you about it, but they’ll have some great advice if you’ll hear them out. You don’t need to know if or when your parents did all this stuff (ewwwww!), but their answers will be based on what they have learned from their own experiences and life in general.
But, What If . . . ?
Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, so we have to talk about the what ifs.
Hopefully, we’ve made the point that for humans, sex is not supposed to be just for reproducing. It’s also not supposed to be something you try just because you’re curious. You know by now that sex is powerful in many ways. It can be a wonderful, intimate experience that two people share. It can also be a very disappointing, embarrassing, and even scary experience if it happens too soon or in the wrong relationship.
The disappointing and scary part can come in many ways. We’re doctors; we hear these stories almost every day! Consider the following real-life examples:
• A 14-year-old girl has sex with her guy “friend” because she is just curious to see what it is like. She ends up pregnant.
• A 26-year-old woman can’t enjoy sex with her husband because she had sex as a young teenager in a bad relationship and has bad memories that get in the way of her enjoyment.
Girlology: A Girl's Guide to Stuff that Matters Page 15