sexual with someone you love is about expressing warmth, closeness and intimacy—an orgasm is an added bonus.
Sometimes for guys, orgasm (ejaculation) may happen very quickly and actually before they are ready for it to happen. Teenage boys in general are not always able to control how long they can keep an erection. That means a guy can get an erection and ejaculate before a girl even starts to get sexually aroused and enjoy the experience—that can lead to frustration. For a lot of women, sex is more about emotional attachment, comfort and security in a relationship. Guys sometimes get a reputation for being just into the act without the emotional attachment. There are definitely some great guys out there who are looking for emotional intimacy before sexual intimacy. There are also guys, especially teen guys, who can seem unemotional and pushy when it comes to sex. It’s not always the guys, though. There are also girls who are pushy and unemotional when it comes to doing sexual things. For too many teens, it seems to be more about bragging rights and being able to say, “Hey, I got laid!” Just remember, sex isn’t supposed to be like a Nike ad. It’s about a lot more than “just doing it.”
Solo Sex
Orgasm can happen without sexual intercouse. It can happen for males and females just from sexual touching or even in sexual dreams. A lot of males and females will touch themselves sexually. This can just feel good, or it can be intense enough to create an orgasm. Touching yourself sexually is called masturbation. When guys masturbate, they will hold and rub their penis, usually pretty vigorously, to stimulate it. When girls masturbate, they may touch their breasts, rub their clitoris or vagina. Basically, masturbation involves touching or rubbing yourself in whatever way makes you feel good sexually. There’s nothing dangerous about it (as long as it doesn’t consume your free time), and it is actually quite normal. For many teenagers, masturbation is a way to enjoy their sexual urges without risking sexual activity or intercourse with another person. Masturbation (just masturbation with yourself ) can’t cause pregnancy and can’t cause sexually transmitted diseases. And if you’ve ever heard that it will make you grow hair on your palms, make you go blind or that other people can tell you masturbate by looking at you, we hope you know by now that that’s not true. Duh.
There’s another term called mutual masturbation. Think of it as masturbation with someone else. That means that one person will touch the other person sexually and vice versa without having intercourse. Some people call this “outercourse” because it doesn’t involve intercourse. It’s also called heavy petting or a “hand job.” Like masturbation, this isn’t dangerous if the “masturbators” are only using their hands. Once it goes beyond a hand job to closer skin-to-skin contact or mouth-to-skin contact, then we’re talking about a different topic and increased risks. We’ll talk more about this in chapter 9.
Oral Sex
If touching each other sexually involves using your mouth or tongue to stimulate another person’s genitals, it’s called oral sex. Some people call it “going down” on someone. If a girl puts her mouth over a guy’s penis, the scientific word for that is fellatio, but most people refer to it as oral sex or a blow job. Blow? We don’t think blowing on the penis is really involved; that’s just a term people use. When a guy uses his mouth or tongue on a girl’s clitoris or vaginal area, the scientific word for that is cunnilingus. There is no nice way to describe it in everyday language; we prefer to stick with the term oral sex.
Anal Sex
Bet you can guess what this means. It means penis in anus. As you can imagine, the anus has loads of bacteria and is not really built for that, so it can be much more risky and cause infection, as well as be painful. Some girls think that if they have anal sex, they are being “abstinent” and can still be a “virgin.” But basically, anal sex is just as intimate as vaginal sex, and as we’ve discussed, the virginity issue is very questionable.
What Is SEXUAL and What Is ABSTINENCE?
There’s a lot of talk out there about abstinence. Lots of federal money and entire educational programs have been designed to promote sexual abstinence until marriage. The problem is, many of these programs don’t define sexual abstinence very well, so teens are making up their own definitions.
The word
Whether these recommendations are based on religious teachings or just on common sense, the whole reason for encouraging sexual abstinence for all young people is to prevent unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections and emotional pain that can come from having sex when you’re not ready. That means you should abstain from any activity that can cause these problems.
Let’s be more precise just for the record. We hope you know how a pregnancy occurs by now, so obviously sexual abstinence means no penis-in-vagina because that could lead to pregnancy. Also, to prevent infections, sexual abstinence would include abstaining from oral sex, anal sex and very close skin-to-skin contact, particularly of the genital areas. Finally, the emotional pain thing is the most difficult to figure out. It may be impossible to prevent emotional pain if you let yourself have strong feelings for others. We can’t help having our feelings and emotions hurt in life. But, if you use your
So don’t fall into the trap of believing that sexual abstinence means you can do anything sexually except have a penis in the vagina. It’s not that easy. Think about it, and make a decision you feel good about.
The Consequences of Sex
Let us first emphasize that most young teens do not have sexual intercourse, neither vaginal nor anal. These days, teens may be having more oral sex, thinking that it is risk free. Wrong! Any type of sexual contact carries risks, as we’ll explain. That means it requires responsible behavior and thinking ahead to avoid those risks.
Obviously, pregnancy is a huge risk that you take if you have sex. There are many effective ways to prevent pregnancy, but nothing except abstinence from sex is 100 percent effective. Most important, pregnancy and childbirth change lives forever—yours, your baby’s (obviously!) and your partner’s—so it better be something you are prepared to handle if you are going to have sex. Children born to young mothers do not get the same opportunities as children born to adults, who can provide financially and emotionally for a child. Young mothers are also less likely to finish their education, and you can imagine how hard it is to get a good job and provide for your family if you don’t have a good education.
Besides getting pregnant from sex, there are infections and diseases that can be passed from one person to another through sexual activities. You’ve probably heard of some of them. HIV/AIDS is one of the most well known because it kills the people who are infected with it. Other diseases may not be deadly, but they can cause serious problems, such as severe pain, birth defects, infertility (meaning a woman can’t get pregnant) and even cancer. You know what’s really scary? Every year, one in four teenage girls who have sex will get a sexually transmitted infection. One in four!!!That’s a lot! Pretty serious, huh?
Some infections can be treated, but some cannot be treated at all. Some have NO symptoms and can cause infection in the vagina, the uterus or the throat (through oral sex). The biggest problem is that you can never tell for sure whether someone has an infection. Even though a person may get “checked” for sexually transmitted infections, it doesn’t mean they don’t have ANY infections. That’s because there are no reliable and easy tests for
