Girlology: A Girl's Guide to Stuff that Matters

unfulfilled, and sex won’t seem like such a great thing. Pay attention to those feelings if you have them. They are telling you that you aren’t ready.

Once you’ve “gone all the way,” the relationship can lose a lot of the mystery and excitement. There can also be a loss of trust and respect (for yourself or your partner). There will also be a lot more stress in the relationship because of the responsibilities that go along with being sexually involved. When sex happens too early, the relationship often ends shortly after sex starts because it didn’t have a strong foundation to begin with.

And that can break your heart. Because no matter what movies, TV or other teens might tell you, sex is special, and it is a very big deal. When you give it away to (or have it taken away by) someone who doesn’t respect it and you . . . well, that just plain hurts.

If this has already happened to you, if you have already had your heart broken by rushing too quickly into sex, you don’t have to keep feeling the hurt over and over again! You can take charge and choose to set limits for physical involvement with your next boyfriend. Your mistake doesn’t make you any less lovable or special. If you learn from your mistake, it will even make you wiser. Then the next time you’ll be thinking about building a strong foundation for true love, not just giving in to the exciting feelings of a crush!

Now, that’s exercising some Girl Power!

Romance Is Not Random!

So how do you start to build that strong foundation for true love?

Just like with a friendship, you have to get to know each other’s likes, dislikes, interests, fears and hobbies. You met each other because you had something in common—like a mutual friend, playing sports, same religion, same neighborhood, same job, same volunteer work—so that’s a great place to start building a relationship. Start out by exploring that one thing you know you have in common. If it’s a relationship that can turn into more than a crush, your question, “What position are you playing this season?” will soon turn into deeper conversations about the disappointment of losing and the elation of winning games, about teamwork and friendships among athletes, and about dreams of careers or colleges.

Once you figure out that you and your crush have things in common, it’s important to get to know more and more about him. You’ll also want to know about his family and family traditions. Most of all, you’ll begin to understand his values. And knowing your crush’s values is important because “true loves” are not just randomly thrown together. It takes two people with shared hopes and dreams and values to become true loves. So if a crush has become a boyfriend, and you’re practicing how to move a boyfriend to the true love column, you have to know his values.

There are a million more things you can learn about your boyfriend. As you get to know these little things about him, you’ll be learning whether this person is someone you can trust and be honest with about your own feelings. Enjoy getting to know your boyfriend—it’s one of the most special parts of being a teenager! You could:• Go with each other to school games, plays, concerts, volunteer activities.

• Swap favorite CDs.

• Learn each other’s favorite things, like music groups, color, sports, books.

• Talk about great jobs to have when you are adults.

• Discuss what you will major in at college or what college you want to go to.

• Describe your dream vacations to each other.

• Go swimming, go hiking, play tennis, jump on the trampoline, shoot hoops, or pull out a pack of cards or a board game.

• Volunteer together in a community organization.

• Watch each other’s favorite movie, even if it’s not one you’d pick for yourself.

• Get to know each other’s parents.

• Hang out with him around his brothers and sisters or best friends.

• Discuss or debate issues (i.e., the pros and cons of the new uniform policy at school or bigger issues like abortion or the death penalty) to challenge your thoughts and beliefs and see where each of you stands.

If you find you’re still hanging out with him and feel comfortable trusting him, then you can start to share more intimate feelings and thoughts.Think of some other things that you think would be fun to do with a boyfriend:

Think of some things you would want to know about him:

Getting Closer to Your Boyfriend (or True Love?)

You may have spent time getting to know your boyfriend, his family, his values, his likes, dislikes, goals and dreams, and now you might be feeling like he’s a candidate for true love. You know lots of intimate things about him (that just means close, private, personal things), and now you might feel like being more physically intimate.

Getting to know a person intimately doesn’t mean you have to have sex with him, but you should be able to talk about it. Physical closeness involves a lot more than sexual intercourse, so you need to be able to talk about everything: kissing, touching and sex. Boyfriends and girlfriends who have a plan and set boundaries for physical contact are more likely to stick to what’s comfortable and not do something in the heat of the moment that they didn’t plan on!

Can We Talk?

So how do you make a plan? You have to talk about it. Learning to communicate is a huge part of respecting each other. We know it’s uncomfortable, embarrassing and all that. But it has to be done to protect yourself and your boyfriend from letting physical things go too far.

If you are finding that talking about sexual things is really difficult, start the conversation by talking about characters you saw on TV or in a movie or maybe about what’s going on between boyfriends and girlfriends at your school. That lets you get your ideas about what’s okay in teen relationships “out in the open.” It will also help you and your boyfriend start talking about what’s okay in your relationship. But if you can’t talk, or he won’t talk, your relationship is definitely not ready to become physical!

“The talk” is tough, but once you have set your boundaries, it can be totally fun! Physical touch is a natural part of developing a relationship, and part of your job as a teen is to practice these relationship things.

Don’t Feel Pressured!

The teen world today is different from when your mom and dad were hanging out in middle school and high school. Sex was rarely even mentioned in most households, and TV was as clean as church.

Sexual images and references are everywhere now—music videos, TV, magazines, billboards, and blue jeans and T-shirt ads. The message today is that sex is just something you do, regardless of your relationship or responsibility or age. The result is that too many kids today feel pressure to go straight to oral sex or sexual intercourse before a relationship even really develops. It leaves a lot of kids confused about being intimate.