14/02/2017
Teens' Relationships: Prospects and Challenges
Adolescent is a period that extends over a substantial part of a person’s life. However, each adolescent experiences individual changes and growth at differing rates, with some moving through the adolescent phase quicker and more smoothly than others. Some adolescents have supportive families, others face this daunting period of their lives alone. Some adolescents may remain at home with their families, but their families are emotionally distant so the adolescent can feel as if they are “alone in a crowd”.
No-one can deny that for any one person facing changes in their lives in the biological, cognitive, psychological, social, moral and spiritual sense, could find this time both exciting and daunting. With the increase in independence comes increases in freedom, but with that freedom, comes responsibilities. Attitudes and perspectives change and close family members often feel they are suddenly living with a stranger.
The psychological challenges that the adolescent must cope with are moving from childhood to adulthood. A new person is emerging, where rules will change, maybe more responsibilities will be placed on him/her so that a certain standard of behaviour is now required to be maintained. Accountability is becoming an expectation from both a parental and legal concept.
Significant dating most commonly begins in late adolescence, ages 15 - 18, during the high school years. By "significant" I mean when young people want to experience a continuing relationship that involves more interest and caring than the casual socializing or friendship they have known before. They want to pair up, at least for a while, to experience what a more serious involvement is like
Teenagers must know what it means and what it takes to have a good relationship so that he or she is more likely, if so choosing, to make a well working committed partnership later on.
There's no point talking about a good serious dating relationship without talking about the potential for s*xual involvement.
-report surveys like the 2005 report by the National Center for Health Statistics indicate around 50% of students having had s*xual in*******se by the end of high school.
What this suggests is that a lot of students do have s*x, and about the same number don't. So if a young person elects not to have s*x, they have a lot of good company. Generally, parents want to play for delay - not saying "not ever" but "not yet." For safety, having s*x is like using alcohol or other drugs: the later you wait to start, the more mature (and wiser) your decision-making is likely to be.
From what I have seen, the three most common causes for serious dating relationships becoming s*xually active are for the sake of "love", altered judgment from alcohol or other drug use, and for a rite of adult passage - hooking up to act grown up.
Of course, if you're "in-love" the possibility of becoming s*xually active increases. The relationship becomes more affectionate, affection becomes more s*xually arousing, s*xual arousal intensifies emotion, emotion overrules judgment, and the immediacy of pleasure is more compelling than being careful about outcomes. The s*xual restraint questions to ask are these. "If I have s*x with this person, what emotional and physical consequences might I face, and are they worth the risks that I am taking?"
True love means loving the other person enough to keep them free of s*xual harm.
If, against your parents wishes, young people in love are determined to become s*xually active, then they need to have the good sense to safely plan their s*xual activity by using s*xual protection. For sure, you need to know that having s*x doesn't mean you have love, how having love doesn't mean you have to have s*x, and how having had s*x with someone once does not oblige you to have it again.
Sexual advice for young people who are seriously dating is to keep the relationship sober because most first s*xual experiences are drug or alcohol affected. Just as we advice teenagers not to drink or drug and drive, (either you or the other person) because substance use alters judgment, lowers inhibitions, increases impulse, and causes people to commit and allow behavior that they would not if they were substance-free." Many emotionally and physically coerced s*xual encounters at this age are abetted by substance use.
As for s*x as a rite of passage into adulthood, hooking up to proving one is now manly or womanly; well, it doesn't. It only proves that you are putting yourself or the other person at risk of a whole lot of dangerous outcomes.
What I have also seen, however, is that although many parents are reluctant to talk with their teenager about the management of s*xual behavior, even fewer ever talk to their son or daughter about what constitutes a "good" relationship.
We admonish you to keep your choices Positive, Confident and True.
Stay Safe, Stay Healthy.
