Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Safe sex is NOT 100% safe!

In the paper about two weeks ago, there was a letter in the Annie's Mailbox section. The letter was written by a 22 year old girl from Staten Island. According to "Devastated on Staten Island", she dated Matt exclusively for six months. During their relationship, they practiced safe sex every time! Their product of choice was the condom. Matt dumped Devastated and she worked hard to overcome the break up. Just when she thought she was getting over Matt, she found out that she had an STD, an extra little something to make sure she never forgot him. Devastated was dumbfounded I mean they had practiced safe sex everytime. Did I mention that he was her first intimate relationship? One thing is for certain, Devastated was not Matt's first conquest.
I would like to say this again...The only 100% safe sex is no sex! Abstinence is the only way I can guarantee you a life free of STDs and unintended pregnancy. Condoms are not foolproof, and they tend to break or leak. Once more the condom does not protect you from oral sex. Any contact made with an infected area can lead to STDs. Abstinence is not just the not having intercourse but it includes all physical touching of the "private" area. Don't be like Devastated and learn this lesson the hard way. Do what I always recommend, learn from someone else's mistake. Now you know the truth!

Monday, March 23, 2009

Sexting

Don't say I didn't warn you. I have said that no good can come from sending or posting risque pictures of yourself and now there is hard evidence that, surprise surprise I was right! The down side to sexting is negative for both boys and girls. Here are two good reasons to stop sexting right away.

First we have the tragic story of Jessie Logan. Like many other teens Jessie sent a naked picture of herself to a boy she had been seeing for about 1 month. The young man was so crazy about her that he immediately sent the picture to four other girls representing at least 3 other high schools. The girls sent the picture out to everyone, and before Jessie knew it she was being mocked and bullied at school and online. Kids were calling her terrible names, and everywhere she went she was harrassed. "Jessie expressed regrets about taking and sending the photo, her mother said. She wanted to warn other kids. At Payne's suggestion, she did an anonymous television interview.
"My little girl wanted to get the message out to other children not to make the same mistake she did," Albert Logan said".
How, do you ask did Jessie Logan deal with this constant abuse? She killed herself. One night while getting ready to go out, with her flat iron still warm she hung herself. She left no note, they know that she made 5 phone calls while getting dressed, walked out of the bathroom, passed her mother in the hallway without saying a word and that is the last time they saw her alive.
My question to all girls that engage in sexting or are thinking about participating is WHY? WHY in the world would you do this? There is nothing to gain by doing it. Do you think you will secure your life long love by sending nude photos of yourself to his cell phone? I saw a statistic that approximately 22% of female teens or 1 in 5 is already sexting. Let's reverse this trend and I show some respect for ourselves. A good rule of thumb, if it is a picture you would not want your mom, dad or grandmother to see then no one should see it.
Now the downside of sexting for boys; there is the young man who saw a girl for about two months in Wisconsin. She dumped him and started dating someone else, but not before she sent him 2 nude photos of herself. In a jealous rage, he sent the picture to all of her family members, including grandma, and to many of her friends. He is now a registered sex offender for distributing child pornography. He had to serve jail time and for the next 25 years every time he moves he will have to send a postcard to all of his neighbors letting them know of his sex offender status. I know she started it, right? After all, she sent the pictures. He was 14 months older than her, she was only 16 making her a child and he an adult. The exchanging of pornography over the Internet or a cell phone is a felony. Your age does not make you exempt from the laws of this land. A felony goes on your record and makes it hard to secure a future in a good college or even trying to land a job.
Sexting has serious consequences that will lead you down a road of many regrets. Listen up boys and girls stop sexting and keep your clothes on! Not listening to this sage advice will devastate you in the long run and I would have to work really hard to muster up any compassion for this stupid behavior!

Monday, March 16, 2009

May I bend your ear one more time?

If you would please allow me to one more time touch on the Bristol Palin topic. I am sure my readers must think I am beating a dead horse but I am not sure my point has been made and there is still more to say. Unfortunately for Bristol, she is the daughter of a very polarizing political figure, people either love Sarah or hate her and so on that opinion Bristol is being judged.
I have talked about "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" it is FICTION! What is happening in Bristol's life is REAL and it is the real crisis that many teens face today. What kills me are the people who are pleased, if not thrilled that she is going through this because it shows what a failure her mother and the abstinence movement are. Will there be people rejoicing if one day one of my daughters finds herself in this impossible situation? I choose abstinence until marriage because it is the path with the least negative consequences. Worse case scenario my daughter is dumped because she will not sleep with some guy. Please note, that while I will not promote safe sex I don't judge those who do.
On the other hand, those promoters of safe sex are over joyed at the life lesson Bristol is now having to endure. It is as if to say, "HA! Abstinence does not work, Sarah Palin's daughter failed and said it is not realistic" from the MSNBC website here is a quote, "Bristol and her beau have apparently called off their engagement, making the product of their special night of conservative 'value swapping' in the back of a Chevy — son Tripp — one helluva elephant in the GOP's cathedral of morality." Why in the world would you take what is happening to these two teens and make it political? Does the above statement help anyone? Would you say this about your own child as a Democrat or a republican? The adult decisions our teens are making today are having real life consequences regardless of political party. If this had been Chelsea Clinton in high school would we be saying, " See safe sex doesn't work"? You fools this is not about politics! This is about our kid's future! Here is an absolute truth, if you don't have sex you will NOT get pregnant. Abstinence is the only sex education that can say this with 100% certainty.
Incidentally I read an article this weekend that was discussing the break up of Levi and Bristol. Levi says he is just not mature enough to get married. Well then I would tell Levi if you are not mature enough to handle the consequences of sex then you should not be having it. The article had a statistic that only 8% of teenage marriages last. So much for true love at 16! For the rest of us, why not treat Bristol like we would want our own daughter to be treated, with moral support and not like shrapnel from some political fall out!

Thursday, March 12, 2009

what happened with the baby daddy?

Well here is a shocker...Bristol Palin and her fiance' have broken up! It would seem that Levi and Bristol did not in fact have true love for one another. When I first blogged about Bristol's predicament back in the fall of 2008, I said that she was unfortunately the rule and not the exception among today's teens. Hearing the news today, that she and Levi are separated only reiterates my point. Teens think they have found true love, make grown up decisions with grown up consequences and think the rest of their life will be a fairy tale.
The truth is I can only think of two of my friends that married their high school sweethearts, and I think they even broke up for a while in college. I know when you are young and in love you think you have found everything you are searching for, I know this because I used to think the same thing. Now I look at all of my high school crushes and wipe my hand across my brow and say whew, am I lucky I didn't go down that road! But in my teens, while I was doodling their name and seeing how my first name looked with their last name I doubt you could have convinced me we were not meant to be. Ah my good old friend hind sight!
Unfortunately every day we have teens who think they have discovered their soul mate, and they engage in sex thinking this will bring them closer to one another, when really it can just tear them apart. Just think what may have happened if Bristol and Levi had not had sex. Maybe they would have dated throughout the rest of high school and college, gotten a job married, and even bought a house. And maybe a few years later they would have started the family they always dreamed about. OR maybe they would have dated the remainder of high school, gone off to college and discovered there are a whole lot of other fish in the sea, parted ways and have fond memories of their high school sweetheart.
Now, because they did choose to express their love in a physical manner they are forever tied to one another. Probably Levi will start dating first because he is not actually living with their son. He does not have the day to day responsibilities that Bristol does. Actually all he is required to do by law is provide financially for his son. So does he bring his dates over to meet his son? How does Bristol handle other women down the road being involved in her son's life. Do you think either of them thought about any of this before they decided to have sex? Isn't their situation, which is unfortunately typical of teens today, enough for you to say no to sex outside of marriage? Don't be left wondering one day, what happened to my baby daddy or my baby mama.
I know you think you are in love. And if it is the real, til death do you part kind of love then sex can wait until you say I do!

Sunday, March 8, 2009

dating and sex.

There is a new show on MTV called "Sex with Mom and Dad". I have now watched three episodes in an attempt to blog about it and I still don't have a handle on what I want to say. However the last episode I watched was about a 20 year old man who had not had sex in two years, because of his smothering mother. What bothered me the most was his equating sex with dating. Since when did the two become one? Can't you have one without the other, or is that the problem?

In my dating history, I never equated the two. This is a concept that leaves me a little stunned and I hope it does not make me naive. I can understand that a physical relationship develops when dating someone, we call that natural. I also know that people have sex without the relationship, we call this a one night stand, or another name is tragic. But here is a 20 year old who cannot date, because he cannot have sex. How in the world does one learn how to have a meaningful, mature relationship without dating? As I have said before, a relationship built on the physical bond and not the emotional bond has a weak foundation and will not last. If this guy's only goal in dating is to get sex, then maybe his mom was right, maybe he is still too emotionally immature.

When I talk about abstinence I proclaim the virtue of how it keeps you safe both physically and emotionally. Maybe it is time to define what you want out of dating. You know you don't want to be crushed by a broken heart and you know you do not want to be strapped with an STD for the rest of your life. Use this as a guideline to decide what you do want out of your dating history. And frankly, it will be a history. Not many people get the opportunity to marry their first love and many of us will tell you that is a good thing.

I went through a lot of my old college photos this weekend and scanned them onto my computer. I had pictures of boys that I had one date with and I had pictures of guys I dated for a while. You know what I didn't have? Regrets. Each guy is now part of my dating history. That history helped me decided what I wanted in a partner for the rest of my life. I knew what I wanted in my spouse and I knew what I didn't want. Beyond a very few bad dates, mostly I have happy memories. Each one of these guys I can greet with a smile and a quick introduction to my cute husband. And my cute husband can shake their hands and look them in the eye and know that he is the only one who has ever or will ever have all of me. Now that is a bond built on a solid foundation. Stop confusing dating with sex, you can have one without the other!

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

The bachelor!

I am currently working on two other blog ideas, but they are just not yet ready, so why not talk about The Bachelor. I have admitted on several different occasions that I love trashy TV, hence The Bachelor. That is my disclaimer, because now I am going to have to talk bad about a show that is a guilty pleasure of mine; I wouldn't want anyone to call me a hypocrite.
Like millions of others, I tuned in last night to see which girl Jason would choose, Melissa or Molly. I really didn't care, because I am still upset that he let Gillian go! The more I think about it, this show is quite the "how to" manual in dating. Things I have learned about dating from watching the Bachelor. One: the girls that act slutty do not get picked. Two: the girls that play hard to get and appear innocent and above the fray of the show seem to get the curiosity of the suitor. Three: You should never date a guy while he is dating 25 other beautiful girls. Four: when on a TV show fighting for one man, you may lose all sense of reality and forget that the Bachelor is not the last man on earth. What you are feeling for him is not love but a contrived feeling of "love' that is really a competitve feeling to win. Lastly the more physically you get involved the farther you will fall when he dumps you.
Yes, slutty girls may get male attention, but not the kind you want. Acting loose to get a guy to notice you is selling him a false bill of goods if that is not how you want yourself to be perceived. Now if you do want that kind of label and it is working for you then more power to you, but I worry you may be wasting your time reading this blog. I admit I have never known any girl that wanted the label of whore and yet I know many that act like one sometimes thinking the end results will be worth it. I'm just saying...I am afraid a lot of that misinterpretation goes around, and yet we act surprised that we feel used and abused. How can we call a guy a cad when all he did is show us with the same amount of respect we show ourselves?
While life may not be a reality TV show, there are times we may develop a crush and forget that any other person of the opposite sex is alive. We then do terrible desperate things to get them to notice us. Stop and ask yourself, is he or she worth it? Am I making them into something they are not? Good example of this, there was this guy in college that I thought was AWESOME. I watched him from a far for months before I strategically put into action my plans. We met one night "accidentally", but truth be told I had carefully orchestrated the whole event. The night exceeded my expectations we danced until the bar closed. We went to Krispy Kreme and ate donuts until 4am. The next day I was so excited to see him. After dinner with a friend I ran to his fraternity house to see what was on the agenda for the night, and I found him hot and heavy with another girl. For months as I had stalked this good looking boy, I had created some kind of character in my head and found out that he was no where near the man I thought he was, he was a pretty big tool. Not long after that he knocked up some girl, and I wasn't even sad. For two reasons: I had not given him a piece of myself. Had I been intimate with him I would think I would never be able to get that part of me back. Secondly in hind sight after really getting to know his true character I knew that he wasn't worthy of me! Boy this has come a long way from Jason and Melissa I mean Molly.
Back on task, last night Jason chose Melissa proposed to her and spent some "quality" time with her for about 6 weeks. It turns out that when the cameras were off and ABC wasn't sending the two of them on incredible once in a lifeitme dream dates, the chemistry was no longer there for him. I hate to speculate but I am assuming Melissa shared herself with him, which made it even more tragic when he dumped her on national television and said, "I made a mistake I meant Molly"! I think the break up would sting either way, but maybe the pain would not be as deep if she had said no to the sex, not unitl we are married. AH another lesson learned!