Sex Does NOT Equal Love!

I wish my mother had told me this when I was contemplating doing the deed for the very first time.

But she didn't.

And as a mother of two girls now, I found myself dreading 'the talk' but when it came down to it when I had to have it with my oldest and will someday have to have it with my youngest I almost went the way my mother and my mother's mother and mothers for generations before me and told my daughter to wait until she was 'in love', but I caught myself.

Are we really still telling our daughters this lie?

Yes its a lie. Its a misleading non truth that will only make that very important step into womanhood a nightmare that will scar them for life the same way it did most of us.

I'll ask this of other parents out there, have you bothered to look at how kids interact nowadays? Are you in tune with the children of this generation? In dealing with kids all day and driving pregnant teens to and from home on a daily basis I think telling our children to 'wait until they are in love' is not only a waste of breathe, its bad advice.

Kids, especially teenage girls, think they are in love every five seconds. Kids today are dating in Middle School. They have a boyfriend for 3 days and are dropping the 'l bomb'. So 'wait until you're in love' is like giving your 12 year old the green light to start making babies. She thinks she's in love all the time. If she's popular, she'll be in love at least 6 or 7 times a school year. Middle School relationships that last longer than a month or two are very rare.

When I started the talks with my child about when it was appropriate for her to start having sex (and let me first note that she is still young and will be starting Middle School next year) I told her what I believe is a better answer than "wait until you are in love". I told her the following things:

'I can't tell you when you are ready, but I will tell you that when you get a little older, boys will try all the time to convince you to have sex, they will lie to you, they will tell you they love you and they try and convince you that its the right thing to do against your better judgement and as mean and sad as it is 99% of the time they will NEVER call you again if you give in, especially in Middle and High school'.

'That's what boys do.'

'I would hope that you realize that your body is a gift, that it should not be given to anyone and everyone simply for the sake of doing it, it should be with someone who respects you, who treats you like a queen and someone you know you can trust.'

'Any boy you tell no to who really cares for you will wait until you are ready, no matter how long the wait is, if he never really cared trust me, he'll move on to the next girl down the list he can try to get in bed with.'

'Your reputation is like your virginity, once you lose it, you can never get it back, so choose who and when you do it very very carefully.'

and

'If and when you decide to do this, you can come to me before you do it, so we can discuss birth control options without any judgement from me, I just want you to be honest with me.'

I feel that telling her to 'wait until you are in love' is a crock. Some may disagree. I'm not going to tell my daughters to wait until they are married because I would be setting myself up for disappointment if I honestly convinced myself that was going to happen.

Some may argue that I'm trying to be my children's friend rather than their mother but I disagree. I'd rather the topic of sex be an open discussion amongst me and my girls. I don't want them to be ashamed to tell me about it. Because if they are too ashamed to talk about it, then they really shouldn't be doing it. I want them to understand that doing the deed comes with a level of maturity that until they reach it they shouldn't be doing it. And I don't plan to judge them if I think its too early, who am I really to decide that? Now if my oldest comes to me when she's 12 and tells me she wants to start engaging in sexual activities then I think we'd have to discuss it at great length her reasoning behind her decision while I attempt to change her mind for a few more years, but I want her to be comfortable enough to at least tell me how she feels.

I tell my daughter that sex isn't always about love, because as adults we don't always sleep with people we love. And in school, sex is rarely about love. Its about sex. So to mislead my girls with the whole 'you should only have sex with someone you love' is setting them up to having their hearts broken a few times more than expected before they discover true love. I tell my daughter that sex doesn't equal love, but when you do it with someone you love its a whole other experience that compares to no other, it should be what she strives for, it should be what she seeks in a partner (mutual, real love) but she may be with a few frogs before she finds her prince charming and if she makes bad choices she will get her feelings hurt allot more than necessary.

Now, I wish my mother had told me all that. I probably wouldn't have wasted so much time on all the frogs...