<p>I am with Beil. I also hope that all of you are sensitive enough to know that there are kids out there, (and you may be one of them) who are in a mental/emotional state that makes hooking up a very bad idea. Mood disorders are rampant at your age. Sex can be a real power keg. Be careful, very careful about who you let come close, intimate with you.</p>
<p>My son isn't interested and he's been tested many times. He just states that he's not into it and then he has to explain that he's not gay as that's what they ask you if you're not into it.</p>
<p>Apparently women offer themselves or guys will find you someone. I was pretty shocked when he told me about this stuff. I got less shocked after a while.</p>
<p>All I can say is that there is a lot of talk about sex on the internet that isn't really reflect real life. There are 17 year old boys/girls that are not into sex yet. Some are not ready emotionally plain and simple.</p>
<p>To the OP, why does sex have to be "meaningful"?</p>
<p>It's just a physical act and it's your choice whether you want to attach emotional significance to it. I wouldn't listen to some of the advice parents offer you here because at a wonderful school like Yale, you're going to miss out on meeting some AMAZING people if you avoid socializing with individuals who enjoy casual sex. You don't have to be influenced personally by the belief systems of others, but you should never use them to stop interactions with others.</p>
<p>Unless you join a "Virgin Society" or something, you're going to find people in all the clubs/organizations you participate in at school to have all sorts of different thoughts and experience with sex. Don't let this deter your college experience.</p>
<p>t's just a physical act and it's your choice whether you want to attach emotional significance to it.
DIsagree- we are not made that way.</p>
<p>Our DNA is is designed to attach to the person that we are propagating the species with for short and long range survival.</p>
<p>We may think we are just in it for the short term physical release but oftentimes isn't the result unless we are especially good at blocking our inner thoughts and feelings.</p>
<p>30 years ago my sister had a roommate at UNC Chapel Hill who came home very upset one day. She told my sister that after she had spent some time with a guy the previous evening, they went back to his room to talk (or so she thought). The guy started taking off his clothes. She asked him what he was doing, and he explained that he assumed she wanted to have sex. She told him she was not that kind of girl and left. She went to her RA and to a counselor at UNC the next morning who both told her that she needed to loosen up and not be so uptight about sex but rather just enjoy herself at college. She was, after all, an adult now. My sister told her roommate that if she did not want to have sex, then she shouldn't. My sister's roommate thanked her profusely for reassuring her that she was okay for not wanting to have sex.</p>
<p>All of this advice by various people might work for them (or so they might think), but if you do something you don't want to do, only you will have to face your conscience and any potential consequences. If you are not interested in the hook-up culture, then by no means do not get involved in it. I guarantee that despite any statements of advice from various counselors, college students, or parents, it is far from 99.9 percent of college students who are sexually active. Current students think they invented the hook-up culture. They forget that their parents generation went to college before AIDS, and sex was very common. Nevertheless, then as now, a significant percentage of students was not sexually active during college.</p>
<p>I also think the rhetorical question posed by cottonwood513 is excellent: "Does anyone regret not losing their virginity sooner? No."</p>
<p>
See the thing is, I don't think that is true. I think a lot of married couples who decided to abstain from sex till marriage end up regretting that decision since they don't have a lot of experience in the physical act and feel let down when they realize that that the whole concept of saving it "for your spouse" is overhyped, especially if/when they divorce.</p>
<p>Like another poster on the thread said earlier. a lot of people wish they were more confident of their sexuality at a younger age. It is common for people in relationships to rush into marriage because they feel like it is a prerequisite for sex and then the couples greatly regret their decision to tie the knot. Instead, if they had treated sex as merely one piece of a fulfilling relationship, then these people might have waited and made a more rational decision regarding marriage.</p>
<p>In my parents' generation, it was very common for people(especially wonem) to wait until marriage for sex and those who didn't might have been ostracized. This is because people were marrying much earlier than they are now. If you're going to wait till your late 20s or early 30s to get married, then abstinence is often not a realistic option.</p>
<p>Evil: One of the disadvantages of being young -- maybe the only one -- is not having any experience. Nearly everything in your post is wrong.</p>
<p>Couples who saved themselves for marriage and then divorce: They regret a lot of things. Not having had sex earlier rarely makes it into the top 40 of things to regret. By and large, the things they regret are the same things divorcing couples who were sexually promiscuous before marriage regret.</p>
<p>I have heard people say that they regretted rushing into marriage in order to have sex. Some of them are still happily married to the person with whom they rushed into marriage, some not. I suspect that there are also cases of people regretting that they married the first person with whom they had sex.</p>
<p>Starting to have sex early may or may not help make someone confident in his or her sexuality. Confidence doesn't have a linear relationship with age of onset or frequency of occurrence.</p>
<p>In MY parents' generation -- i.e., people the age of your grandparents -- it was very common for people to have sex before marriage. But not so much in high school, and not without some kind of commitment, like going steady. In other words, there has been a broad range of practices (some of which are culturally variable) for a long, long time. One thing is relatively constant though: People don't all tell the truth about what they do/did.</p>
<p>Abstinence is a perfectly realistic option for anyone who wants it to be, including people in their 20s and 30s. And not just members of religious orders, either.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, I think the real reason that pafather's answer to the rhetorical question is both correct and uninteresting is that few people wait a long time after they are emotionally ready.</p>
<p>Everyone is made differently. </p>
<p>I think a study (not Kinsey, but another whose name I forget) demonstrated that (happily) married couples frequency of sex varies tremendously from never, to once per year, to once per month, to once per week, to a couple of times per day on the high side. It varies by age considerably, as the terstosterone level in men starts to drop pretty quickly after age 25. I would guess the middle 60% ranges from once per week to once per month.</p>
<p>As with all human behaviors, there is such a huge range of "normal". I think normal merely describes the middle range. </p>
<p>One cannot merely dismiss the religious component in this issue. Whether one feels sexual relations is "right", "wrong", or in between is for many (I'm going to guess at least 25%... more like 50% thirty years ago) a part of their religion ... not having sexual relations until marriage is as much a part of many 18 year old's upbringing as not lying, not stealing, not murdering, not abusing others, etc.</p>
<p>It is not realistic to expect that just because a religiously inclined college student leaves the home, their moral compass will so easily be discarded in the new environment.</p>
<p>I think this hooking up may be damaging to kids self esteem both genders.</p>
<p>FWIW, there are guys out there that are morally upright.</p>
<p>I do not smoke, drink alcohol, or have intercourse, and I do attend a large top 50 university. Trying not too sound too self-righteous, but I do look down on people that engage in the "hook up" culture, smoke, and drink. It's disgusting, and regret will set in in years to come. Only a fool could justify to themselves such behavior. The moral ambiguity and decadence of my generation is mortifying.</p>
<p>Men that would degrade women in this manner deserve harsh punishments. Jail, castration, and public humiliation, imho. Not bating here -- I'm serious.</p>
<p>Parents, if you have a daughter, do what my sister did: martial arts and handgun training. If you're facing rape, lay waste to your would-be attacker; morality demands it. ["Cursed be he that doeth the work of the LORD deceitfully, and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood." (Jeremiah 48:10)] Act in self-defense.</p>
<p>I think a lot of people regret that they made such a big deal of keeping their virginity. It turns out that the decision to have sex or not to have sex is not nearly as important as many of the other decisions you will face in life. Who you marry is a big decision. Whether to have children and when is a big decision. When to have sex is not a big decision: If you make a mistake by having it too soon, you simply decide to stop and wait a while. (Just make sure you protect yourself!) You can, of course, invest 'the first time' with such overwhelming significance that you are torn by lifelong guilt and regret if you make the wrong choice-or you can decide that adults are sexual beings and this was or was not the right choice at the right time; then get on with your life. No drama is required. I vote for the latter approach.</p>
<p>johnman-I'm taking a self-defense class or two before I go to college this fall. :) As they say, be prepared. :)</p>
<p>
[quote]
Trying not too sound too self-righteous...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You failed miserably.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Men that would degrade women in this manner deserve harsh punishments. Jail, castration, and public humiliation, imho.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Hook-ups are "men degrading women" now? How ridiculous. And how condescending, the idea that a woman is necessarily being "degraded" by something she enjoys. </p>
<p>There are women who enjoy hook-ups. We are talking about consenting adults here, so I don't see what on earth the sense of your proposed punishments is. Men, and women, have the right to say "No" and be taken seriously. They also have the right to say "Yes" and be taken seriously.</p>
<p>Rape is a different matter, and I agree with you that everyone (men and women) should learn self-defense to help protect themselves.</p>
<p>The "consenting adults" can't make an appropriate choice when they are more drunk then they ever imagined they could be, and I think that is the concern with regard to hooking up..</p>
<p>Walk of Shame commercial. I think they had to pull it but it's funny. PG</p>
<p>Walk</a> of No Shame</p>
<p>That was cute, Barrons.</p>
<p>You need to know five things that really drive you nuts about someone before knowing them well enough to have sex? Wow, I would say that if you know five things that really drive you nuts about someone, this is not a good match and you would be wise to move along as far as seeking a partner for a sexual relationship goes saying you want more than just sex but a longterm committed relationship.</p>
<p>I don't believe I had even ONE thing that drove me nuts about my husband when we got engaged, all of one that I can think of on our wedding day (and we've been happily together for 23 years now, nearly 22 of those in marriage), and I can think of two more right now (for a total of three). Needless to say, we have sex, and honestly, I find our marriage to be far happier than I could have ever imagined in my wildest dreams such that I sometimes wonder if I am merely in a long dream. But I suspect I am not just dreaming and it is thanks to my having learned very well what made for compatibility and what didn't by having dated a bit in high school, over 100 guys in college (never had sex with ANY of them, so the notion of girls who don't put out not going out is nonsense as even when I was 21, a survey showed that only ONE percent of females had reached their 21st birthday a virgin, so it's not like I just grew up in some different era where guys didn't care about getting sex in general), and some more in graduate school (where yet again, the fact that I was anything but an easy lay made me all that more of a rare commodity to plenty of men as I got marriage proposal after proposal and have never even been good looking). And the commodity wasn't that I was a virgin, as I let guys know I was likely raped on a Young Life bus trip at age 16 (was given a Coke that was likely drugged, long before "date rape drugs" were ever heard of, but I feel fast asleep and evidence of sexual molestation of rape was present when I woke up), but that I wasn't a prude (I have a rather high sex drive and seem to be in the minority of women who have never said "No" to sex with my husband...I don't get headaches) and at the same time had excellent self-control (so a man didn't have to worry much about me having an affair once married). I knew my prince when I found him.</p>
<p>Rather than use the "five things that drive you nuts" suggestion, I will toss out these criteria (again, this is for those who aim for a serious, longterm commitment and not those out just for sexual enjoyment):</p>
<ol>
<li>Have you met the person's family? Do they like you? Can you at least stand them? My aunt once told me, "People don't just marry an individual; they marry the individual and the individual's family" and she is right, much though many like to think otherwise. There are over 6 billion people in the world, around half being the sex you are looking for - find one that both you AND the family can at least eat dinner with once every few months without going nuts as far as you can tell before marriage (sometimes, such an individual will turn up after even decades of marriage, like through a new addition to the family or a mental illness in the family or whatever, but then, you've done the best you can and just have to accept what is).</li>
</ol>
<p>Also, we had a guy in our town who was married to two women with two families neither of which knew of the other until the guy's 50th birthday when both the wives ordered a cake from the same bakery and the baker alerted them. Don't let yourself be two-timed; take the time to meet the person's family. And if ever you decide to date a divorced person, try to meet the ex and you can get a LOT of insight from that.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Have you seen the person's ID to even know they are who they say they are? </p></li>
<li><p>Have you been to where the person lives (and know they are truly single)?</p></li>
<li><p>Are you <em>very</em> confident the person isn't carrying AIDS or other STDs?</p></li>
<li><p>Have you been going out with the person for at least three months? Anything less and I think the odds are higher for it to become a short-term relationship rather than a long-term one, though there are of course exceptions where people met and married the same day and all ended well.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>That's a great commercial!</p>
<p>The "Hook-up culture" Is somthing you might not agree with like lots of other people but it won't interupt your personal or social life.</p>