You would think that because there is pleasure in sexual activity that sexually active teens would be happier. That is not the case. Unfortunately, there is a strong association between sexually active teens and poor emotional health.
Sexually active teens are more than twice as likely as virgin teens to be depressed and/or attempt suicide. Teens report that they had less self esteem after becoming sexually active, and a lot more regret.
Also, sexually experienced teens, especially girls are much more likely to experience dating violence, sexual abuse, and unwanted or forced intercourse than their virgin peers.
When I said “yes” to doing some sexual stuff, I didn’t realize that I was saying “yes” to eventually going all the way. But after doing some stuff-like mutual masturbation and oral sex-the reasons I had for not going all the way seemed pointless. Plus I had a lot of curiosity about sex, since there is so much hype about it, from friends and movies and music, not to mention the guy I was dating. Over the course of time and over several serious relationships, I eventually gave in.
All this happened over the course of years–starting with those bad choices in high school, partying and feeling so depressed in college, and finally getting my life back on track after college. Now I am married to a guy who believes in me, loves me and respects me. I have a beautiful child now too. I have now found what I really wanted all that time ago-feeling good about myself and having the confidence to enjoy being me. Starting over let me do that.
With her everything was exciting. We totally clicked. We waited for a while, then, through my constant pressure, we started having sex. Sex soon became the focus of our relationship. It was all I ever thought about with her. It became the all important thing in our relationship, at least, to me anyway. I stopped wanting to get to know her on any other level. And so, instead of growing closer together, we actually started drifting apart. That’s what I mean by “sex killed my best relationships.” People can relate on many different levels – emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually. But when my girlfriend and I started relating mostly on the physical part of the relationship, it short-circuited the other important parts of our relationship. As a result, the relationship as a whole started to go south.
I know a newlywed couple who have sex less than once a month because of this. He doesn’t respect her, and she knows it. She doesn’t trust him, so she doesn’t want to give herself to him. It’s very sad, and more common than you might think.
When Tasha and Antonio started dating they went to movies together and hung out together after school. But the longer they dated, the more intimate they became, until eventually they began sleeping together. After they broke up, the pain lasted for years.
