To wait or not to

Sooner or later, this question comes up.

"You hear so much these days about it, Len," Howard's mother said very seriously to Howard's father. "Howard's been seeing an awful lot of Ina lately. Don't you think you'd better talk to him?"

Howard's father looked thoughtful. "But he's just a kid, Gay. Only seventeen! Aren't you making far too much of it?"

"They start in awfully young, I've gathered. And they get in awfully deep. And some of it's because they have no one to talk things over with."

"We managed all right."

"But don't you remember, darling? We did an awful lot of agonizing."

"Hmmm!" Father looked sober. "And at that we were a good deal older than Howard. You're in, dear, as the expression goes. You have my blessing to go ahead and start with Howard whenever you wish."

"But Len! It's not my job. It's yours. I was okay when he was small. But in his teens a boy needs to talk with a man rather than a woman. If there's no man in the family it's different, of course. However, if you don't want to, we can ask Dr. Nelson if he will, or Pastor Gray. They've both done a lot with young people. I've had discussions with them and they say it's often easier for a son or daughter to talk with an outsider . . ."

"Not our boy!" belligerently, "I want a try first!

"After all, Howard and I are quite used to talking, man to man. We discuss business and politics and what's in the news. And yet none of those things are as important as this. Only I'll have to count on you, Gay, to give me all the pointers you can from that class you've been going to. And I'd like also to have a couple of up-to-date books."

Even so, when Father opened the subject, he found himself clearing his throat. "I've been wondering, Howard, about you and Ina."

"How do you mean?" with a note of challenge in Howard's voice.

"Hmmm!" thought his father. "He's probably afraid I'm prying into his privacy." And aloud, "I know the two of you like each other a lot and that you have a lot to work out together. I'm not after confidences from you. What you want to tell me is up to you. But I did want to tell you a couple of things that were on my mind."

"Now, Pop, please don't lecture. She's a wonderful girl and I'm terribly much in love with her and she likes me too."

Very simply and directly, then, Howard's father went on to say that he knew that sex feelings were a very great problem when people were in their middle and late teens . . .

"You've said it, Dad. I've only got one life and sometimes I wonder if I'll ever get married or if I'll end up in a uniform on the other side of the world."

Father nodded, accepting Howard's feelings. "I know how it is."

"But, Dad," from Howard, suddenly questioning, "I worry a lot too. It's not really so simple. I want to a lot. I love Ina so much. And then I think of all the things that could happen." And after a pause, "I think the biggest worry is if we were to go ahead, I might get Ina pregnant. And then, just suppose I'd have to leave."

"You've got a big point there. You can't belittle it. Because there isn't any method of birth control that's a hundred per cent reliable. You always take a chance.

"And even if you married with our consent and her parents', you'd be shoved into responsibilities long before you were ready or able to take them on. Marriage then would be something you were forced into instead of the thing you wanted most in life."

Father spoke in the tone of a man philosophizing to himself rather than preaching. And since young people in their middle and late teens are themselves great philosophers if given half a chance, this struck a responsive chord.

"In this life there are a lot of times when you have to settle with partial solutions and make peace within yourself in terms of these. You have to consider the world outside yourself and the world inside yourself as well.

"Because you and Ina are the kind of people who want to have respect from others and who want to have self-respect also, to use an old-fashioned term, I have an idea that you'll feel as I do, that it's better to wait."

Glancing at Howard, Father caught the quick gulp and the serious look of determination.

This was all for now. But here, as elsewhere, Howard's father had considered his boy's feelings as well as his acts. It is not always love, however, that makes a boy or girl "go the limit."

Sexual escapades may, for one thing, be a defiant gesture by the teen-ager. Revolt over our condemnation of his sex feelings may then add itself to revolt over other things about which he is already hostile. He may then take to using sex as a means of letting his hostility out.

Says Wilma, sixteen, "I got sick and tired of my parents' lack of understanding. I got sick and tired of their constant blame. I know if they knew what I've done, it would hurt them. Maybe," protesting angrily, "maybe I should feel terrible. But I don't."

Underneath the surface, however, Wilma did. For entering into a sex act with one person in order to hurt another person has little to do with love. Obviously it cannot bring security. It can bring only an increased sense of guilt.

Another reason why an adolescent "goes the limit" is to find a closeness and a confirmation he feels he has lacked. In this case what he is seeking, however, is rarely companionship or mutuality. In his mind he pastes a parent picture onto the partner and goes to him with dependence, trying to get him to be an imagined substitute parent who will give him the acceptance he feels his real parents haven't. Most of all he wants acceptance for the sexual impulses which he believes his parents have refused to countenance.

His dilemma is clear.

After all, the person he has turned to is not a parent. Factually the adolescent is still dependent on his real parents because of his age if for no other reason. And so when he returns to them after his escapade, he comes feeling anxious and miserably apologetic in spite of his attempts to deny this. He fears that they may find out and condemn him--perhaps even discard him. Whatever security he had with them before is lessened now by the worry that floods within.

Some boys and girls try to gain a sense of achievement and prowess through sexual exploits. Some try through daring to prove that their fears of being hurt and punished are unfounded.

But these efforts usually fail.

Even where the love motive prevails, anxiety enters.

The adolescent who has intercourse before he is emotionally ready for a steady, steadfast relationship ordinarily is torn. It is practically impossible to grow up in our present culture without acquiring hesitance and doubt.

And so, as parents we do well to take a firm stand: "It's better for you to wait to have intercourse until you are old enough to marry. And it's best to be married before you do."

Here are some of the reasons:

Sexual compatibility is important in marriage. Because of feelings we do not fully comprehend, it often takes a while to work out a sexual relationship so that it is satisfying. Full, mutual enjoyment may not be reached for a period of time.

"You mean we may not like sex together right away?" asked down-to-earth, frank young Harriet. "It may take us a while to get used to each other? Perhaps we'll be discouraged at moments meanwhile. And if we're not married, I, for one, would be scared to death that John might get tired of me and leave."

To enjoy sex fully, one must be able to be oneself fully. One must be able to be free and vital in many aspects of the mutual relationship. But where fear of desertion enters, constriction enters also. And this ties a person up and defeats sexual adjustment.
"You mean I've got to be free enough to be myself--to get mad, for instance, when I feel mad at John, and that I need to be able to take it too when he gets moody." And yet not be afraid that he'll run away."

"That's about it. Ordinarily you can work it out better when you know you're assured of being together, not having to worry whether one or the other in an angry or discouraged moment will call it quits."

Among the conditions that facilitate compatibility is the intimate tie of living and working together. Sharing a home and mutual endeavors backed by the feel of steadiness that comes with marriage--this is more conducive to sexual adjustment than the fly-by-night arrangements. For the latter cause anxiety and unrest to enter during a time in which making adaptation to one another calls for stability and peace.
One mother exclaimed, "At last I can see things clearly These young ones want their parents to ADMIT IT'S ALL RIGHT FOR THEM TO HAVE GOOD FEELINGS and at one and the same time to HELP THEM CONTROL THEIR ACTS."

As with other feelings, sexual feelings need to be channeled.