WOMEN: SEXUAL ATTRACTION AND FALLING IN LOVE IN ADOLESCENCE
Posted on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 at 4:41 pmA lot of what happens when you’re attracted to someone is the result of instincts and reflexes. Our unconscious nervous systems make sure that sexual attraction does occur (to keep the species going).
When someone takes your fancy, you instinctively move closer to them. Your skin flushes and your pupils dilate, which makes you more attractive to them. Your body starts producing chemicals (pheromones) that attract the opposite sex through smell. Your voice becomes deeper and softer, so that you must move closer still to hear what each other is saying. You then feel the glow of each other’s body from that flushed skin. This brings on a reflex need to touch, and there you go. All this happens outside your conscious control and without you being much aware of it, except that you feel remarkably good with that person! Isn’t biology wonderful!
Who can describe falling in love? All the poems, songs and stories have tried. You’ll recognize what they’re trying to say when it happens to you. It’s something much more than sexual attraction: that feeling that your love is the most wonderful person in history, whom you want to make happy and share your whole life with.
Boyfriends and petting
From the mid-teens on, more girls are likely to have a ’steady’: someone for whom you feel much more than sexual attraction. Companionship and having fun together are important in going steady, as well as all the delicious cuddling and petting. These relationships might not last long (though they can last for life), but they are good practice for learning about pairing and how to cope with it (and with breaking up).
It’s often said that girls have more romantic feelings and that the boys are only interested in sex. I don’t know about this: many young boyfriends are very committed. But if you have a steady, it’s very likely that sooner or later sex is going to come up. Will you ‘go all the way’?
Sexual intercourse?
This is something you must decide for yourself, whether it’s with a steady boyfriend or a casual acquaintance. Let’s hope that if you decide Yes’, you’ll feel sure that you’re ready for it, that it will happen with someone whom you care for and who cares for you, that you’ll know how to avoid possible bad consequences, and that you’ll enjoy the experience.
It seems common for girls to be pushed into having intercourse before they’re ready, usually by boys who want to ’score’ and are in a state of sexual excitement from anticipating the possibility. They’ll pull lines on you such as the following.
• ‘If you really loved me, you would.’ The obvious answer to this is: ‘If you really loved me, you wouldn’t try to talk me into something I don’t want’.
• ‘I’ll suffer terribly or die if you won’t!’ Well, boys don’t suffer or die from not having an orgasm; they know how to have that by themselves.
• ‘You must be frigid.’ This is a devious, mean tactic, intended to make you feel bad.
Sometimes there’s peer pressure from girlfriends. ‘Haven’t you done it yet? What’s wrong with you? Scared? Hasn’t anyone asked you?’ Take no notice, and find some new friends.
More subtle influences can lead you into sex before the right time. Women’s traditional submissive and subservient role is still pretty strong in most of our minds, making it hard for us to assert our rights and say ‘No’ to men. You mightn’t want to-hurt his feelings. Also, sexual advances can be very flattering – a powerful persuasion.
There are some bad circumstances for first intercourse:
• if you have sex without contraception
• if one or both of you are drunk or doped at the time
• if it’s an act of rebellion against your parents
• if you agree because you think it will make him love you, or that he’ll ‘dump’ you if you refuse (if he did you’d be well rid of him, but you won’t think so at the time)
• if you’re feeling miserable and unloved, and think it will make you feel better. Unfortunately first intercourse for girls rarely lives up to expectations. It’s often so quick that you may wonder if it’s really happened, and you’re unlikely to have an orgasm. It can leave you feeling disappointed, unsatisfied, worried, guilty and embarrassed. Fortunately, for most of us it gets better in the future.
If your first intercourse is through incest or rape, it can have disastrous emotional consequences that can haunt you for years.
Recent surveys show that around halo of all adolescents have had sexual intercourse by the time they’re 17 years old Everyone keeps saying that young people have sex earlier now than in the ‘good old days’. I don’t know how they can know this, because until recently no one asked. There certainly would have been less opportunity in the past, when most social meetings between young people well chaperoned. However, the Australian Вureau of Statistics tells us that between 1910 and 1930 half of all teenaged brides were pregnant (because they had a baby less than nine months after marriage). Maybe things haven’t changed much!
Sex at any age can have some bad outcomes, including unwanted pregnancy, catching STD or making you or anyone else unhappy.
*73/31/5*
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