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Thinking about partnered sex? Do yourself a favor and look through our checklist to get a good idea about the readiness of you and your partner – it’s more complicated and demanding than many people think, and knowing what you need to get ready can help assure that your sexual experiences with a partner will be as great for both of you as possible.

Want to know what to expect at your first gynecologists’ or reproductive health exam? We’ve got the lowdown for you here.

What we are talking about here is celibacy, the deliberate choice not to have a sexual partner for any period of time. There’s nothing ambiguous about that. Being celibate entails sharing NO sexual acts with a partner: any kind of intercourse (vaginal or anal), oral sex, manual sex, and so forth. In other words, no physical, sexual contact with others; meaning any genital (penis or vulva) touch, with mouths, hands or anything else between you and someone else is off limits.

A lot of false assumptions are often made when people are talking about BDSM. Let’s start with a little glossary to be sure we’re all on the same page.

When I was 16, due to an irresponsible pairing of an impetuous one-night stand and a few days of partying, I woke up one morning to discover I had mononucleosis and walking pneumonia. As if that wasn’t enough, my period was late.

If you have NOT gladly and freely consented to and participated in sexual activity – if you have not in some way said a big yes and wanted to keep saying a big yes – and someone else had sex with you anyway, that is rape. No matter what ANYONE tells you, it is not your fault. There certainly is fault, but it lies with the rapist, not the victim.

Some people experience great pain or discomfort with vaginal sex or other kinds of vaginal entry that’s not about hymens, lack of arousal or lubrication, or rough partners, but about a health condition known as vaginismus.

The next time anyone tells you that only losers masturbate, or that they don’t, and never would, bear this in mind: according to most studies and surveys, about 95% of adults have masturbated or continue to do so. Were many falsehoods and misconceptions about masturbation true, it would mean that 95 out of every 100 people would be blind, drooling psychopaths with hair on their palms and shrunken genitals.

Itching like nobody’s business down south? Have a curdled discharge? Candida Albicans may be the hoodlum to blame.

Never believe: “I love you, it will never happen again.” It will happen again. The tears don’t matter, the bruises don’t matter, the broken bones and ER visits and warnings from friends and relatives don’t matter. Those scars that we bury deep inside us, the mental and emotional scars that we try to pretend don’t exist – they don’t matter. It will happen, again and again and again, unless someone puts a stop to it.

A lot of questions about how to have intercourse, how to masturbate, and worries about what’s all going on down there can be solved by simply getting to know your own body. In fact, I’d gander to say that before you let anyone else get to know it, you’d best know it yourself as well as you know your own face.

Dr. Lynn Ponton’s book takes readers inside the minds of 15 troubled adolescents to provide a compelling look at today’s teenage experience.