safety
How (and why) to Root for Team Awkward
I am 15 years old and I have only made out once. I do not know the person I made out with, and I don't exactly remember what it was like. I want to make out with more people, but I am afraid I will not be good at it, I also don't want to embarrass myself with the person I do make out with. Another thing is, what if the person I do make out with tries to do more with me than I am ready?...
How do I tell my Mom I might be pregnant?
My partner and I have been together for about 6 months now. He's 17 and I'm 16. We have unprotected sex sometimes, and I think I might have gotten pregnant. I won't be able to tell until next week, but I'm kind of crampy and bloated already. I don't know if those signs are too early to be pregnancy symptoms or not, but I have no clue how to tell my mom I am pregnant if I am....
I'm trapped in an unhealthy relationship and don't know what to do.
I am 17 now, and started dating this one fellow when I was fifteen. At the time he was 44. Of course, now he's 46, but that's not really the point. He's divorced and has two kids, one son 2 years younger than me, and a daughter the age of my own younger sister (12). I look after them for him sometimes. I feel like I really love him, but I don't really feel the same way about him....
He wants something sexual, but I feel uneasy, especially around past sexual abuse.
I'm 14, and my boyfriend wants me to give him dry sex, I am very uneasy about this because I've been sexually abused before, what should I tell him?...
Summering Safe and Sound
Here in the hemisphere I live in, we're into the swing of summer. Ah, summer, my personal favorite season. I love the sun, the warmth, everything blooming, the energy, the spirit of the season.
It's also the time of year when we tend to see the most new users coming to us because they're in a crisis or a panic, or are just really, really feeling down in the dumps. We know that the idea of summer as a happy, carefree time for all young people doesn't square with the reality that for plenty, it's not, whether that's about tough stuff happening, or about having experiences that aren't negative, but are just super-challenging. With that in mind, here are a few tips and things to think about as you get into (or grapple with) your summer groove:
I worry that because I'm a man, I am going to sexually abuse someone.
My mom was a victim of incest as a girl and has used it to invalidate my emotions. I blame the incest, not my mom, but it still hurts. But I can't help but feel like I, as a man, am dirty to be sexual. I can't draw a line in my head between good sex and bad sex. I am a virgin because when I get close to sex, the girl will start reminding me of my mom or my sister....
Three on Getting to the Bottom of Things
So my boyfriend of 9 months was asking me about anal sex. We only ever done oral sex, so when he brought up anal I was a little scared. We both decided to at least see if it could work. We were at his house and I got on my knees and he slowly went in. At first if hurt then it didn't. All in all we only did this for about 7 seconds then we stopped....
What Is Healthy Sexual Development?
Depending on your view, the answer to that question might seem really obvious or very tricky and hazy.
At a recent conference I was part of in London, Alan McKee presented Healthy sexual development: a multidisciplinary framework for research. What McKee and his colleagues determined to be the core parts of healthy sexual development had me jumping up and down in my seat with joy (literally: I may have disturbed my fellow attendees with my bouncing). It summed up the things we try to support, encourage and inform our users with and keep core at Scarleteen so well, and so much of what I think -- after many years of thinking hard about and working with these issues, and being fully and broadly immersed in them with a very diverse population -- truly is central to healthy sexual development.
I'm delighted to have permission to excerpt and reprint this framework here.