Let's Talk About Sex, Baby

How many of you remember having the birds and the bees talk with one of your parents?  How many of you never got that talk at all?  I wonder how many of us drastically changed the content of the talk we've given our own children in direct correlation to theamount of information we were or were not given by our folks.  Having been both the giver and the receiver(no pun intended) of said sex talk, I got to thinking about this and decided to take a trip down memory lane.  Wanna come?

Damn it, these puns are everywhere!

 In my formative years, the public school system’s sex education for girls began and ended with learning how to pronounce menstruation correctly and how to use feminine protection products.  Boys and girls were taught a scaled down version of the facts of life, separately.  The exact mechanics of the sex act were not divulged.  Possible consequences were not mentioned.

            At church, the topic was murky at best.   Home was the final frontier from which to glean information.  I remember vividly the one and only conversation I had with my mother about the birds and the bees.  I was fourteen going on fifteen, spending a rainy Saturday afternoon watching a movie with my mom.  We were watching the 80’s cult classic, “Say Anything”.  During the steamy scene in which two unmarried young adults climbed into the back of the young man’s car, my mom commented, “Nice girls don’t do that.”, with a threatening glare.  

 Five words; that was our sex talk.  No follow up Q & A period was offered.  She was likely every bit as uncomfortable as I was, bless her heart. 

The movie images portrayed sex as romantic, meaningful, and powerful.  The girl in the movie seemed plenty nice to me.  Naturally, the guy immediately fell in love with her.  In a strange twist, she broke his heart.  But by the time the 120 minutes came to a close, they had magically reunited.  The guy showed up under her window in the rain, (can you imagine?) holding a gigantic boom box over his head blaring the hauntingly beautiful song that had played the night of their first tryst:  “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel.

  To this day, hearing that song makes me want to have sex.   I am not even kidding.  There may be a scientific study there.   (Don't even get me started on "Stranglehold" by Ted Nugent).

In the movie, the couple lived happily ever after, presumably having more and more sex, wedlock optional.  I mean if the guy’s willing to hold a boom box up for you in the rain, who needs a ring? 

            As a teenager, I equated sex with maturity, desirability, and the surefire way to land a guy.  Imagine my surprise when real life didn’t yield “Say Anything” results.  What was I doing wrong? 

  That all seemed to change when I met Bob, a boom box holder if I’ve ever seen one.  Now that, my friend, was the real deal.  I was walking on clouds of pheromones.   Oxytocin held my brain hostage for the better part of the nineties.   I was high as a kite; sleeping back to belly with someone you’re completely attracted does that to a person every time.

            This pre-marital bliss fest came to a screeching halt when I became pregnant at 18.  I had truly thought it could never happen to me.  Therefore, when I had the sex talk with my daughter years later, I spared no gory detail. 

             Strategically, this talk took place somewhere I presumed she would go often throughout her youth- therefore, I was planting a hook in her memory.  If she didn't reminisce about this talk at least once in awhile, I had not given it my all.  So there we were in the car in a long, long line at the McDonald's drive-thru.  In that endless span of time, I gave Cory every bit of information I could possibly offer.    I didn’t stop at the extremely detailed facts; we talked about emotional consequences, reputations, the ways boys might pressure her, what they might say, how she could protect herself, and how her relationship with someone might change if she chose not to wait.   I covered every base, so to speak.

           One thing I was sure to do was leave the "good" girl/ "bad" girl component out of it.  Even if she chose to have sex before she could married, I didn't want Cory to ever think of herself as a bad girl.  What she needed to be thinking about- preferably ahead of time- was the consequences of her actions, no matter what they were.  We talked about responsibility.  We talked about how her life would change if she were to become pregnant.  I made sure she understood that it rarely happens the way they show it on TV.  Secret Life of the American Teenager is a fairy tale, folks.  Just because the guy promises to raise the child with you doesn't mean he'll do it.  This much Cory already knew.

            Suffice it to say, I have never seen a child try to exit a vehicle so quickly in all my life.  When we pulled up in our brick driveway, her feet hit the ground running before I even put the car in park.  As I hollered after her, "If you have any questions, we can talk more later!", she grimaced and ran, clutching her Happy Meal to her still flat chest.  She was a blur as she ran into the house, and no questions were asked that day.  But I must've done something right, because in the years to come, we had many good discussions.

            More recently, in a college class, a classmate talked about the significance of the sexual act in Biblical times. Once the act was consummated, a couple was considered married.  Along those lines of thinking, young people today who go from sexual relationship to sexual relationship before marrying have emotionally divorced many times before they legally marry for the first time.  

             Surprisingly, that rang true to me.  Cory's biological father and I never married, but  the pain each time we parted ways could not have been made any greater by walking down a church aisle and shaking rice out of my hair at the other end.  I was completely shattered each and every time.  Webster’s dictionary calls divorce “a complete or radical severance of closely connected things”.  

 My reasons to dissuade my children from pre-marital sex have been obvious.  I didn’t want either of them to have a child before they were ready to support it within a stable family.  I didn’t want them to be sick or heartbroken.   I would prefer that they wait but I would understand if they didn't.     I try not to be a complete hypocrite.

  Even though, religious beliefs aside, exploring sex is part of growing up, there may be even more than the surface risks at stake.   It can be dangerous to indulge in something so binding with someone.  It is a powerful act.   It has the potential to change your life course and even the state of your future relationships.   Think long and hard about what you will say to your children on this topic.  They are listening.  But most importantly, make sure they know they come to you to talk about anything- that your embarrassment is worth giving them the guidance they need.