What Boys, Girls, and Their Parents Need To Know

by Wendi Capehart

 

The following is adapted from an old post the good blogger at Wit-nit wrote. He wished to illustrate just how heady and disorienting a brew lust can be, how dangerous in the hands of the immature, but he is not a believer and he wrote an R-rated post. He allowed me to edit it down to a PG or PG-13 rating and throw in some of my own warnings.

Young people should understand the following:

Boys Need to Know:

• Physical intimacy is intoxicating like alcohol. It will cloud your judgment, inhibit critical thinking, and make you do things that later you may regret.
• While physical intimacy is usually a strictly physical thing for a boy, it's a very emotional thing for a girl.
• Girls will always attach more meaning to physical intimacy than boys will.
• You will, more often than not, cause emotional damage to girls you are physically intimate with whenever you think you're just ‘having a good time.’
• Girls can form strong attachments with only a little encouragement from boys, and will almost always expect more from you than you realize. They don't even mean to -- but they are emotionally attached much more quickly and strongly than boys realize, and boys need to be careful about how they treat girls for this reason (and others).
• Girls will seldom tell you directly how deeply and emotional they feel about you. Any small endearment you give them they will amplify to mean something much more than you intend.
• You may learn quickly that some girls can manipulate you by use of the intoxication that comes from physical intimacy. Some will purposely get you jealous so that you will fight other boys over them. Some girls find this entertaining, some find it gratifying, some feel it shows how much you care about them.
• Over-indulgence in emotional and physical intimacy can have some debilitating effects, just as over-indulgence in alcohol can.
• If you and your buddies simply see girls as objects for your emotional and physical pleasure, then you are selfish jerks. You will die alone, without any real friends.

Girls Need to Know:

• Physical intimacy is intoxicating like alcohol. It will cloud your judgment, inhibit critical thinking, and make you do things that later you may regret. And the consequences for girls are usually more devastating than for boys.
• Physical intimacy carries profound emotional feelings with it for girls, but boys usually do not feel this. Generally speaking, boys are more detached from emotions than you are.
• Physical intimacy is exactly that -- a physical thing for boys, and they will usually be embarrassed and uncomfortable and will leave once they have achieved their goal for physical contact with you (and I am not talking about a handshake, you understand).
• Many boys have little problem being physically intimate with a girl and then forgetting about her and her feelings.
• Many boys attach little meaning to physical intimacy other than the physical pleasure of it.
• Many boys are very likely to see you simply as a physical object for their gratification. They will be generally clueless and careless about your feelings, although sometimes they will be able to convince you otherwise, because under the intoxicating effects of physical intimacy, they will be desperate to tell you what you want to hear. Many of them will believe what they are saying when they are saying it, but when away from the source of the intoxication, their feelings will change.
• Boys and girls usually don't really have a true and clear sense of themselves in their teens. While still a teen you are more likely to misjudge the intentions of boys and what you really need or want.
• Boys do not have the maturity to handle the consequences of physical intimacy. Wait until you are in a committed marriage and are able to handle the intoxicating feelings of intimacy before getting into sex.
• Many boys, even good ones, find their judgment clouded by thoughts of intimacy, and you'd be surprised what can prompt such thoughts.
• The kinds of boys you find at the sorts of parties where people might pass out are the kinds of boys who will take advantage of you if you pass out at a party.
• Boys will never care about you more just because you give them physical intimacy. They are more likely to stop thinking about you once you've given in.
• There are plenty of boys, especially handsome and seemingly nice ones, who will lie to you to gain your trust and your purity.
• Older men can also be just like boys.
• Girls do not always understand how intoxicating the mere thought of physical contact can be to a boy, and they think flirting is just fun. But be careful. Not only is this genuinely unkind to nice boys, but you will sooner or later run into one who will be insecure enough to get violent when you tease, and flirting is teasing.
• While you can provoke violence when you tease, this doesn't make the violence 'your fault.' However, don't be stupid about it. The fact that there are insecure boys out there does mean you want to be careful, or you could be hurt. And don't be selfish -- it's not nice to tease.
• Violence, jealousy, and pleas for you to give in and be intimate with a boy are not signs of how much a boy loves you. They are signs of how much he loves himself and how little he respects you.
• These feelings of attraction are unbelievably powerful, and sometimes they are irresistible. By irresistible I do not mean we cannot ever resist acting on them. If we have properly trained ourselves to rely on God, to seek His face in prayer and fasting, to deny ourselves in other matters, to exercise self-discipline, then we can resist acting on these feelings, and we can distract ourselves from them. But sometimes these feelings do come to us unbidden, and if we are not careful about playing around with inflamed passions, then we can put ourselves in a situation where we do not want to resist any more, and we will lie, deceive, and cheat our parents, ourselves, and the object of our affections to gratify our desires and intoxicate ourselves on our passion.

Parents Need to Know:

• Feelings of attraction are unbelievably powerful, and sometimes they are irresistible. By irresistible I do not mean we cannot ever resist acting on them. If we have properly trained our children to rely on God, to seek His face in prayer and fasting, to deny themselves in other matters, to exercise self-discipline, then they can resist acting on these feelings. But we should warn our children that sometimes these feelings do come unbidden, and if they are not careful about playing around with inflamed passions, then they can put themselves in a situation where we do not want to resist any more.
• If we have allowed our children to see God as a big vending machine in the sky whose primary function in our lives is to gratify our whims and wishes, we leave them defenseless. It should come as no surprise to us that children too young to drive a car or sign a legally binding contract might find these emotions far too much handle.
• Meanwhile, don't send them out with matches and gasoline until they're equipped to deal with fire.