When teenagers show an interest in a member of their peer group, it is not unusual or unnatural for the parent to feel betrayed and discarded. After all, until this moment you were the one your teenager loved best. The husband who has an extra-marital affair with a younger woman at this time may not really be looking for a sexual partner, but be trying to find a substitute for the uncritical love his daughter once had, but no longer seems to have, for him.
Little girls practice their developing attractiveness on their fathers, learning how to charm and get on with a future partner through him. The child almost certainly resembles her mother and can recall to his mind the early days of courtship. When a boy comes on the scene, it would be difficult not to see him as a rival - and a spotty, unworthy one at that! Mothers can have exactly the same bond with their sons, and both parents may compare their rivals with themselves, and find them wanting.
You may be horrified to think of your son or daughter in sexual terms, and be extremely reluctant to accept their sexuality, yet find yourself very quickly imagining a sexual content in their boyfriend's or girlfriend's intentions. The other person becomes a convenient scapegoat - instead of facing up to the fact that your teenager is growing up, you can blame the intruder for any sexual activity and believe that your innocent was led or forced into it.
Young teenagers' first ventures into love are likely to be intense and all-consuming, but more romantic than sexual in nature. Left to themselves, young people will probably progress very slowly from admiring each other from afar, to exchanging first words, dating, hand holding and kissing. It may be ages before they get to the stage of even wanting to explore each others' bodies - if they ever do. Paradoxically, it can be adults' expectations of their relationship being sexual that can force them into taking it that far. If you work yourself into knots preventing them ever being alone, and issue dire but vague warnings on the consequences of 'letting things get out of hand', you may well provoke the very thing you are trying to prevent. After all, if they have been given the label, they may as well go ahead and enjoy the act.
Parents often leap to conclusions because behavior and less have changed since our day. A girl in black tights or wearing an ankle chain, a skimpy dress or having dyed hair might, to us, have been showing a certain level of sexual experience or invitation. A man with a ring in the left ear and bright colored clothing was wearing the acknowledged badge of homosexuality. Now, all these are everyday styles with no special significance. Also, some of our youngsters have a greater degree of physical and verbal ease with each other than we had, and many of the things they say and do together which in our day would only have passed between lovers, merely indicate friendship. If your teen's friendship is tender and romantic and you coarsen it in their eyes by distrusting them, they are far less likely to come to you later if or when they do need advice in a relationship that is becoming physical. You can accept their loving feelings for each other and acknowledge their desires, without condoning or prompting sexual activity.
