DEAR CHRISTINE: I’m not ready

DEAR CHRISTINE, I am writing for some of the advice you give to others. It has to do with someone.

That someone is a very nice guy who I was talking to for over five years now. He is deeply in love with me and would do anything for me. During that time he was waiting until I finished school.

My problem now is that I am finished with school and he wants me to have sex with him. In the past we were always good friends with no intimacy existing between us. Now this request of his has me afraid.

He says he loves me very much and even though I love him, I do not love him the way he wants me to. I do not like it when he touches me. I have even told him to find another girlfriend but he is insisting that he loves me and wants me.

Although I am happy when I am around him, I am also uncomfortable because I worry over his requests and wonder what my mother would say if anyone sees us and tells her. Most often when he invites me out, I do not go. If he tries giving me something, I don’t accept it because I feel if I take it, I’ll have to give something in return.

We discuss many topics like sexually transmitted diseases, sex and so on. I love him but I keep putting him down.

Christine, should I do what he wants? I am 17 years old.

– A.T.

Dear A.T.,

No! You do not have to do what he wants.

I feel that right now your conscience is telling you what to do and that is not to rush into any sexual relationship with this young man.

You’re just not ready and he has no right to try and coerce you into something that would hardly be to your advantage. If you are going to continue seeing him, if he will see you on your terms, keep off the type of conversations you are getting involved in.

Having discussed the matter, put it aside. That time of conversation could work as an inveigling technique. He is obviously playing on your physical emotions, and if you are not careful, you’ll have a full-blown “living” affair on your hands.

I feel too that you should introduce him to your mother. If you keep meeting him in secret, you’re likely to run into trouble.

I’ll probably be considered old-fashioned when I warn you about what can happen if you two keep meeting in secret places and having conversations on sexuality, but I know no 17-year-old girls who get intimately involved and also get their boyfriend to the altar.

They are looking for excitement and I thinkmost girls are hoping for more than mere physical fun – especially when the consequences can lead to premature motherhood without the support of the boys who got them that way.

– CHRISTINE