Did you date in HS?

He was a sk8er boi

She said see ya later boy

He wasn't good enough for her

Sure you did.

sex "was pushed on you." Explain what you mean by that? There are very few women that push sex on men!

The previous guy said he "turned down sex 5 times" before he had it.

I tend to agree with you. Women avoid sex or at least are coy about it.

How old are you? Having sex before marriage is never a good idea.

That's just your opinion.

We need a standard everyone can follow!!!

If you've ever looked at a 16 year old female, you know that dating in high school is indeed NOT pointless.

^this. Seriously, I dated about a half dozen girls from the time I turned 16 until I graduated. It was a great opportunity to learn how to deal with the opposite sex in an emotionally mature way and discover what kinds of personalities I felt comfortable with. I would describe myself back then as almost painfully shy, but I had the guts to ask out girls I liked and was always elated when they said yes. Fun times!

Here's when freak wrote:

[quote]Oops it got too serious wrote:

Looking for where I said she is tortured... isn't there.

When you said she needed counseling to get over it.

Thanks for confirming that I didn't actually say it. I also didn't say she needed counseling for this issue. My words continue to be twisted because you all would love for me to be a lunatic.

I'm somewhat confused at the backlash here. I've said a lot but to some it up:

1) My experience is that dating (and more specifically, being in a hyper sexual relationship) may lead to missed opportunities that will last longer than the relationship itself.

2) A person's sexual endeavors may have an impact on someone they meet in the future. While this is my experience, I have heard it to be true from others as well. My sexual history is part of who I am forever, and that is part of what my spouse will have to accept when being married to me. We didn't know what it truly meant to accept all of each other when we got married - we were young. That is he primary reason why my long-ago past is even being discussed today. It is something that comes up in therapy though it is not the primary reason for it. Hell, I need help getting over some of my prior decisions and shame, too.

3) Women compare themselves to each other by nature. This includes how their current partner thinks of them compared to his past partners - including, but not limited to, their bodies and activities in the bedroom.

4) Women want to be chosen. I didn't save anything for my wife. At all. I chose to give it away before tying the knot. While I didn't know my wife at the time, I did know the girls I was having sex with were not my spouse. In that way, it is hurtful to her because she was waiting for the correct person, and I did not.

5) My wife and I have a transparent relationship where any question will be answered. That does not mean we dwell in the past. That does mean, however, that we don't sweep things under the rug. We confront them head on, no matter how big or small, without getting defensive.

7) My wife and I both are in therapy. Thankfully I pay a lot of money to a professional who is educated and has experience, rather than relying on online message boards to help me through life.

8) We are both satisfied emotionally, spiritually, and physically in the relationship, and we don't want to have a 'normal' marriage. Most of those fail.

I'd love to field any questions. A lot of my words have been twisted, so please read my comments in context before throwing stones. I'm probably forgetting something above, so let me know if I missed something, if you care to discuss it.

I ran track.

Oops is a troll, and a loquacious one at that. 3/10 for hijacking and dominating the thread.

no I did not, have always regretted it, though it is true it was not a decision I made as such. Just another involuntary celibate..

I do believe that failing to date in HS (or university) has made me vulnerable and my marriage (of some decades now) weaker.

dating in HS doesn't have to go as far as sex, which can really screw with your head. In the meantime it's possible to have fun and learn a great many useful things about yourself and relationships with women/men (depending on your preference).

Even if you do have regrettable sex, most people are not disturbed by this.

By age 19, 71% of the population has had sex.

See more numbers here,

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/FB-ATSRH.html

And by way of a sort of perverse reassurance - if you still can't find anyone to date, it might be because you are too smart and likeable. Here's a psychiatrist writing about it:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-romanceless/

"In high school each extra IQ point above average increases chances of male virginity by about 3%. 35% of MIT grad students have never had sex, compared to only 13% of the average high school population."

and

"An analysis of the psychometric Big Five consistently find that high levels of disagreeableness predict high sexual success in both men and women."

Read also the story of supernerd and fine human being Scott Aaronson,

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2119

A shy female nerd who took one of his classes,

http://zyan.scripts.mit.edu/blog/2sat/

Tommy 2 tone wrote:

Oops is a troll, and a loquacious one at that. 3/10 for hijacking and dominating the thread.

I wouldn't spend this much of my time trolling.

Yes. And so should you. Why not? For me in HS it was mostly short lived, fun relationships, lots of making out, no sex. It was great. Hung out with friends most of the time, guys and girls and then would "date" when I liked a girl or thought she was hot. It was high school.

Now... As an adult with kids if my own I get what Oops is saying, sort of. I have also come to realize that life is messy and that people are not perfect and the sooner you realize that in your wife and she in you, the quicker you can forgive and move on. Grace. It's real and you should think about it. It will change your marriage and allow you to stop wallowing in your past and move on and enjoy your wife now regardless of what you did in HS. It will also allow you to go hang out with her instead of spending your time writing a novel on letsrun.

Why does everyone think we are wallowing in this? I never said that.

Grace is the key. We have a ton for each other. Our marriage has seen much more than a few convos about my sexual history. Trust me. That is not on the 'priority list' when we come to the table to talk about the hard stuff.

Remember, I was answering a question about dating in HS. I was not answering a question about the 'toughest part of my marriage' or what keeps my wife up at night. It's a fact that it bothers her and it's also a fact that she doesn't dwell on it, it's just part of my life that she prefer were different. Yet she loves me in spite of many of the things I have done, some of them much, much worse that she has some righteous anger about.

Sounds like more of us agree than we realize. Context makes all of the difference in this conversation.

And for the record I had a great time at dinner with my wife and kids tonight, as well as catching up with her today during lunch and after I put the kids to bed.

I'm just filling the gaps with this.

I didn't date in high school. High school is full of politics and cliques and when a strong desire for a particular person of the opposite sex is involved, all the politics are there. Unlike later in life where people are atomized and divided more, in high school it was hard to get away with "dating" casually. (I went to a rather large city high school in the age before the Facebook.) As for "play," (flirting, petting) hookups and what not, yes that happened much more casually.

Boys fantasize in this day and age (and so do women). You can try to sweep it under the rug (whatever your position, as guardian or advisor to the future or reflecting on your own history and regrets or pride) but the better way is to guide it in positive directions and make sure young people have the tools to grow and learn and be responsible.

At my high school, the sociable and athletic types were screwing like rabbits and always getting into mayhem. This was a continuation of middle school (:-o yes). Of course, there were also shy and academic-oriented/conformist people who didn't do much for a combination of disinterest, inability or variability in the timing of their sexual "unfolding/blossoming." for lack of a better term

But you can't take things out of context. Most people were very willing participants. Girls talk and gossip endlessly. If these same proactive types are still getting themselves into trouble, then, it's a problem of the whole community and not just something to blame on "sexually exploitative" men. Gossip culture can be out of control and it is up to classy women and leaders to bring balance to that. Same goes with parents and male adult role models. Speaking on young ladies.

Anyway, you can't take things out of context, as, for all the sex that was going on, that was like 5% of the iceberg and the rest was endless machination, games, flirting, etc. And people back then, as now, are always lying, fibbing or using as currency or getting their hearts broken over the phantom numbers game. People talk smack all the time. I remember in high school, some of the girls I considered friends, would brag about their hookups in front of me. Clearly intentional and suspect.

What people really don't talk about is college sexuality and how that segways into adulthood. That is the key, for society, for justice, for marriage, for balance in everything or failure in everything (from the viewpoint of the good of society).

There are multiple viewpoints in this thread but few acknowledging the truth that people come in diverse arrangements. There are many variables involved in how two people, in a relationship, relate to each other. Every point made in this thread can be true, related to a certain person and another certain person, any particular couple, and their unique co-circumstances.

There are people who are genuinely of a monogamous disposition, who would have physical and psychic disatisfaction with non-monogamous sex. There are very experienced dating coaches who would confirm the existence of such individuals. More so, in our secularized society, are the pool of potentially sexually active and relatively plurally sexual women. Some might only describe it in terms of the cultural pressures to conceal sexual activity (double-standards for women) but I think it is more complicated then that. We assume that an actor (male or female, in the context of dating) is a completely organized and rational being at any time but this is sort of an in-organic 1 dimensional understanding, more descriptive of non-living things and artificial games. The truth is, we are all growing, we all have complicated pasts and are working through our emotions every minute and making decisions, related to sex in the social arena, and not all of those decisions relate to the physical need to procreate or the purest of romance, especially at the high school age. In the late 20s, the absolute objective and perhaps evolutionary reality of those two drives become clear. Most of the time, people are trying to stay popular, trying to survive socially and academically and trying to explore themselves and work out whatever conditioning about succeeding sexually, athletically, whatever that Hollowood has brainwashed 80s and 90s kids with.

Some people seem to be projecting their baggage and misgivings about high school into this, and as I said, sex does not start and end in high school. The same people are usually around in college and for the most part their promiscuity continues, or begins in earnest.

On the one hand, the physical attractiveness of high school folk is overstated, and people are still growing even into their late 20s. Whatever major social circle anyone happens to be in--school, work, etc--usually is serious business and so social and mating survival in high school is also serious. People are rehearsing and projecting and gaining knowledge into total personhood (manhood for women, and womanhood for men) with their peers. Sometimes, the shared sentimental opportune time of senior year beckons many into a rehearsal of very serious adult emotions and some precocious physical development. But honestly...

this is correct: most freshmen in high school, and this hasn't changed (and even a lot of adult men) don't even thoroughly wash their butts. They just wipe with toilet paper and leave the rest of the residue to stink. How much do you think they know about love and sex?

Yet, there is something to be said for youth. This is a mystical, metaphysical thing, which may not be possible to discuss here. The beginning of the journey. What could they be later if they had done things differently? The key is to just remember what it was like to be young and the budding personhood. That potential is always within our grasp in our lives if we know the right practices. A return to youth. But, for most in daily life, there are some things about youth to be respected beyond what was said here. There is a fertility which served functions in previous ages but should just be acknowledged in our day and age as a conspicuous variable of a sheer physical fact. Our genitals are fresh and unworn in youth years. Our libido and recovery is robust. Many, especially in our secular society, can explore early on, at least in discretion in private (and preferably, a good chunk of the time, solo) with much less emotional and physical drainage than in adulthood. Unpleasant unexpected experiences young can certainly be traumatic, but time is also on the side of the young sexual psyche. As life goes on, only more memories and baggage accumulate. This is a flip side from what most people report, which is freeing themselves from sexual repression and entering this "adult rational self-sufficiency" in working adulthood and having satisfying relationships and sex. But it also depends on one's trajectory. For me, for example, I have a lot of failure and disatisfaction that keeps me working to be a better athlete, a better person, a better lover and a smarter mind. I lived life fully in high school and college and the memories just pile up so they can come back to influence my emotions and enjoyment later when unexpected. And not necessarily just in the cumulative sexual guilt thing, but I'll talk about that later.

There is something to be said for the significance of sex. It's significant when it's insignificant, and significant when it's significant. It's whatever you make it to be and sometimes that will change, even beyond one's control.

Adults, more than others, should be able to appreciate the specialness of sexual acts, because of prevalent physical realities. Sex after the n-teenth time in a person's life starts to (as opposed to teenage years) drain and require more strength and resources. Whether you're in a monogamous relationship or having a special fling, for fine men of good calibur and attributes, how much work goes into it! The exercise required to build the great body and build up of vital energy and juice. That exercise is way in excess of the act itself. Or, how much frustration and meanness one, in the course of cycles, makes their way through. Regret and/or concern for full satisfaction is certainly an issue, even outside of monogamy.

The problem is, I think our society has hangups about this and a lack of intellectual tools to explore this issue. The prevailing cultures of secular promiscuity (which themselves are flexible and distinguished amongst each other through time and subculture) AND conservative and religious attitudes are both mistaken. Few in the secular annals, whether they be enterprising responsible genius philanderers, lazy lousy ones, lazy monogamous folk or seemingly decent ones, really grasp the full importance and significance of chastity, devotion, idealism and so forth. Like Kandinsky said,

"In practical life… one will hardly find a person who, if he wants to travel to Berlin, gets off the train in Regensburg! In spiritual life, getting off the train in Regensburg is a rather usual thing. Sometimes even the engineer does not want to go any further, and all of the passengers get off in Regensburg. How many, who sought God, finally remained standing before a carved figure! How many, who sought art, became caught on a form which an artist had used for his own purposes, be it Giotto, Raphael, Durer, or Van Gogh! "

The blame is on the architecture of our culture, dividing people, incidentally and nonincidentally, into silos from which they are stuck in a net-non-progressive loop. For similar reasons, the majority of American Christiandom has similar lack of grasp. The theology of sex

My advice is to be as creative, relentless, reflecting and individualistic and free-thinking as possible. Give yourself 100% to promiscuity, or to monogamous devotion, to whatever, or to both. Few people really do this. When the going gets tough, they look to the half-answers in the gossip-scape or in Church. The truth is, even the wisdom in the gossip-scape and the dating advice columns and what not, is an unorganized body of knowledge and there are more factors to consider. The truth is, Church these days is a social and self-excusing institution, with runaway structural problems. The structure of a pastor's life and their duties and the church folk are not conducive towards addressing serious problems but rather perpetuating business as usual, over simplifications and appeasement. This also results in half-answers and a mode that inhibitive toward true full spiritual development and full knowledge, and when it comes to the outlook of teaching and salvation, half-knowledge doesn't cut it. It's a failure of the leaders of the church/churches and the community and the structure.

Going back and forth between these two venues of society, one will never find satisfactory answers. They'll just be changing clothes and thinking they made progress. That leads me to a remark on threads like these. I've seen a lot of them lately, mostly of late 20-somethings complaining about all the same infidelity and sexual politic issues and coming up with the same trite recourses. The absurdity of this, of course, is a few plain text posts in an anonymous running forum with such scant detail is not scientific or productive at all.

Unlike with other threads, these word wars about love and sex are almost irrelevant

because you don't see who the people are, or who or what they are facing. They could be talking about something different than you are; you might be projecting your own insecurities on their story which has nothing to do with it. Who knows! It could just be opposites attract, or similars attract (that if you saw the story, you would be like "oh that's not a big deal!" or this and that. And with love and sex and dating you need to see all the colors and sounds and context. With the late 20-something threads, there is nothing universal or hopeful about it other than misery and nonsense.

Fairness, community, wholesomeness, ethics, greater ideals are at stake (for those interested) when it comes to these matters. Putting yourself on one end of the conventional (and half-answer) spectrum itself does not position oneself to be better off in serving, understanding and grasping these things. One just has to do the work. Preferably, that's thinking work combined with art and science and experience.

The idiocy in our churches, the blindness in society, the injustices and ethical violations, the hypocrisy: this is all evidence that the conservative and liberally sexual folk alike are not doing a good job.

Promiscuity can scaffold much good, with the right knowledge and intentions and framework.

Anything can be done. I can tell you stories. Wilt Chamberlain commented in his book in which he disclosed the explosive 20,000 figures, he made a statement professing his sentiment and admiration for the possibility of a great woman, a Penelope or Helen of Troy type figure, to whom one could make love to 20,000 times. I have met one such woman and only one such woman in my life and I can tell you, there's monogamous knowledge there others don't have. Can your romantic pursuits catapult you straight to the most deepest insights into existence, as well as ethical and religious debates? Is your monogamy powerful enough to help power/motivate the building of Noah's Ark?

People like to act like marriage is some holy grail, forgetting that celibacy and renunciation is in fact, strictly speaking, higher up on the pecking order. Forgetting that itself, marriage contains multitudes, with promiscuity and chastity contained within. Forgetting that, family indeed is a cornerstone of society but rushed families perpetuate problems of society. Most people like to dismiss these problems as only being the most obvious types of things, like a broken home, divorce, physical abuse, drug abuse, welfare, bla bla. Ignoring the more serious matter which is mediocre middle class marriages perpetuating and having a part in every poor middle class behavior and flawed institution. So the parents fall out of love, have all these jealousies and baggage, are keeping up with the Joneses and now projecting their insecurities on to their kids. This, in fact, is the sort of negative energy and motivation which runs many of our societal wheels everyday, for worse! If you wonder why some kids in your high school or college were behaving like pillaging madmen (or madwomen), I can predict for you that much of it traces back to the malaise of the bourgeoisie. I have seen it in my own life.

I have seen the most tender faced, wholesome ladies, of great destiny, merit and character, sexually blossom in excess and turn to corruption and evil. Not all is lost and all is never lost. Youth can be re-achieved, and if it can't, then meditation into older years can solve all problems.

There is a lot of crazy sexuality that goes on in the context of NCAA sports and NCAA running. I never hear people complaining about that but that is perhaps the most profound and damaging. It corrupts the sport of running, sets bad precedents for the generations moving forward into adulthood, etc. etc.

I can't help but think that the sexually-misguided weirdo "GotTooSerious" poster is actually Rojo acting out some second life fantasy in which he's actually pulled some tail in his past?

Granted, there's a few freakin' socially stunted clowns around here, but this guys guilt over having actually gotten some ass in high school is unrealistic.

Sure, I've regretted a few girls I've had sex with.......not the actual sex.....just the girls. They were either of the "the 2 at 10 became a 10 at 2" variety or maladjusted women who thought that what was understood to be a casual, fun romp entitled them to put their names in my cellphone with the fervor of a fat 80s teen boy trying to get his name all over the high score screen on Ms. Pacman.

Anyway, back to the original topic. I was far from a lady's man in high school, but I dated. Managed to beat the proverbial clock and get laid just before my 18th bday too. I know many will claim to have had their game perfectly refined by 15 and were getting laid every weekend......I call these people liars.

And hell, even if it was an 11th hour thing, it was still the shit. For whatever weird teenage reason, I was freaking out about turning 18 still a virgin (kind of like American Pie, just replacing graduation with a milestone bday).....so the fact that I found myself with a girlfriend who was super cute, actually fun to be around, ran competitively (yea, it mattered to me back then) AND managed to get my first taste a mere 6 days before my 18th bday was about as good as it got back then.

And if, God forbid, that psycho is actually serious about his opinions and stances on the matter, let me offer this piece of advice. And you can all quote me on this.

"Calm the eff down. Getting laid is the shit"

Normal people don't lose all sense of themselves and their values just because they've bumped uglies with a few handfuls of people in their lifetime. In fact, I consider them perfectly normal people who enjoy things that are fun...like sex.

As long as she's not the type to trade BJs for coke or banging friends of her ex as a way to get back him, chill the hell out and leave it alone.

My two cents.

I never dated anyone in high school, but I was way different than the girls in high school. I saw the world, they saw high school. Now I see society and they see eternity. I've always had different view points on the way life is lived and I get to complex with these thoughts; they see themselves and youth forever lasting. I just turned 21 and you'd think I'd be at bars every weekend trying to get with some girl and bringing her home, but I don't. I see a bunch of people draining rot down their throats down their spinal cords. I haven't dated a girl since 8th grade, years ago. My opinion, do what's best for you not someone else. Live life for you, so you can understand what it means to be you and how you want to see yourself live. That's the only advice I can help you contemplate on before it's all up to you on how you want to live and make your next action.

You guys take this far too seriously. Date in HS, just don't take anything too seriously. Have sex, but use protection. high School relationships are good to build up relationship experience and to get a barometer for crazy/bad relationships.

Just don't over-analyze or look into too much.