<p>I’m currently a college freshman in a long-distance relationship. My boyfriend and I have been together for well over two years and I would consider our relationship to be quite serious. I come from a conservative family in the sense that my mom pounded into me that sex before marriage is sinful and wrong. I’m honestly quite terrified of having sex before marriage for many of my own psychological reasons, and having my boyfriend spend the night with me does not mean that I will pursue such actions.</p>
<p>My mother believes that sharing a bed with anyone before marriage is wrong. She does not really care when she hears of others doing so, but is very adamant that I not do the same. Here’s my dilemma:</p>
<p>My boyfriend and I have made several visits to see each other, and we stay with each other each time. I lie to my mom about staying with a friend, or setting him up with a friend to stay. My mom and I are usually very close and on any other issue (getting a bad grade, partying) I feel I can tell her anything. I’m not afraid to stand up for myself and I realize the umbilical cord has been “cut”, I just usually feel that the fallout that would occur is not worth dealing with at the current time and I’d rather maintain positive and less stressful relations with my mom. </p>
<p>My question:
As a parent (preferably with “conservative” viewpoints), would you rather “not know” if your daughter was engaging in such behavior, or would you want to hear it even if it deeply hurt you? Also, (please be honest), would you likely treat your daughter differently when she visits and invest much time in lengthy lectures?</p>
<p>It’s not that I feel the need to discuss intimate details with my boyfriend to my parents, but rather I feel guilty lieing every time he comes to visit. Also, I realize the “right” thing to do is to not lie, but I’m under a lot of stress from school right now and it may be better to put off additional stress.</p>
<p>I hope that if you decide to sleep with your boyfriend that you both stay smart about using protection. Otherwise you might have to have a really difficult discussion with your mom.</p>
<p>Not sure how to advise you about being open about the relationship, however. From your description, I can see positives in both telling and keeping quiet. Which do you think would cause the greatest good for the greatest number of people?</p>
<p>While it might be “easy” for you to sleep in the same bed with your boyfriend and not have sex, you may not realize how hard that is for him. A young man’s sex drive is very high, and sleeping next to his girlfriend is incredibly arousing for him.</p>
<p>Only you can make this decision for yourself. But what I would just say is that honesty is important in all healthy relationships, even relationships between children and parents. Only you can decide when the time is right to tell your mother.</p>
<p>As a mom, I would rather my daughter tell me the truth about this then lie to me, even if I didn’t agree with it. And, no, I would not treat her any differently, although I cannot guarantee there would be no lenghty lectures, lol. It is my job as a parent to advise her and help her navigate her way to adulthood. Al enghty lecture here and there comes with the territory. </p>
<p>If I were you, I would tell your mom the truth. Tell her that you respect her beliefs and that you share her beliefs about premarital sex. Explain to her that you and your boyfriend will be staying with each other, but you have no intention of having sex. That said, I would advise you that sharing a bed with your boyfriend may eventually put you in a position you would rather not be. I urge you to be prepared for this possibility, both physically and emotionally.</p>
<p>I think only you can decide if lying is going to cause you more stress than telling her and dealing with the consequences. You know your mother best. I know my mom would have been constantly after me if I had told her 25 years ago that I was staying at my boyfriend’s frat house (she thought I was staying with friends in the dorm). It is easier to get away with now in the age of cell phones than it was then (if she called my friends would cover for me).</p>
<p>My father was very conservative when I was your age (he no longer is!), so I felt it best that I not tell him about being sexually active with my bf in college. I didn’t hide it from my mother (my parents are divorced). I don’t think having kept this a secret from him really damaged our relationship in any way. I think it is okay for parents to keep things secret from their kids and vice versa.
I really don’t want my daughter to tell me every detail of her life and I am certainly not sharing everything with her.
If you do become sexually active, please use birth control or you will be having a very difficult conversation with them!</p>
<p>Lie:
You’ve chosen already to take actions that go against your mothers teachings. It’s ok, that is part of growing up, you make your own decisions.</p>
<p>So, the decision is already made, and you cannot unmake it. YOu are not going to change your actions, no matter what the lecture your mom gives you. She will not convnince you to change. So telling her the truth will only cause hurt, pain and frustration. You will NEVER convince her you are doing the right thing, she will NEVER convince you to change. If you tell her the truth you get to take pride in ‘always being honest with your mom’, but you already lost that trophy, so you wont feel better and she wont feel better. Nothing good comes of it.</p>
<p>Now, lying on the other hand allows you to do what you want, and allows her to believe that you are following her rules/values. At some point she will know, but you are not forcing her to face it.</p>
<p>So…Lie.</p>
<p>Oh, and as for the comments above, about being careful, and sleeping next to him will lead to sex…You already know all that is true. So please be smart about it. Buy Condoms, Now. Discuss Birth Control, Now. Adult actions have adult consequences, be prepared to deal with these adult choices.</p>
<p>Got to hand it to you Imontoya, you really stated it succinctly. There are a great many things my mom either didn’t know I did or didn’t let on she knew. To this day, we never discuss those things that now looking back seem so very long ago and in the big picture( life, health, death) so very unimportant.</p>
<p>I’m a mom, I don’t have a daughter but I would just not want to know. And yes, use protection. I’ve got boys and believe me I’ve drilled that into them. I still don’t want to know what they are doing…I don’t need to know and don’t want to know, I doubt I’d feel different if one of them was a girl and I agree with Imontoya rational reason why.</p>
<p>Next year when my daughter is in college and is an adult it is her business. She is the one adamant about waiting for marriage, while I subscribe to the thought “only very serious adult relationships with someone you are confident will stay around in case of …”.</p>
<p>Personally, if she becomes active I don’t want to know and I have told her that. She will be on BC just in case and in case of something worse (date rape). She and I have talked very openly about potential consequences, both physical and emotional and as far as I am concerned it is her decision and I love her no matter what her decision is. </p>
<p>I know your mother will still love you if you tell her the truth, she will just have to get used to it and have to get over her initial anger and shock.</p>
<p>Lie, I am with Imon. My mother was also like your mom. My sister lived with her H before they were married. She used to have to clean up the apartment (moved his clothes, took away his shaving cream) before my parents visited. She used to have us call her if my parents should decide to drop in on her. I also didn’t tell my mother that I had sex before marriage. We didn’t tell her before we didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Maybe at some point she suspected something, but we never discussed it. My daughters tell me everything. I was the one that took the older daughter to get birth controll, but it’s because I wanted that kind of relationship with my daughter. </p>
<p>You are an adult now. You should be able to decide what’s right for you. At the same time there is no reason to shove it to your mother’s face. She is certainly entitled to her believes.</p>
<p>In the book “Binge” the author ( a male) visits a number of campuses and talks to students about alchohol. He is stunned about how clueless the girls are about male sex drive. What seems “friendly” to a gal can be a huge green light to go-go-go for it to the male. </p>
<p>I’m not worried about your mother as much as your boyfriend. You persist in seeing him but under what (to him) will be a highly controlling situation. This could explode (sorry, but the correct word choice) on you. You, too, have a biology that has got to be revving up and curious. This is how pregnancies can occur – mental denial even as the physical plants are on fire. </p>
<p>You waving around your psychology and conservative roots while SLEEPING WITH HIM are stupid. If you don’t want to have sex before marriage, then stay down the road with a gf. But saying one thing with your mouth and another with your body is playing with fire. It is a lot harder on him than you – but you are the one who get pregnant (at which point, yes, your mom will know you’ve been sleeping with bf). </p>
<p>I saw this a lot 30 years ago when I was in college in Texas. Girls would deny they were sexually active because they felt it made them “less a Christian.” It was amazing what they could rationalize. “Oh, we just do oral” or “He pulls out, so it’s not really cosummation.” or “I repent and that means I get my virginity back.”</p>
<p>There is no question in my mind that OP is already having sex with her boyfriend. If not, it’s only matter time. In this time and age, people should be smart enough to have BC. If not, she is the one who takes the chance of getting pregnant. But she is the one who could also get to decide whether she would keep the baby. He is the one who could become a father with absolutely no say in the matter. I think the boy could possibly get the shorter end of the stick.</p>
<p>OP - I suspect you might get different opinions from Dads than from Moms, and perhaps different opinions from parents on the coasts as opposed to parents in the great mid-section of our country. DW was from a very conservative farming town in the midwest. We lived together while she was in graduate school … and every time her parents came to visit she moved my stuff out of the apartment (though in all honesty she was probably more concerned with what I would tell her parents if they challenged our living “arrangement.”).</p>
<p>IMHO this is an issue you need to work out in your own mind first, and then decide how and when to discuss it with Mom based on your knowledge of her and your concern for her. It’s really nobody else’s business (except for the part about using protection!).</p>
<p>I told my parents the truth. My sister did not.</p>
<p>My advice: avoid the subject or lie. My father did not speak to me for a year. My mother was just about as distant. My parent’s relationship with my sister did not suffer.</p>
<p>But you know your parents and their likely reactions. My son could tell us just about anything and not have the results that I did.</p>
<p>This is not true all of the time. My girlfriend of about a year and I went on a trip for a week last December. We already discussed sex and we both had the same opinions about it. We were going to wait until after college and until we were both financially stable. Birth control and condoms are not 100% effective. You never know what is going to happen. We have seen too many of our high school and college friends have children when they were thinking they were being “safe”. Well the hotel we were staying at messed up and they only had rooms with 1 bed available. Eventhough we slept in the same bed, we did not have sex. Sleeping in the same bed next to somebody does not always lead to having sex.</p>
<p>Parental Denial is highly underrated. Most parents have an inkling about what goes on in their children’s lives. My husband is a bit more conservative than I am. His view is “yes I know these things go on but it doesn’t mean I want to hear all the details” He’d rather be oblivious to it because that is what is most comfortable for him. We make use of the phrase “humour me” in our household. It’s a signal to our children that we know intutively what is happening but we’d rather not get involved.</p>
<p>OP-if you feel bad about lying to your parents just remember you are protecting them from something they’d rather not deal with. That will hopefully ease any guilt you may have.</p>
<p>Whilst we are on the subject, why is “sex” such a voodoo thing? I mean there are certainly worse things I can think that my teen might be doing including:</p>
<p>being mean to people
lying
being disrespectful to themselves or others
letting others take advantage of them
taking advantage of others
being selfish or ungrateful</p>
<p>I’d much rather my children be good citizens with a healthy sex life than abstinent and mean.</p>
