YouthInk: "Let's talk about TEEN SEX"

Read some articles in the Straits Times (Mon, Aug 7), and am thinking of writing something to add to what they said. Do feel free to let me know what you think - all correction and feedback are warmly welcomed!

With regards to the recent articles under "Let's talk about Teen Sex" in YouthInk (Mon, Aug 7), while the writers have raised very good points regarding how to curb "a high number of teen pregnancies and cases of sexually transmitted diseases", I would just like to highlight another critical aspect of why teen sex (and for that matter, premarital sex in general) poses painful problems for the parties involved.

For the reason is that we people are not just physical animals - we are emotional and social creatures too. As the psychiatrist, Erik Erikson, in his Eight Stages of Development theory, has highlighted, the teenage years (13 to 20 years) are the phase in which a person acquires and establishes a clear sense of self-identity, and sexual identity too - manhood or womanhood. Premarital sex (especially teen sex) has the effect of disrupting the normal development of healthy relationships, socially and emotionally.

In addition, teen sex lacks the security, intimacy and mutual commitment of a married relationship. Firstly, it runs the high risk of making the guy trivalise the girl's feelings in his eyes, making her nothing to him but an object of physical pleasure. Secondly, it's shortchanging teenage girls, who have sex because they seek intimacy, but the very nature of teen sex is such that they will not be able to find the emotional security and intimacy that they so want.

In his classic book, "The Friendship Factor", Alan Loy McGinnis relates a tragic story about a brilliant student who committed suicide because his girlfriend had sex with his best friend. Even though he was in one of the top universities, and a highly liberal one too, who was a believer in "safe sex" - in the end, when he heard that his girlfriend was not only having sex with him, but also with his best friend too - in spite of his "liberal" principles, he could not take the pain and shot himself dead. And another true-life story was that there was this man who had multiple sex-partners before he finally married. He was unable to enjoy the time with his wife every time they had sex, because whenever he saw his wife's face, the faces of all the women that he had sex with before would spring to mind.

So, I think we have to take a step back and look at the bigger picture when it comes to teen sex. It's not just about not getting pregnant or sick; it's about helping the young people wait till marriage to really and fully enjoy the goodness of sex. Like a juicy fruit, sex is best enjoyed at the ripe time.