September 24th, 2008
DEAR STRAIGHT TALK: A friend lets her teenage daughter stay overnight at a household where many teenagers regularly stay the night together, co-ed. Sometimes the parent of that household is there, sometimes not. When I bring up concerns, she says, “Those kids are all just friends.” I think she is naïve. I mean, honestly, teens? Raging hormones? How could something NOT be going on?
Roseville, CA
Mariah, 16
I have many friends of both sexes who sleep together and do not have sex. Sure it happens sometimes, but that doesn’t mean all teenagers are sex-crazed. Some teenagers really are JUST friends with the opposite sex and have no intention to sleep with them in the sense you mean. Usually nothing ever happens because the guy is gay or he needs a place to crash and ends up with a good friend who happens to be female. Most of my friends are male and I don’t see the big deal of having a non-sexual relationship with them.
Jennifer, 14
It is different in every situation, but friends of the opposite sex CAN sleep in the same bed together without having sex. Even promiscuous people are not always at fault. This is a very flirtatious generation that most adults don’t understand. If you see your teen flirting with someone don’t automatically assume something is going on.
Michael, 16
There are situations where the guys and girls are just friends. But it can be hard to completely stay away from having something sexual creep in. In many cases, we’d be lying to say it’s strictly friends.
Shelby, 16
I find it offensive that just because we’re teens you assume we are having sex all the time. Could you be any more judgmental? I have quite a few guy friends who I feel totally comfortable sleeping over with — and we’re not having sex, we’re talking! Did you have sex every time you spent the night at a guy friend’s house?
Katie, 15
I go camping with my boyfriend and his family, and usually there are eight or nine teenagers spending all day and night with each other. Nothing happens between either friends or couples because parents have said if we are caught doing anything, we all go home and there’s no more camping. But they give us the opportunity to prove that we can be trusted. If parents make the limits clear, and provide strong consequences, the situation is under control.
Sawyer, 17
Males and females sleep together a lot and nothing happens. Co-ed sleeping isn’t so much the problem, it’s the drinking and smoking that needs to be monitored. Yes, sex happens sometimes, but at least when it does, we’re educated. We didn’t do what your generation did! There was so much sex in the 60s and 70s, most of it unprotected. All our STDs come from you guys! When it comes down to it, the sex education we’ve been given brings in a huge amount of safety.
Kendal, 21
It depends on the kids. They could very likely be just friends and really have nothing going on. It really does happen a lot. However, the fact that there aren’t parents home is a red flag. Not that parental supervision insures that there are no sexual activities, but it’s definitely a mood-killer. Your friend needs to be a bit more realistic and make sure there’s parental supervision. And you need to mind your own business.
DEAR ROSEVILLE: Well, there’s a wrap! Anything else you’d like to know? We loved your question, by the way, and I wanted to close with Kendal’s common-sense advice regarding parental supervision. This generation has platonic male-female relationships unlike anything our generation could, or can, imagine. Assumptions about sexual behavior are harder to make, but parental supervision will always be a no-brainer.
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September 6th, 2006
Dear Straight Talk: I am bugged about your advice on how to end a friendship. Your “let things drift” approach, where one friend gradually moves away from the other without explanation, left me cold. My daughter, after being friends with another child for seven years, was totally cut off, left out of conversations, ignored, and had to listen to talk of activities done by this child that didn’t include her! There was never closure, never an explanation of what had gone wrong. My child was devastated. She withdrew. This was four years ago, at the beginning of high school, and she still feels like there is something wrong with her and that she isn’t supposed to have friends.
When I see my child, now a young woman, I see a kind, caring, thoughtful, beautiful person. She does not. The adults in her life think she’s awesome. She does not. As for friends, there still are none, she is still afraid to reach out. The joy of doing things and going places with friends during high school is not part of her memories. So when friendships change, I would insist my child communicate with the other child. This may not lessen the heartache, but at least the reasons would be on the table.—Mother of a terrific daughter
Dear Mother: Four years! I’m bugged too, because your daughter’s reaction was over the top. I suspect an earlier rejection was lying dormant and was re-stimulated by this event. Perhaps she has an estranged or otherwise “missing” father. Perhaps she is adopted. I do not know, but I would bet money that there was an earlier episode or pattern of events that made her, in her child’s heart, feel unwanted. It could even be pre-memory, such as a medical condition at birth that separated her from her birth mother.
No doubt, your daughter was burned by this friend. The ‘let ‘er drift’ approach that I recommend is applied gradually and with sensitivity—the bridge between the two people goes out of maintenance, but it’s not torched.
I stick by my advice that explanations tend to make things worse. Unless paths diverge or there is conflict, most kids dump their friends to move up the social ladder. Hearing “you’re odd, you’re ugly, or you smell weird,” is more destructive than hearing nothing at all.
High school society often stamps people with indelible labels. Perhaps this was part of what happened in freshman year and she never got out from under it. Happily, these labels tend to dissolve upon exit. However, if her mind-set persists in the world of work and/or college, I recommend counseling. She deserves a break.
From Katie, 13: Changing friends is tricky. If the person is really sensitive, it’s too hard to explain the reason. Instead, I look for someone to pair them up with to take the heat off. But, if I know they’ll bounce back, I might say, “Hey, I think we’ve become different. I still want to be friends, but maybe not so close. I think we should get to know other people.”
From Jennifer, 13: I would rather have a friend drift off than tell me I’m a geek. But your daughter’s experience doesn’t make sense because even geeks, who get rejected a lot, continue to reach out for new friends. If your daughter still isn’t over it four years later, maybe her friend said or did something so horrible that your daughter was ashamed to tell you. Maybe she accused your daughter of being a lesbian, and maybe it confused her making her afraid to make close girlfriends. Kids do get accused of being gay or lesbian and I always wonder how it affects them. I’m just trying to think of what might have happened because four years is too long.
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January 11th, 2006
Dear Straight Talk: I have a friend who I’d rather not be friends with anymore. It’s not that anything happened, I just don’t care to hang around her anymore. But how do I get this across? She assumes we are friends and I can’t figure out how to NOT be friends without hurting her feelings. Do I write her a letter? Do I just avoid her?—Stuck in the mud
Dear Stuck: As the truckers say, “Let ‘er drift”. On a flat stretch right before a long downgrade, truckers lay off the gas in order to cool their brakes for the downhill ahead. This flat stretch in a friendship is a good time to coast, no gas, no brakes, definitely no letter bombs.
Phone calls are returned, but not with lightening speed. When you are on the phone, you can’t talk long. The mood is polite, you express care, but lack enthusiasm. Ditto for email and texting. At school, different routes are taken, interruptions happen (a phone call needs to be made, a book returned), most invitations are respectfully declined.
Friendships naturally ebb and flow and what’s nice about the “Let ‘er drift” approach is that the door is open to drift back in.
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