Dear Harlan,\nI am 17, and I just started attending college. I am proud to say that I made it through high school and stayed a virgin. I know plenty about contraceptives, mistakes, love partners, feelings and all that. It's just that the urges I used to get back then are very much stronger now, and I feel like I am ready to have sex now more than ever. I cannot stop thinking about it -- at all! I am waiting for that special someone, but I just want something more, I guess, to satisfy me, yet I want to stay a virgin until the right time. Help me out.\nImpatient Virgin
Dear Impatient Virgin, \nThe truth -- it's easier to have sex in college than to not have sex. There will always be someone who's drunk enough, desperate enough or lonely enough to be with you. As for the right time, that has to be your call. But here are the wrong times:\nWhen it's with someone who doesn't listen to you, respect you or trust you. \nWhen you can't talk to your partner about anything on your mind before sex, during sex or after sex. \nWhile you or your partner is drunk or high. \nWhen sex is about getting someone to like you.\nWhen you can't discuss a partner's sexual history.\nWhen you can't ask your partner to get tested for HIV, chlamydia and other sexual souvenirs. \nWhen you don't think the sex will be available tomorrow, so you have it today while it's available. \nWhen you have sex because your friends are having sex, and you don't want to be the only virgin. \nWhen you don't have birth control -- assuming you don't want to make a baby (even condoms aren't 100 percent effective against birth control and STDs).\nWhile under pressure. \nThat said, you can still be creative sexually with yourself or a partner and hang onto your \nvirginity.
Dear Harlan, \nMy friend is engaged to a Marine who is currently serving in Iraq. They are planning a wedding for May 2007, but because of financial expenses and the fact that she needs to take her mother to the hospital a lot for cancer treatment, they are strapped for cash to pay for the wedding. She is constantly stressed-out and is wondering whether or not she should continue her quest for the "Dream Wedding." My question to you is, As a friend, should I tell her to hold off on the wedding? If so, how should I do it? Thank you for listening.
Concerned Friend
Dear Concerned Friend,\nIt's not that you don't like the guy, right? You're not jealous, right? \nIf your only motivation is your friend's well-being and you can't stand to see her so stressed-out about something that should be so wonderful, tell her exactly how you feel and have it come from a loving place. Ask her what you can do help make her happy and relieve the stress? Instead of postponing the wedding (and the stress until later), a better idea might be changing her expectations of what a dream wedding should be. What elements are most important to her? What will still keep the dream alive and relieve the stress. When the dream creates debt, stress and problems, it's anything but a dream. Help your friend shift things around. Really, that's what good friends are good for -- bringing perspective. Bring it on.
