Stuck in the Middle
Tomayko-Peters, Sylvia
Stuck in the Middle SYLVIA TOMAYKO-PETERS Senior spring of high school is supposed to be fun, that's all there is to it. Finally, you are finished with applications for colleges, and your grades...
...Each is so drastic that it cannot possibly mesh with the other...
...It felt like a long shot to think that we'd be accepted somewhere that we both loved...
...One gives me all the freedom and no responsibility...
...All of my angst over the transition to college got me thinking about how high school relationships come loaded with contradictory expectations...
...At the same time we know the questions we face in the next phase of our relationship are going to be more complicated than the ones we have overcome...
...Much more aware of how he felt, he knew he wasn't ready to have sex, regardless of whatever pressures others put on our relationship...
...It couldn't have worked out better for us, and we are ecstatic about our good fortune...
...This side of the debate feels restricting...
...Pop culture reinforces this idea...
...We loved each other, so why did it matter so much to others that we weren't having sex...
...Will we learn how to act more maturely, or are we kids who are too young to even learn about the mental or physical responsibilities of a sexual relationship, let alone have one...
...The fact that the kids on Skins are supposed to be the cool ones sends the message that no harm can come from indiscriminate sex...
...the other gives me all the responsibility and no freedom...
...I wanted more say in the matter...
...We applied to college, and we waited...
...In other words, I should have sex at the very beginning of a relationship or even without a relationship...
...Now we were really ready, and when the opportunity finally came, we took it...
...Buying condoms seemed like far too public of an admission, but there was nothing else to do besides walk into the pharmacy and get them...
...I certainly wasn't prepared to talk about it, even if I tried to act like it...
...Other couples waited a few weeks, but after that it seemed odd to not be having sex...
...Everything was up to the college admission officers...
...Having a boyfriend during most of high school exempted me from hookup remorse, but the stories of my friends' various encounters reached me...
...We had been together for three and a half years...
...Do we see marriage in our future...
...However, I began my spring term filled with dread because it meant hearing back from the colleges I had applied to, months earlier...
...It wasn't until later that I took the daunting decision to go on the pill in order to be extra careful...
...She graduated from Nauset Regional High School and is a first-year student at Brown University...
...I have had friends who refused to acknowledge this situation after hooking up at a party...
...Throughout high school, I felt that I was treated by my peers as being far more sexually mature than I was...
...We talked about what we might do, thought about it, worried about it, but throughout the year, I had the feeling that where I would end up next was out of my control...
...They ranged from being embarrassed at becoming entangled with someone at a party to relying on sex as a crutch to keep a girlfriend or boyfriend from breaking up with them...
...I had learned about sex from school, parents, friends, but I didn't truly know how the repercussions of sex might affect me, mentally or physically...
...By the time he finally understood my ramblings, I was thoroughly embarrassed, and he was surprised...
...Now, after being together for what seemed like a monumental time span, we were being asked to plan separate futures...
...In the end, things seem to work out...
...One of my favorite shows, the British Skins, includes all the subjects of a teen drama—dysfunctional families, eating disorders, relationship problems, suicide...
...I saw their reasoning, but it was hard to understand how they could have such certainty about their priorities...
...In the end we avoided the pitfalls of first love and managed to navigate the craziness of high school...
...We even were referred to by some of our friends "the married couple...
...Learning from a hookup seemed dangerous to me, though oddly enough, sexually transmitted diseases didn't seem to be a concern in our small high school...
...It surprised me to hear from classmates who had significant others that their relationships weren't important enough to worry about in comparison to getting into college...
...But although we found a path through the extremes of teenage life, we still face an equally challenging future...
...We had come to a point where we had to break off connections and start fresh...
...It surprised me afterward that it was just that easy...
...I know many high school students who, within only a few days of being a couple, were having sex...
...We didn't have sex right then...
...Against the odds, we were both accepted by Brown University...
...We came to a mutual agreement that we were ready for the next step, but we left it at that...
...Abstinence-only sex education is being taught, and many people are once again putting emphasis on purity and virginity...
...I was so nervous I don't remember if I was even able to say the word "sex" to him...
...This was a contradiction that I refused to accept...
...A few months after we started dating, I voiced the idea of having sex to my boyfriend...
...I don't remember how we started talking...
...Even after talking we wanted to weigh the idea in our minds for a while...
...For once there is time to relax, to unwind...
...In fact, I had plenty of time to think it over because for the next three weeks I went to France on an exchange program...
...Others panicked after having sex with a new boyfriend, worried they made the wrong decision or might be pregnant...
...These opposing viewpoints cancel each other out in my mind...
...While the first experience may not be the best for judging what sex was like, I never regretted our decision...
...I want to be in the middle, but all I am left with is a huge gulf...
...Maybe it didn't stick in my mind because we felt so comfortable with each other by that time that I didn't feel embarrassed or distressed...
...A health teacher once said that you weren't ready to have sex until you could openly talk about it with your partner...
...When we first began dating, I thought that I was expected to have sex early in our relationship...
...The problem was that I didn't have the experience of an adult...
...It's funny, in an endearing sort of way, to think about how we didn't really know what we were doing...
...It seemed that our final choice would come down either to going to the best schools for us individually and trying a long distance relationship or to settling for a safety school that kept us together...
...At first I wondered if there were something wrong with our relationship, but I knew there wasn't...
...When I got home, I was ready and excited to see my boyfriend...
...Their assumption was that as a teenager in this modern world, I should approach sex in a way reserved for adults...
...I felt as though my relationship was perceived, by most adults and many friends, as inconsequential because I had fallen in love in high school...
...Late one night, after being together for around a year and a half, we had a serious conversation about it...
...Even applying to many of the same colleges left us with no guarantee that we could still be together...
...Along with these stories have come related pressures about my own relationship...
...yet knew I had to go along with...
...The perception of sex that permeated my high school is that you were supposed to be having it because everyone else wants to have it...
...The alternative view of sex, is built around the idea of "just say no...
...When my boyfriend and I did finally have sex, we were ready...
...Do we want to live together...
...First, however, we had to deal with birth control...
...After we'd dated for a year, friends were astonished and even disapproving when they learned we hadn't yet had sex...
...By being expected to make a mature decision about my future while ignoring my boyfriend, I was being treated simultaneously as an adult and as a kid...
...I said I wanted to talk about something, but all I could bring myself to ask was how far he wanted the relationship to go, as if sex were a marker for our affections...
...What was eating at me wasn't the anxiety of getting into one particular college or another, but wondering what would happen to my boyfriend and me when the time came to choose colleges...
...Usually the characters cope with these problems through drugs, sex, and more drugs and more sex...
...At the time I was nervous, and a little confused, but I can look back on it now with fondness, and a little more wisdom...
...We now have religious groups promoting "purity rings" to teen pop stars like the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus, who vow to remain chaste until they marry...
...Sylvia Tomayko-Peters was born in 1991 and lives in Truro, Massachusetts...
...My generation is now a part of the hookup culture in which many find it normal, even if they regret it the next morning, to casually make out or go as far having sex with friends or acquaintances at parties...
...Finally, you are finished with applications for colleges, and your grades have been sent in...
...His sureness made me realize that although many teenagers believe that everyone is supposed to be concentrating on sex, they really aren't thinking about it as much as is hyped...
...The middle ground I long for is, I know, going to be even harder to find in the coming years...
...It wasn't fair, I thought...
Vol. 58 • January 2011 • No. 1
