Mistakes happen . . .

Remember the 12 Steps to Intimacy? That’s an ideal progression for a relationship, but the ideal is not always the way things happen. Maybe you were in a situation you couldn’t control, or you made a bad decision about drinking alcohol at a party and ended up doing a thing you really didn’t want to do. Maybe you were lied to about the other person’s feelings for you and you fell for the old “if you love me you’ll let me” line.

There are hundreds of variations on this theme of going too far too fast. Too many people fall for pressure from their date or their peers, or from the culture that makes it seem like the norm. Maybe the significant adults in your life even made mistakes when they were your age. Nobody’s perfect.

But life does go on and we need to learn to deal with the mistakes, the disappointments, the failures. It helps, first of all, to know that we are not alone in our desire to get beyond our mistakes. Research shows 67 percent of teens who have been sexually active wish they’d waited. A nationwide survey says that more than half of all high school youth are abstinent – they are not having sex. A common – but wrong – belief is that “everybody’s doing it” when in reality 85 percent of teens say sex should be saved for a long term, committed relationship. Over half of teens aren’t sexually active and a majority who were wish they hadn’t been. If you decide to stop having sex, you become part of that majority who are waiting, in some cases, again.

Think it through. Go back to the 12 Steps to Intimacy and decide to use those steps in your next relationship.