Boy - Girl Relationships

The relationships that middle school girls have with boys run the gamut from barely being able to admit that boys are human beings, to being obsessed with boys and having boyfriends, to actively seeking sexual encounters. Many girls are happy to have boys as friends and value the different perspectives boys have.

Girls who are interested in boys may spend hours pondering which qualities are the most important for a potential boyfriend to have and what true love is. As they become increasingly interested in boys, middle school girls are more likely to begin wondering about sex. Many of the girls who participated in the Beyond the Butterfly project discussed various issues surrounding sex, including when they would consider having sex, and what qualities their potential partner should have.

Unfortunately, the discussion for many becomes an actuality. Nearly one third of ninth grade girls report having had sexual intercourse, almost 8% before they were thirteen years of age, according to a recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey. The vast majority of girls who have sex before the age of fifteen say that it was against their will or unwanted. The statistics surrounding unwanted sexual relations are somewhat alarming. It has been reported that by the age of eighteen, approximately 30% of girls have experienced either incest or other sexual assault. Furthermore, 20% of high school students report that they have been involved in unwanted sexual activities. According to a recent central Minnesota study, the vast majority of young women reporting a sexual assault say that they were forced by someone they knew. Approximately 84% of these events occurred in someone's home. Young men are still using emotional blackmail ("you would if you loved me," etc.) to coerce girls into having sex with them.

It is often the case that the girl who has her first sexual experience at an early age is more apt to continue having sexual interactions. Too often, teen sexual involvement results in unwanted pregnancies. Information released by the National Center for Health Statistics announces that girls under fifteen years of age give birth to more than 12,300 children annually. The report also noted that each year there are nearly 500,000 children born to teens aged fifteen to nineteen. In the majority of these cases, the father of the child is over twenty years of age (American Academy of Pediatrics).

The negative consequences of teen pregnancy are far-reaching. Not only are teen mothers less likely to graduate from high school and more likely to need welfare, but their children are also more apt to perform poorly in school, become teen mothers themselves, or, if the child is a boy, end up in prison.

Girls who have strong relationships with both their parents and those involved in sports are less likely to become sexually active early in their teens or to become pregnant as teens.

Another unfortunate result of teen sexual activity is the spread of STD's (Sexually Transmitted Diseases). Each year, there are about three million new cases of STD's diagnosed among those nineteen and under. It has also been reported that there are about twenty-four teens being infected with HIV every day. Also, cases of AIDS are increasing among teen girls, with female adolescent cases making up to 43% of AIDS cases diagnosed in 1994, up from 14% in 1987.

Many professionals recommend that adolescents be encouraged to abstain from having sex, or at least postpone sexual activity until they are older. They also urge that those teens who are sexually active be taught about contraception and have it made available to them. Clearly, continued education is necessary to ensure our teens' safety.

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What Some of the Girls Said:

About Boys:

• You can have boy friends, like they're not boyfriends. That means they're your friend and they're a boy but not your boyfriend. I think it's easier to talk to the guys about some things than it is to talk to girls.

• With guys, well sometimes it's easier to talk to the guys, but then sometimes it's way easier to talk to the girls.

• Well guys are important, just like girls, but I'd say my girlfriends are more important because if you break up with a guy then your girlfriends, they might say, what the heck, we weren't good enough for you when you were going out with somebody, but now we are? So I think guys are important, but I also think girls are just as important.
  
  
• I think you need to keep your girlfriends no matter what.
  

• I think guys are important and so are my friends, but I have some guy friends and they're kinda cool and they think and have different perspectives than the girls.

• I don't like boys. Period. Some of ëem are nice, I hang around with some of them, they're nice, but I don't think I'd rather, I don't think I'd want to date one. because, they're like, they're boys.
  
  
• Sometimes I can feel normal, but whenever I like a guy who I really like, I feel happy and kind of hyper. Because when they're around, I can have fun with them, and I like to hang around with them.

• I need guys in my life. I don't care if they're friends, but they're really important to me, so I have lots of boyfriends.

• Oh, I love boys, I have two brothers that are boys and so I mean boys are humans just like us.

• I don't really judge a lot of boys, but I can tell you that there are some boys in our school that are immature. You can't really talk to them ëcause they're kind of silly in the head and all. But I have a lot of friends that are boys and most of them are kind of immature, but they can change their ways once in a while, but there are a lot of immature boys at our school.

• I think guys just try to act really cool around you but that's really not the point. You just wanna get to know what they really act like and their real personality. A lot of guys are really nice and they treat you the way you really want to be treated but some guys are just like total jerks and they just treat you like you're the last thing on earth that they want around.

• It was always that boys had cooties and don't touch them, they're gross, and now, hey, he's kind of cute and look at him and he's looking pretty good today and it was different. There were a lot of different things going on, new things that weren't always bad, that were good, that were hard to understand.

• This is how I see it. I try not to judge people on how they look, but sometimes I wouldn't mind if I had a really hot boyfriend. But I mean, the guy has to be smart, and he has to be healthy, and he has to wear deodorant, and everything, and hygiene, and he has to have a nice, well, I wouldn't mind if he had a nice body and good looks.

• Well, for me looking at a guy means he's got to have like a good personality and have some common things that I like. It would be very helpful if he was good looking, but that's not the main part of it. I want him to be good. A good personality. And not do drugs, or make me do something that I don't want to do. Or stuff like that.

• And he can't drink.

• But just a guy with a good personality and who's caring, and he can't be wrapped up in himself and think he's all that, or put his friends in front of you all the time.

• I'm dating right now, although my parents don't want me to. I'm on the phone a lot or I'm online or I'm doing both.

• The guy that I'm currently going out with is really nice, really respectful, has like the book of virtues crammed in his head. He's just really, really sweet and sensitive and you know he does have, this eye problem and he doesn't dress the greatest but I don't really care about that because you know he's really sweet and you know we share a lot of interests.

• The only thing we're not alike in is pretty much we're different genders. It's kind of like you know we have two different points of view, because we're both in touch with the opposite gender like in our bodies.

• I don't think that girls in our grade are really pressured to have boyfriends but a lot of them still do because I guess boys support you in some way.

• I don't think that we're really pressured to have a boyfriend. There's this one girl in our grade and she's gone out with like seven guys and like how is she supposed to have a guy to out with like in high school because she ruined it in middle school. Relationships don't really mean anything in middle school ëcause it's not like you're going to marry the guy you're going out with in middle school. So I don't think we're really pressured to have a boyfriend.

• Everything that you do has to be done as a couple, I think. Like decisions that are made, because otherwise you're never gonna go anywhere in life, and all my relationships have been serious to me. When I like one guy, I don't like ten other guys like some people do. When I go out with a guy, I go out with a guy and not ten other ones at the same time. And not like sitting there imagining being with somebody else. And I think that that's important that you have to be a couple at all times when you're in a relationship because that's what a relationship of love is all about.

• I think that trust is your main thing because you can't do anything unless you both trust each other.

• Trust is so important in every relationship, it's not only important in guy relationships but also girl relationships. And you have to remember that trust is the main key to everything, but so is love and understanding. And you have to be there for each other. And you have to really feel like you have feelings for each other or you can't be a couple.

• You have to make sure there's respect. If there's not the respect that you need, then you're not gonna have a good relationship.

• I think that in every situation you're kind of friends before, I mean, ëcause somebody's not just gonna come up to you and say, hey, let's go out. You might do that when you get older, but right now when you talk to the person at least a little bit before, you got to know them before you can go out.

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About Love:

• I think that you can love at this age because I really don't think it's the age that matters.

• A lot of kids will say that we're too young to know what real love is, but I think that if you have strong enough feelings for somebody, you can love them at any time.

• Do you believe in love at first sight? Yeah, like when you see this hot guy walking down the street, oh my god, I love him.

• I don't think you can love him right away, until you know him. Until you know stuff about him, that he'll respect you and stuff. You can't be walking down the street and here's this guy and yell across the street, hey I love you. You don't even know who he is. He could have come out of the bushes.

• You can't love somebody just because they're hot. You have to know about them, and what about their personality?

• Everybody's love is different. Everybody has like a different feeling of what they think love is.

• And sometimes different loves like, love for your for siblings, love for your mom, love for boyfriends, love for a pet. You have no, nuttin' sick or anything, but like love for a friend. And there's all kinds of different loves. So, you can't really tell which one's which.
  
  
• You could care for em as in a friend love, but you wouldn't know if its true love like, like I want to marry him love or something.

• I've never loved anybody. I've been obsessed with somebody, but not like in love with em. I know like a lot of people who just say love comes with maturity. And we don't have the maturity to really care for somebody. I know I haven't loved.

• At our age, you have to remember that guys are gonna change so much from what they look like right now. People that you think are the ugliest people could be like the hottest people later.

• Some of the people in our school, they're really weird. And guys they're just players. They go out with you for a day or a week and they dump you and then they go to your friend. One of my friends does that and she's a girl. They move along through a group and then when they're done with that group it's on to the next group. Yeah one day I don't like you because you have a big nose. Or I don't like you anymore because you have ugly hair. Yeah well then why did you go out with us in the first place? Are they trying to think they can get some?

About Sex:

• I feel that young teenagers are not ready to have sex because they are too young. If they can't talk about having sexual intercourse, then they shouldn't even be participating in it.

• In a way you can say it's wrong because first of all we're too young and we don't really take it seriously. We don't really consider the consequences. When we're having sexual intercourse, at that time we don't think about the diseases that we can get from having sexual intercourse and I just think that if you're not ready to be talking about it or talking about protection then you're not ready at all to have sex.

• I feel like me and a couple of my good friends are like the only virgins of the school. One girl said that it was fun. I think if you love that person it's all right but you don't just do it for enjoyment. A lot of people just think it's fun.

• I don't want to have sex until I'm married.

• I don't want to have sex until I get a lot older.

• I think it's kind of sick, yeah, really disgusts me. Sometimes, you know, you like fantasize. I mean when you really like think about it, as if you were going to come down to it, it's really like ew.

• If they're gonna do it, they should like make sure that they use protection.

• It's illegal for kids our age to have sex.

• I think nowadays, sex is just physical.

• It was all about love and now it's just like there's no feeling to it.

• Now it's just for pleasure.
  
  
• I think kids are having sex because they maybe want to get it over with or maybe they're just really horny or something.

• I know a lot of people that are just doing it just to do it. Not like they need to be loved, or not that they have to be part of the crowd, just ëcause it feels good, I guess. That's what they say.

• There's no reason for a young girl our age to be having sex ëcause they could say that it feels good, but they ain't really in love. They don't know what love is.

• I don't think sex before marriage is that bad. I mean, it's not like a really good decision, but if you are in love and you think it's like a good thing, I think that you should use protection any time you have sex and there is always a chance of getting disease, but there's always that you won't get it either and if you use protection, I don't know.

• I think sex before marriage isn't good, but I don't think its like necessarily a bad thing, because obviously like we're in the 1990's. It's not exactly a good thing, because diseases are being spread and stuff. If you and your spouse or mate actually love each other and you both decide that you want to, if you both use good protection and you both decide you want to, then it's your choice.

• If somebody wants to have sex, I'm like no, you know. I'm not the type of person to be doing all that crazy stuff and I'm just like, I just have the power to say no and stick to my gun and I think that really helps.

• I think having sex as a teenager is really stupid.

• I am not allowed to date until I'm sixteen. I've gone out with guy friends and actually, I'm glad I can't date ëtil I'm sixteen, ëcause I don't think I'm ready for it. There's too much pressure to go far with a guy, and also, when I am sixteen, I would rather go out with a big group of friends, because I think that would take a lot of the pressure off and that would actually be a lot funner.

• Most of the people I hang around with really good kids and they don't do any of like that sexual activity or drugs and alcohol, so basically I don't know too many people who are sexually active right now.

• I'm glad that I have to wait until I'm sixteen to get put in that position to have to back out if I do have to. I better hurry up and get ready for it. I don't think I could, I hope I could, but I don't know if I could.

• I don't think sex is really appropriate for this age because I think you're still too young and you're still adjusting and stuff and you should wait until you're older, older, and you're like with the one that you really want to be with.

• I think abstinence is the key.

• We're like too young for sex. We're not the kind of people who would go out and have sex all day.

• I think it's probably going to happen to everybody, right or wrong, nineteen to twenty-five or something.
  
  
• There's pressure to look good and wear the right clothes and go farther with a guy and everything. This one guy asked me if I would have sex before I'm married, and I said "No way, I don't believe in that," and they made fun of me and taunted me about that and everything. That's peer pressure, but I'm not gonna change the way I feel about it and peer pressure doesn't effect my opinion about things.

• I'm not gonna get it on with a guy.

• Society puts labels on us ands thinks everyone is having sex. Society paints a bad picture of teens.

• I don't think anyone has the will power to just say stop. You tell me, I'm in the middle of something, you're not just gonna jump up and yell stop.

• I don't know if I would. I don't know if I could. I don't know.

• Like people always talk about abstinence and just say no and everything. But when you get to a certain point, you just can't stop right in the middle and say stop.

• Once you're in the moment it's hard to get out of the moment.
  
  
• If you went out with this guy for a long time and you really knew him, I think then you could. ëCause if he really loved you, he couldn't care if you didn't want to do that but if it's just a guy you don't really know, I think it'd be harder.

• I think if the guy really loved you, he'd understand no matter what. But I think it would be so hard to just like all of a sudden just stop in the middle of what you're doing.

• Sex is that I'll do it when I want and that's my decision.

• There's like this commercial on the radio, it's like you have a right to say no, and it's like all these different voices just repeating it over and over again. And like it made me think, well I have a right to say yes too, you know.

• I think it's good that they do all those commercials, but they're also making it sound like you're bad if you have sex.

• You have the right to say no. There's nobody that can tell you, now you have to do this with me.

• I think that there's a lot more pressure for girls to have sex in middle school and high school because of other people doing it and on TV. It's all over the movies and people that other people look up to. Other teenagers look up to. If you see them sprawled out on a bed on TV, that's your role model right there. And I think that females have more pressure to be sexually active with men because they see it more when their role models are being sexually active in front of them. And not just role models who are on TV, but role models maybe in their household, or maybe their relatives or their cousins or their best friends or their teachers. They think that it's okay to do that, and it's considered the cool thing or the in thing to do to be accepted.

• I don't feel any pressure to do drugs or have sex.

• I think a lot of kids don't get informed. I think if parents tell them, they're more likely to not have sex before they're married, but a lot of parents are uncomfortable talking about that and that's why I'm not going to have sex before I'm married, because of my parents. So I think that if other parents talked about with their kids they wouldn't either.

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About Sexual Assault:

• A couple of my friends have been raped. One girl I know got raped by her uncle and another time got raped by a friend of the family. If they're in jail, good. You just don't do that to your family members or your friends family members. It's just not appropriate and it just makes me so angry. She was in second grade and first grade at the time and that makes me so angry that they would do that to such an innocent little girl.

• If they're that horny that they have to go find somebody else, just to do that, that is really plain sick.

• It's not like the person who got raped, it's not their fault.

• If they're at a party or something, and they know they're with a person that they can't really trust, you shouldn't go get drunk with em. So they can in a way, help themselves. But some of them it just comes on when they're in a park or something.

• Rape is a very hard situation for me to talk about. It hasn't happened to me, but it's just a hard situation for anybody to talk about because rape is something that a girl doesn't want and a boy just forces on her. I think it's wrong and whoever does it just should be in jail for life, for a long time because it's just not anything right to do.

• I watch a lot of talk shows and it was saying that the reason why most teenage girls are promiscuous is because they were sexually abused as children or they weren't raised right. You have a lot of sex partners and you don't really know who they are. They were saying the reason why they do it is because they want to find someone that'll love em. You know because they didn't have love when they were younger.

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And About Pregnancy, Birth Control and Protection:

• I mean if you're so eager to have sex then you should use a condom or something.

• I think it's alright, but you got to use is protection ëcause all these kids out here getting pregnant and they don't know what to do with their kid.

• Sex is a serious issue. You shouldn't bring a baby into the world without knowing that it can have a loving, caring home, and that you can provide everything for it. And I think you shouldn't have sex until you're married and you can provide what you need and you have somebody help you raise a child.
  
  
• A lot of people in my family and a lot of people that I know that are in high school have had sex with guys. And the guys have left them when they got pregnant or got any type of disease from them, and they just totally are emotionally disrupt and they don't know what to do. I'm not promising myself to wait until I'm married, I think I'm gonna wait until personally I'm ready and I believe that if I were to get pregnant that that person would actually pay for the child and I'd be able to take care of the child myself also.

• I can't say I'm not gonna have sex before I'm married, because I don't know what I'm gonna do. But I don't wanna have sex before I'm married because of STD's and I don't wanna get pregnant at an early age because I wanna be able to live my childhood.

• My biggest fear is that I'll make a wrong decision, like have sex before I'm married and get pregnant and just make a wrong turn in life and that I can't turn around and fix.

• If you're ready to have premarital sex that's your choice. I'm not gonna tell you not to do it, because it's so much out there, but you have to think of the factors. Like there's STDS, you can get pregnant no matter how much protection and what if it happens, it's gonna bring a new life into the world.

• You may get money from the father, and you know your parents may give you money to help you take care of the kid, but money is not really what it needs. It needs the love and the attention. And I don't know if anyone at our age is ready to give a child.
  
  
• I'm tired of baby-sitting other people's kids sometimes, can you imagine having your own all the time?

• Especially if you had to take care of it by yourself, because the father ran off and I don't think anybody our age would be able to deal with that.
  
  
• Why do you think girls want to have babies?

• Cause they think they'll have somebody to love, care about.

• I think it's because they think it's cool because grownups are doing it so then if they have babies then they'll be like a grownup.

• They think that they'll become more mature after they have a baby.

• One of my friends had a baby. I don't want it to happen to me so that's why I just say no.

• One of my good friends got pregnant when she was fourteen, and she said her boyfriend is like "I'm mature enough, I can pull out in time," and they were having unprotected sex, and it only took like one time, and she was pregnant.

• She's got to deal with that all of her life.

• I wouldn't want to handle that. I'd have to give up everything. I'd go nuts.

• I have a fifteen year old friend who's due anytime, and she's going through a lot right now, and it's really hard on everybody because we have to be there for her and I don't think she realizes just how much it's taking out of everybody else. I know that it's really hard for my parents to understand that I have to be there for her because they don't agree at all. They don't back her up at all, and it's really hard to be there for her when my parents are not behind her at all. Her mom thinks it's okay and so my mom and dad don't talk to her mom and it's become pretty bad and she's due anytime. Today was her last day of school and for the rest of the year, so she won't be finishing her freshman year and she's gonna miss a lot. I think just letting her know that I'm there for her. It's really hard to accept that because she's done a lot of stuff that I don't agree with and I know that all I can do is be there for her and just tell her that I am even if I'm really not.
  
  
• I personally believe in abstinence. My best friend from where I used to live has gotten herself into some trouble. She is fifteen and is pregnant, so that has a lot to do with my opinion on it. I have seen what she and her parents are going through, and I know this sounds kind of self-centered, but I know what I've gone through with it. It hurts me a lot to see her like that. We had a lot of plans for ourselves, and we used to like sit and discuss everything that was supposed to go on, and you kind of know it's not going to happen. Like the wedding, and what day you're gonna get married and who you're gonna marry and everything like that. And how many kids you're gonna have and it's not gonna happen. I hope to wait till I'm married and more or less I hope I can wait and I hope I can be strong enough to overcome all the needs and wants....

• I think you should just be responsible. Why would you wanna get pregnant, because then you can't go on and be what you wanna because you have to take care of somebody, you have to take care of someone you brought into this world?

• I don't think I'll be getting pregnant any time soon because I told my mom that I don't want kids until I get old enough to have them and to have responsibility because if I were to get pregnant, what would I do? Who would I be, I wouldn't be anybody if I got pregnant now. I couldn't do anything if I got pregnant or if I ran away, or something. I couldn't be anybody. I want to be successful when I get older so I don't think I would be anybody if I got pregnant.

• I think if you have a boyfriend, it's okay, it's just that they can't be four or five years older than you, cause you know, that gets out of hand. And things go wrong if you have a boyfriend that's older than you. I mean, cause if you're about thirteen, fourteen, you don't want to go out with guys that are your age cause they're immature. So, what are you suppose to do? And you know, you want to go, we go out and we find older guys and sometimes when you find an older guy they go too fast and you don't want to go that fast.

• Take it slow.

• I don't like when boys rush it too much, and I just want to take it slow.

• I mean, if you want to take it slow, then some people I know, they take it too fast. A lot of people just take it faster than you're supposed to, and they if you go out with an older guy, and you know you're going out with an older guy, you don't take it that slow. And you don't take it that fast. You got to know who you're going out with, and what age and what they been doing and how they are.
  
  
• I think that sex before marriage is a bad decision to make, because if you have sex and don't use protection and if you get pregnant and that guy might just leave you and then that baby will be without a father and plus you can get many diseases like AIDS and STD's and that stuff.

• I think that telling us to wait until we're married to have sex is unrealistic because there are lots of people that are doing it right now anyway. So many people aren't going to listen to them because they think that that's dumb and I think that waiting until you're married isn't sure proof that you're not gonna get an STD. I mean what if your husband didn't wait until he was married and he has an STD? I mean you don't have to be sleeping with like twenty people at a time to get. Well, wouldn't you want your husband to get an STD test before you had sex? Usually like when you get married you have blood tests. I mean that's the only sure way. You're not going to ask your boyfriend to see if you guys have AIDS or something. So then keeping your virginity until you are married is a good thing to do.

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Beyond the Butterfly is co-produced by Wisconsin Public Television and NEWIST/CESA #7 (Northeastern Wisconsin In-School Telecommunications).