Antidepressants Blog

If you’ve asked a certain person out a number of times and that person keeps saying no, then perhaps you just have to face the fact that this person doesn’t want to go out with you. It can be difficult to know exactly how many times you should ask before giving up altogether. In part it will depend on what the person says when turning you down. If the person tells you that he or she is already dating someone else or simply isn’t interested in you, then that’s a pretty clear sign that you should stop asking. But if the person says ‘I’m sorry, but I’m busy’ or doesn’t give a clear reason for saying no, you might want to try again. Perhaps the person really is busy, but would like to go out with you another time. But if you’ve tried a few times and have had this kind of reply, you might want to say something like ‘Is there a time when we could get together?’ The answer to this question will usually give a clear idea of whether it’s worth continuing to ask this person out.

If you’ve asked a number of different people out and all of them have said no, you may start to feel discouraged. You may even start to feel that there’s something so wrong or so horrible about you that no one will ever say yes. But before you allow yourself to feel down and discouraged, you might think for a moment about just who it is you’re asking out. Maybe you’re asking the wrong people. Are you asking only the best-looking or most popular people? If so, this may be part of your problem. For one thing, the best-looking and most popular people may already have lots of people asking them out, so your chances aren’t as good as they would be if you asked someone less popular or not totally gorgeous. The fact that someone is popular or good-looking doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to have a great time with that person. What’s more important is whether the person is nice, whether the two of you could be comfortable with each other, whether you could have fun together. The person’s inner qualities are more important than being popular or good-looking.

You might also ask yourself how well you know the people you’re asking out. If you’re asking people you hardly know, this may be a big part of the reason you keep getting turned down. If you take the time to get to know someone and to let them get to know you first, you’ll have a better chance of having the person say yes when you ask for a date.

It might also be helpful for you to have a mutual friend check things out before you ask for a date. Your friend can give you an idea of how the person might respond. If the person isn’t interested, you’ll save yourself the discouragement of being turned down again. In addition, you might ask some of your friends who they think you should ask for a date. People love to play matchmaker and your friends may come up with someone you wouldn’t have thought of by yourself. They may even know someone who’s been dying to go out with you! So don’t hesitate to enlist your friends’ help.

Above all, don’t give up. Somewhere out there is someone who’d just love to go out with you. We guarantee it!

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This question came out of our Everything You Ever Wanted To Know question box. Questions like this often come up in our classes because, as we go through puberty, many of us experience stronger romantic and/or sexual feelings than ever before in our lives. For some of us this means spending time imagining a passionate romance with a special someone or having sexual fantasies. For some it means having the urge to masturbate more often. For some it means getting interested in the opposite sex, having crushes, or going out with boy-friends or

girl-friends.

These romantic and sexual feelings can be very intense and distracting. It may even seem as if romance and sex are all you can think about. Some young people get so preoccupied that it’s a bit frightening for them. If, like the girl who asked the above question, you’ve been worried about your strong romantic or sexual feelings, it helps to know that these feelings are perfectly normal and natural and that a lot of people your age are going through the same thing.

In addition to questions like the one above, we also get questions like this one:

My friends are always talking about girls and sex and everything. But I’m just not interested in girls in a romantic way yet. Do you think there’s something wrong with me?

When boys and girls ask questions like this, we explain that although puberty is a time of strong sexual or romantic feelings for many young people, not everyone experiences these feelings. Some boys and girls are more involved in sports, school, music, a job or some other aspect of their lives, and romance and sex just aren’t major interests for them. Just as we all have our own personal timetables of development for the body changes of puberty, so we all have our own personal timetables when it comes to romance and sexual interests. Some boys and girls begin to experience strong romantic or sexual feelings while they’re still young. Others don’t have these feelings until they’re older. If you’re worried that there’s something wrong with you because your friends all seem to be having strong romantic or sexual attractions and you’re not interested yet, you can stop worrying. There’s nothing wrong with you. Your personal timetable is just different from theirs. So, you can relax, knowing that sooner or later, these things will start happening to you.

The boys and girls in our classes are curious about anything and everything having to do with sexuality, and they’re especially curious about the kinds of romantic and sexual feelings that young people have when they’re growing up. Therefore, they ask questions like the ones we’ve just mentioned and also questions about things like sex play, crushes, falling in love, kissing, necking, petting and having intercourse (to mention just a few). You may be curious about these things too, so in this chapter we’re going to talk about them. We can’t promise that we’ll answer all your questions in just this one chapter. But we would like to say a bit about these issues and we hope we’ll answer at least some of your questions.

Some of the sections in this chapter deal with topics that come up mostly in our classes for younger boys and girls. Other sections deal with topics that usually come up only in our classes for older boys and girls. So, depending on your age, you may find that you’re more interested in certain sections than in others. For instance, if you’ve just started to go through puberty, you may not be particularly interested in the section that deals with making decisions about how to handle your romantic and sexual feelings. This issue may simply not be very important in your life yet. If you aren’t particularly interested in some sections, you may want to skip them for the present. Of course, it’s perfectly all right for you to read these sections – it never hurts to think about these issues ahead of time. Whether or not you read these sections now, we hope you will come back to them later, when you’re older and these things are issues in your life.

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As a general rule, you can’t get STDs from kissing; however, herpes and syphilis can cause sores on the genitals. If you had oral-genital sex with someone who had a herpes or syphilis sore on the genitals, then you could get a sore on your lips. Or if you kissed a person who had such a sore on his or her lips, you could get the infection. You can’t get AIDS from ‘dry’ kissing, and ‘wet’, or French, kissing is probably safe too. Although small amounts of HIV may be present in saliva, experts doubt that such small amounts could cause infection. But it’s best to be careful who you French kiss.

Can you get an STD from a toilet seat, a drinking glass, a flannel, a towel or some other object?

Again, generally speaking, the answer to this question is no, because the germs that cause most STDs usually die almost instantly when they leave the mucous membranes of the human body and come in contact with the air.

However, there have been some cases of people developing certain STDs from objects. For example, if you used an object, such as a drinking glass, a flannel or towel soon after it had come in contact with a mouth sore of a person who had syphilis or herpes, you could pick up the disease. Or, if you used a flannel or towel soon after it was used by someone who had pubic lice or an STD discharge from their penis or vagina, you might pick up the infection. Or if you somehow managed to put the mucous membrane of your sex organs in contact with a toilet seat that had just been used by a person with an STD discharge or sore and that person’s sore or discharge had come in contact with the toilet seat, it is conceivable that you could get an STD in this way. But such a series of events is highly unlikely. So, practically speaking, it is highly unlikely for a person to get an STD from a toilet seat.

We should also mention that you can’t get an STD from a swimming pool, by sitting on someone’s lap with your clothes on, from the air, from masturbating yourself or in any ways other than the ones we’ve mentioned so far.

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Different people would answer this question somewhat differently. For instance, some people feel that abortion is morally wrong, that it is the same as murder, and that it should be outlawed. They feel that a pregnant woman should have her baby and either keep the child or put it up for adoption. Since these people feel that abortion is morally wrong, they would, of course, feel that using it as a regular method of contraception (or, indeed, ever) is not OK.

Other people don’t feel that abortion is morally wrong nor that it is equivalent to murder. These people feel that abortion is a private matter between a woman and her doctor, that a woman should have the right to decide what goes on inside her body and that she should be able to decide whether or not she wants to have a baby. But even people who feel abortion is morally acceptable often feel that it’s not right or ethical for a person to rely on abortion as a regular method of birth control. They feel that abortion should be used only as a ‘back-up’ measure when the regular method has failed to prevent pregnancy and the woman doesn’t want to continue the pregnancy.

Aside from the moral and ethical reasons, there are also good medical reasons why people shouldn’t forego using other methods and have abortions whenever they become pregnant. If a woman didn’t use contraception, she’d probably find herself getting pregnant at least once a year, if not more often. Having one or two abortions in a lifetime doesn’t do any damage to a woman’s body or affect her future chances of having a normal pregnancy, but there is some evidence that having more than two abortions, say three or even four, might make it more difficult for a woman to get pregnant or more likely for her to have a miscarriage or a premature birth in the future. Doctors aren’t yet sure whether or not three or four abortions will have bad effects. But, almost all doctors agree that having more frequent abortions isn’t a good idea.

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The IUD is also called the coil or loop. It is a plastic and copper device between 20 and 40 mm (about 1—1? in) long that is inserted into a woman’s uterus by a doctor. When in place, it can’t be felt. It protects against pregnancy as long as it remains in the uterus. Depending on the type used, the IUD may be left in place for three to five years. A woman can’t remove an IUD herself, her doctor must both insert and remove it. Although no one is entirely certain how it works, it is thought that the copper on the IUD inhibits sperm movement, preventing them from reaching the ovum, and that the presence of an IUD makes it impossible for a fertilized ovum to plant itself in the uterus.

Natural Family Planning (NFP)-NFP is also called fertility awareness. It involves a woman learning to tell when during each menstrual cycle she is most likely to be fertile (that is, capable of becoming pregnant) and refraining from sexual intercourse at that time. People who use NFP have three techniques for determining when the woman is fertile:

1. daily observations of the mucus secreted by her cervix (certain changes in the mucus indicate fertile times) this is called the cervical mucus (Billings) method;

2. charts of her daily body temperature (slight changes in body temperature indicate when the fertile time is past);

3. keeping track of the days of the cycle on a calendar to predict fertile times.

Using techniques 1 and 2 together is called the sympto-thermal method and is the most effective means of NFP. Using only the calendar technique is called the rhythm method. The rhythm method alone is not a very effective method of preventing pregnancy and therefore is not recommended. NFP should be taught by a qualified NFP teacher; it cannot be learned from a leaflet or book.

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