I was sixteen. Leona was seventeen. Leona was one of my friend Janine’s best friends. On the day I met Leona, the three of us joined around twenty-five other teens on a trip to the regional Six Flags theme park. The three of us spent the entire day together in May of my sophomore year of high school. Janine and Leona were juniors. Janine went to my school. Leona went to Janine’s old school and I had never met Leona before.
On the two hour drive to Six Flags, Janine, Leona and I shared a wide seat in one of the vans taking us to the theme park. I got to know Leona over a long animated conversation during which it became clear to me that Leona and I shared the same kind of humor that Janine particularly appreciated. Janine was laughing during almost the entire ride sandwiched in the middle of the seat between me and Leona.
As we walked into the theme park, Janine and Leona shared some private words they whispered back and forth to one another. Then at the very first theme park ride, Janine moved forward past Leona, effectively changing the seating order. The significance was not lost on me. Janine got in first, followed by Leona and I squeezed in last. I put my arm around Leona’s shoulders. She made herself comfortable leaning into my side before she looked at me and said, “I have a boyfriend. OK?”
It is possible Leona was making a weak attempt at saying no. But I interpreted her words to mean that whatever was going to happen between us that day would last only that day. And in the last remaining seconds before the first ride started, I decided to accept Leona’s terms. “That’s alright,” I replied and I squeezed her just a little tighter.
Leona and I spent the rest of the day ostentatiously close to one another under Janine’s non-judgmental eye. The closest thing we had to privacy took place in a photo booth after we ate lunch. Leona reminded me she had a boyfriend and I reiterated that I accepted that fact. And then we shared our first kiss. The kissing resumed during the ride home. We sat in the back seat of a station wagon. A parent we didn’t know was driving. Leona sat in the middle between me and Janine. Janine pretended to sleep. Leona reminded me she had a boyfriend one last time and I reiterated that I accepted that fact. We then spent the bulk of the two hour drive home slouched in one another’s arms kissing. After that day, I neither saw nor spoke to Leona again. Every once in a while I would ask Janine about Leona and Janine would merely tell me that Leona was doing fine.
Now I am the parent of a teenage boy and a somewhat soon-to-be teenage girl. I have become aware that hookups are very common among high school students. By hookups, I mean kissing or more between two people who are not in a committed relationship. Decades ago, Leona and I kept our hookup tame; we only kissed. But Philip has peers at Hermes High School who not only hook up frequently, but also sometimes do much more than kiss during their hookups. At this age, it is mainly the girls hooking up with older guys.
From my adult and parent’s perspective, I do not like teen hookups. I would like to tell Philip and Chloe that I carry a great sense of guilt over what transpired between me and Leona that day decades ago. But that would be a lie, and I do not ever lie to them. Instead, how I feel is much more complicated. I have two key regrets about how I handled relationships in general at that age. If I had handled relationships differently, my day with Leona would have played out much differently.
1. I regret that I did not apply myself to developing good relationship skills. Instead, I applied myself to developing my charm. The result was that I became very good at attracting a girlfriend (or the rare hookup like Leona). But I was not capable of sustaining my relationships or even ending them in an emotionally healthy manner. And so the ultimate outcome was a lot of avoidable heartache and fewer happy memories for both me and the teenage girls in my life at the time.
2. I regret that I did not have a clear set of rules regarding romance and intimacy. It was only when I reached college that I set my own rules for what I would permit myself to do outside a committed relationship, what I would do only within the confines of a committed relationship and what I would wait for until I was married. Once I made those rules for myself, kissing was something I did only inside the confines of a committed relationship. Today, I hope Philip and Chloe will decide to adopt rules similar to those I set for myself in college.
With the recent revelation about Erica’s hookup behavior, I find Erica’s words to Philip early in the year about her poor relationship skills quite haunting. Many teens today take the same naïve and unplanned approach relationships that I did decades ago. And many teens like Erica take my naïve approach much further. Teen hookups won’t go away and they won’t be tamed. But I don’t see teen hookups as being universal either. I know that there are also many teens among Philip’s peers who are determined to pursue their relationships in a mature and emotionally healthy manner. Such teens are willing to forego the short term pleasures of a teen romance or hookup in order to stay on course with their more long term goals and values.
Good relationship skills and a sense of direction can be developed over the course of adolescence in step with the development of charm and desire. That is the way I am raising Philip and Chloe. And I know many of my parent peers are giving similar instructions about relationships to their kids. But with the freedoms of adulthood so close on the horizon, this is not something parents can simply control. It is up to our teens to decide for themselves.
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