[del677]

wolf whistle!

(Sorry I found that humorous! I can't believe he did that! At 2am! Oh what fun...)

Thank you for the story. If I understand correctly, the problem isn't with your new boyfriend (congratulations), the problem is with your conservative Christian parents who smoke cigarettes (which sounds like a rather odd contradiction! I'm pretty sure the smoking cigarettes is an important clue somehow...)

Who knows what parents are thinking! (I thought my mom understood me, after all she's known me for pretty much my whole life, so I was quite surprised when I learned she hadn't a clue... I still don't understand her, so I guess it goes both ways.)

(Sorry about the rape. You're not alone! I'm shocked to learn how many this has happened to! I used to think oh it was a rare thing, but now I'm starting to believe the opposite!)

So your parents worry about you?

Do you have any older brothers or sisters? (I'm the oldest, and I kinda feel like I'm the practice child, and after my parents practiced on me and screwed it up, then my younger brother came along and they got it right with him.)

My guess is parents don't even know what to worry about. Like sex? Which isn't even dangerous now that we have birth control? Maybe they should be more concerned about drugs. Or maybe they've been indoctrinated by their church to fear being a non-conforming Christian or not a Christian at all is the worst thing to fear. Maybe their child will grow up to be a Hindu or Buddhist or just a nice decent good all around person.

Kind of hard for me to give much advice because I come from a much more liberal part of the country where we're all "normal" (except for me of course).

That's not what I mean, I mean, where having a boyfriend is normal and it's normal for boyfriend and girlfriend to make out and I think my parents are worried about me because I'm not normal in this way (though not by choice! I'd love to have a partner, just really bad at finding one.)

OK the other thing is this uncomfortable feeling is in you, and it stems from a belief that what you do is somehow not normal, so you need to talk with some people who will reaffirm that this all actually is normal, (and where I live, first boyfriend at 18 may even be considered worrisome late, (except for me, I was 21, so I'm not exactly an expert on this!))

So that's my suggestion, is go find some people who will tell you that you are just fine as you are, that what you're doing is just fine and normal and ordinary. It could be your parents you talk to who tell you this, or someone else. If you get enough people telling you it's normal, then you will view your parents as being the abnormal ones, rather than yourself. (Or maybe they'll all say they have the same problem with their parents, and that's normal too!)