YOU MAY BE IN LOVE MANY TIMES

            By Susan Browing Pogany

            The love relationship you're in today is probably not the love of your life. Studies show that most people have seven or eight romances before they marry. You need to ask yourself whether you think making love is truly special or something to do with almost any partner you like a lot.

             Love can be pure bliss one day and a disaster the next. One week you think your partner is perfect, and the next week you may be deeply disappointed and aware of their failings. You may go from admiring their every movement to being bugged by just about anything they do. In other words, your attraction can be intense and positive, but your feelings can change quickly.

            If you assume that feelings of intense attraction should naturally lead to sex, you may end up mistrusting your judgment.

            Many teenagers think that having premarital sex (sex before marriage) isn't a great idea, but they think they might do it anyway if they are passionately "swept away" - that out-of-control feeling when "fireworks explode, waves pound, knees buckle, two hearts beat as one...."

           All this sounds exciting, but having sex because you feel swept away is not the same real love, and it usually does not lead to real love. It can, however, lead to pregnancy, because birth control isn't carefully planned ahead of time.

            When teens later realize that their sex partner was not the perfect person they imagined, they may feel awful.