Is is ok for a kid to not date (or interact with) the opposite sex until college?

[Anonymous]

OP what about trying Cotillion? There's another thread about that going right now.

[Anonymous]

It’s only an anecdote, but my SIL went to all girls catholic school and started dating the first guy she met her freshman year of college. She continued to date him after college, moved out of state with him, and bought an house with him. Last year he announced he is gay. She is 34 yrs old and she has dated 1 man. I thought he was gay the first time I met him 14 years ago. I think someone with more dating experience would have seen that coming or moved on after not getting engaged after 14 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand. I went to an all girls high school and we interacted a ton with our brother school. Does your daughter's school not have a brother school??? Does your daughter not do any non-school related activities? I mean sign her up for a co-ed sport of activity like karate, swimming, chess, music, etc...

OP is supposed to "sing up" her 10th grader?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Were you a slut in high school, OP? I can't imagine why someone would find this is as abnormal as you seem to?

What is wrong with you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s only an anecdote, but my SIL went to all girls catholic school and started dating the first guy she met her freshman year of college. She continued to date him after college, moved out of state with him, and bought an house with him. Last year he announced he is gay. She is 34 yrs old and she has dated 1 man. I thought he was gay the first time I met him 14 years ago. I think someone with more dating experience would have seen that coming or moved on after not getting engaged after 14 years.

Wait.....they had all of those milestones and still did not get engaged? Definitely a red flag

[Anonymous]

I went to an all-girls school and it definitely impacted me in a negative way socially. It was obvious freshman year of college that all my peers were so much more confident around boys. I felt awkward. I was also sophisticated in many ways and well above average in looks. I had four dates in one weekend in the second month of school, so there was interest, I just didn’t know how to handle it. I did a lot of ghosting when a guy liked me and I liked him back because I felt insecure and didn’t want to appear over-eager.

I ended up marrying the first man I was in a serious relationship with even though he was not the best match. I think had I had more dating experience earlier and more confidence with dating, I would have recognized that he wasn’t right for me and moved on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to an all-girls school and it definitely impacted me in a negative way socially. It was obvious freshman year of college that all my peers were so much more confident around boys. I felt awkward. I was also sophisticated in many ways and well above average in looks. I had four dates in one weekend in the second month of school, so there was interest, I just didn’t know how to handle it. I did a lot of ghosting when a guy liked me and I liked him back because I felt insecure and didn’t want to appear over-eager.

I ended up marrying the first man I was in a serious relationship with even though he was not the best match. I think had I had more dating experience earlier and more confidence with dating, I would have recognized that he wasn’t right for me and moved on.

I have a good friend from college with the same type of story. All girls high school, ended up marrying the first guy she had a relationship with and slept with, impulsively. He was not a good match and it completely derailed her life. I would never do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, it's not a good idea for them to never interact with boys who basically make up half the population. It's fine if they don't want to date, but they need to be used to interacting with boys at least platonically. Can she join something in the neighborhood? Community theatre or a church choir or any teen volunteer org?

I agree with this. I was really happy when my DD was 6-9 yrs old that she had many boys among her BFF group. She was sometimes the only girl invited to their birthday parties, and we always had a ton of girls and boys at DD's birthday parties.

Now DD is 13, in 8th grade, and her best friends are girls but she's got 2 boys she's really close to, they look out for her, she looks out for them, they all help each other with crushes (so far everyone has crushes on opposite sex, although DD's friend group has girls who i.d. as gay and a few others who are trans boys now).

Because the real world has all sorts of people, I VERY much want her to be used to navigating male/female dynamics. I want her to feel comfortable and confident around boys and soon young men, not feel she has to shrink herself or appear less smart or strong than she is. And I really want her to navigate romance dynamics while she's still in our home. Already she's had a Saturday where the boy she really liked and who said he liked her wasn't responding to texts or chats, and she was curled up in a ball in her room not wanting to go out at all and all teary. We had several good talks about what happened, "big problems" vs. "small problems" in the scheme of things, and also how important it is to think about how being friends with a particular person makes you feel and how it's important you spend way more time feeling good when you interact with them than feeling bad.

After all that, we made her go out with another friend that day, she had a great time, and since then there have been other boys and other unreturned messages, and she's really able to mostly let it roll off her back and keep moving forward and not worry about it. I much rather she wrestle with these dynamics at 13 when it's not intense yet, they're not going on actual dates yet, and who likes who changes weekly.

Never mind dynamics in class with ansewring questions and dealing with boys who don't like if you do better than them in things (or girls for that matter who are also competitive and mean). And dynamics with other girls around boys.

And then there is sexual contact, and as much as I"ll NEVER be ready for her to be sexually active, I also want any beginnings of it while she's under our roof. Right now she tends to share with me what's happening with her and her friends, I hope it continues as much as possible as those relationships get more complicated and involved.

Want her to navigate all those things before college so she knows herself, has experience in many of these social interactions, and isn't fielding all this for the 1st time at 18.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, it's not a good idea for them to never interact with boys who basically make up half the population. It's fine if they don't want to date, but they need to be used to interacting with boys at least platonically. Can she join something in the neighborhood? Community theatre or a church choir or any teen volunteer org?

I agree with this. I was really happy when my DD was 6-9 yrs old that she had many boys among her BFF group. She was sometimes the only girl invited to their birthday parties, and we always had a ton of girls and boys at DD's birthday parties.

Now DD is 13, in 8th grade, and her best friends are girls but she's got 2 boys she's really close to, they look out for her, she looks out for them, they all help each other with crushes (so far everyone has crushes on opposite sex, although DD's friend group has girls who i.d. as gay and a few others who are trans boys now).

Because the real world has all sorts of people, I VERY much want her to be used to navigating male/female dynamics. I want her to feel comfortable and confident around boys and soon young men, not feel she has to shrink herself or appear less smart or strong than she is. And I really want her to navigate romance dynamics while she's still in our home. Already she's had a Saturday where the boy she really liked and who said he liked her wasn't responding to texts or chats, and she was curled up in a ball in her room not wanting to go out at all and all teary. We had several good talks about what happened, "big problems" vs. "small problems" in the scheme of things, and also how important it is to think about how being friends with a particular person makes you feel and how it's important you spend way more time feeling good when you interact with them than feeling bad.

After all that, we made her go out with another friend that day, she had a great time, and since then there have been other boys and other unreturned messages, and she's really able to mostly let it roll off her back and keep moving forward and not worry about it. I much rather she wrestle with these dynamics at 13 when it's not intense yet, they're not going on actual dates yet, and who likes who changes weekly.

Never mind dynamics in class with ansewring questions and dealing with boys who don't like if you do better than them in things (or girls for that matter who are also competitive and mean). And dynamics with other girls around boys.

And then there is sexual contact, and as much as I"ll NEVER be ready for her to be sexually active, I also want any beginnings of it while she's under our roof. Right now she tends to share with me what's happening with her and her friends, I hope it continues as much as possible as those relationships get more complicated and involved.

Want her to navigate all those things before college so she knows herself, has experience in many of these social interactions, and isn't fielding all this for the 1st time at 18.

[Anonymous]

+1000, PP!

[Anonymous]

OP he’s gay.

[Anonymous]

I didn't have my first kiss till college. I did go to public school though so I was around boys.

[Anonymous]

OP, I wouldn’t be swayed by the fact that your daughter and her friends seem happy enough without male interaction. We often don’t know what we are missing. And if you didn’t have resources or time to worry about this, I would say it’s not a major problem. But it sounds like you have been purposeful in giving your daughter a great education and start in life, so I would look for a way to foster friendships with boys.

A community service club, being a camp counselor, signing up for coed group lessons for sports like biking, climbing or skiing would work- anything that has a schedule so that the kids expect to see each other on a regular basis. I would also try to dissuade your daughter from signing up with a friend, which would make her less open to meeting new people.

[Anonymous]

I'm surprised at all the negative answers. I went to an all girls' school and didn't interact much with boys until college. I was shy around boys for maybe the first week of college? but in a coed dorm I got over it quickly. I dated in college and grad school and am happily married to a man I met after grad school. Zero regrets about my all girls education and I'd send my daughter to a secular all girls' school in a heartbeat if I could find one around here.

Also, some of my high school classmates dated boys they met at extracurriculars, church, or our brother school. If your DD wants to find boys, she can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm surprised at all the negative answers. I went to an all girls' school and didn't interact much with boys until college. I was shy around boys for maybe the first week of college? but in a coed dorm I got over it quickly. I dated in college and grad school and am happily married to a man I met after grad school. Zero regrets about my all girls education and I'd send my daughter to a secular all girls' school in a heartbeat if I could find one around here.

Also, some of my high school classmates dated boys they met at extracurriculars, church, or our brother school. If your DD wants to find boys, she can.

I assume many women have the same experience as you, likely the majority of women who go to all girls’ schools. But it’s the smaller number of women who have difficulty that is concerning. Even if it’s a small minority, the repercussions of feeling socially awkward and even getting married to a bad match is bad enough that it’s worth worrying about. And whether it was causative or just correlated, it seems that some women think it stemmed from not having male friendship/romance before college. It does make sense in my mind that women who went to an all girls’ school and did not have male friendships prior to college would be more naive and have poorer judgment about relationships.