Scarleteen

Is 13 too young to wish I was dating? I feel like I'm not quite ready for penetrative/genital sex, maybe oral, but I just have this really terrible urge to be in love. I look online at cute couples ideas and there's so much I would be willing to do with another person. I would probably be dating by now with my attitude if I wasn't homeschooled with zero friends.

Hi lanadelneigh,

I really like the way Heather answers a very similar question here: https://www.scarleteen.com/article/rela ... or_romance. Part of why I like that answer is that it gets at the idea that there really isn't any good age (or bad age) for any given kind of relationship; age is just one component of whether we're ready for a certain thing.

Too, it's not that strange to be thirteen and wishing you were in love; culturally, romantic love is given a lot of attention and shown to be something that everyone should want and that's amazing to be in. Which means plenty of us end up wishing that amazing thing would happen to us pretty early on in our lives. Does that make sense?

It sounds like you don't have a school life (and maybe a social one) that's put you in contact with a lot of your peers. How do you feel about that?