A lot of girls who are in relationships often forget that relationships are a two way street. Read more...

People never change. When people claim, “I’m a changed man” or “I’m a changed woman”, I quickly pay no attention to it because I strongly believe that people never change. Read more...

 When I came to high school and met Sherry, I thought that she was the perfect girl. Read more...

The following originally aired on KCBS.

By: Meisha Sanders

Not everyone likes to date outside their race, but race doesn’t matter to me.

When I asked my dad what he would do if I dated outside my race he told me, “I don’t rock like that.” That made me question who I should or shouldn’t bring home. He doesn’t want someone else’s family to be judgmental towards me.

But race isn’t a factor to me when I date. When I meet someone I just look at their personality traits. If a guy has a sense of humor and lets me have space, we could have a great relationship.

My aunt and uncle are not the same race but they click. I always see them talking and making each other laugh. Sometimes when my aunt and uncle walk down the street they get funny looks but they don’t care about anybody else’s opinion.

I agree with my aunt and uncle that race doesn’t matter. I only wish my dad felt the same way.

The following originally aired on KQED-FM.

By: Rachel Krantz

“You guys have been dating 5 months? And you're going to live out of a car together for how long?” That was the reaction we usually got when we told people about our summer plans.

Staring out of opposite windows in Minnesota, it was starting to seem like a valid concern. My boyfriend Ethan and I were just 2 weeks into our romantic journey, but the honeymoon was definitely over.

We'd come up with the idea just a few months after we'd met: What if we took all summer to drive cross-country and collected America's first love stories? The idea was simple and lovesick, like our new, seemingly flawless relationship.

Talking about sex may not be the most comfortable conversation for people, but it’s definitely something young people are talking about more than ever. Students of Wesleyan University created the “I Have Sex” video as their way to protest against the cuts that would target Planned Parenthood. The video shows young people holding a sign and admitting that they are sexually active and on birth control.

Planned Parenthood provides affordable forms of birth control and contraceptives, sex-ed programs, free cancer screenings, pap smears, gynecological exams, free STI and STD testing and other health services.

It seems today that many high school relationships don’t work out because of miss communication and issues such as commitment, trust, support and other differences. For example, communication in a relationship is important because you can express your feelings towards one another. Read more...

This commentary originally aired on WAMU, American University Radio in Washington, D.C.

By Destiny Jackson

It’s normal for teenage girls to get messages on their Myspace or Facebook pages from guys they don’t know. They say things like, “Hey, you look good.” Or simply, “Wats good?”

I always play it safe and ignore these guys -- I don’t know who they are or what their intent is. But one day last year, my best friend found a stranger’s message waiting on her page and she replied.

They started writing back and forth and she realized he had first written to her because she was cute. When he wrote messages like "Baby, you the one for me," she began to feel he truly cared for her. Pretty soon he wrote, "When are we going to see each other?"

I told my friend I was very suspicious -- how did she know this guy wasn’t a grown man who planned to kidnap her? But she met him anyway, alone. Turned out, he was just another teenager from outside DC.

Still, he worried me.

I worried that while my friend said the relationship was serious, she never introduced him to her parents or friends. I worried that no one knew him or even had a connection to him. On dates, they would meet alone at the movie theater or at his house, in a part of Maryland we didn’t know well. And I worried that this 15-year-old guy only wanted one thing from my 14-year-old friend -- sex.

One day she told me she was going to skip school to go to his house. I told her it was dangerous to sneak off without telling someone exactly where she would be. She didn't listen.

After first period music class, the school alerted my friend’s parents that she hadn’t shown up for class.

Then, about half an hour later, my friend called the school crying. Her boyfriend had hurt her and tried to rape her, she said. And she needed to get away from him. Her mom drove to pick her up and the school called the police.

In the end, he didn’t cause much physical harm -- just a few bruises she got while struggling to escape. Things could have been much worse. I could have lost my best friend that day.

For adults, Internet dating has become more and more normal and probably nothing to worry about. But teens may be putting themselves in danger when they seek romance online. If you’re dating someone you know only through the Internet, be honest with your
parents or another adult you trust. Because as teens, our online communities may be growing every day, but the only space where there is reliable accountability is in our real-life community.

These commentaries by D.C. area teens are part of a collaboration between WAMU's Youth Voices program, Youth Radio and the Latin American Youth Center.

This commentary originally aired on WAMU, American University Radio in Washington, D.C.

By Camille Moore

Let’s face it fellow teenagers, all of those juicy blogs, magazines and TV shows we love know exactly how we think. They fill their pages and screens with fashion tips, workout plans and romantic advice:vital information for a 15-year-old girl whose hormones are raging. But they don’t always use this knowledge for good.

With all the media I’m exposed to, I’m often left to wonder, "Are my clothes cute enough?,” “Is my body thin enough?” and “When should I experience the big "S-E-X" to fit in with the crowd?”

The way teen-targeted magazines answer that last question can be particularly problematic. Do I really need an article entitled “How to get the sexiest guy in school with just 3 easy steps?" or what about a recent Glamour magazine cover, which promised to teach readers how to give a guy, “The best sex he’s ever had?”

It seems like the media has thrown the old just-be-yourself philosophy out the window. It falls to parents to teach those kinds of lessons. But parents are often too scared of teenage sex to have an honest conversation about it.

I remember when my mom found my brother's sex magazines. She went into hysterics. Then she sat him down and told him, “Son, if you engage in sexual activities, you might catch something from one of these fast little girls and your ‘you know what’ might fall off.”

No curious teen wants to be lectured by his parents on how sex is a terrible thing to do at a young age and how it would be ten times better if he waited until marriage. Most teenagers won’t buy that argument.

If the media can find the keys to the teen psyche, parents can too. They can start by getting tips from the same magazines we do.

Alright, it is hilarious to imagine mom and dad sipping coffee and opening an issue of Seventeen magazine instead of the morning newspaper, but now when I’m done reading an issue of my favorite magazine, I give it to my mom. It’s opened our relationship.

Now instead of her running into my room to ask “Why did I just see the words ‘birth control’ pop up on Google’s history?,” she approaches me with “Have you seen this article about the new birth control pill?”

In other words, the “Talk” isn’t a lecture anymore, but an actual conversation.

These commentaries by D.C. area teens are part of a collaboration between WAMU's Youth Voices program, Youth Radio and the Latin American Youth Center.

The Tiger Woods cheating app is now available. Ok, not really, but if you’re the type that dates A LOT of people there is a new app that can help you juggle those romantic meetings, so they don’t overlap.

DateMate serves as a digital planner, the kind that keeps you're booty calls and potential partners organized. The app lets you rate a date and allows you to keep track of how many times you’ve been intimate with ALL your dates and then breaks it down in a graph form.

The basic idea of DateMate is that it allows you to enter details about your partners—birthdays, contact information, silly things that you should recall—and track your encounters with them. The app offers a calendar so that you can keep track of whose bed you were in on which night and a way to rank the dates and create notes about them. Once you've got a bunch of dates under your belt, you can even generate graphs of your activities and compare frequency, quality, and progress.

via Gizmodo

With this app being a player can get easier.