My sympathies, askye.

What on earth can a (much older) half-sister on the other side of the country do to try and make her see sense? Reason stands no hope against these hormones. *sigh*

How close are you two?

askye, I'm sorry about your grandma.

smonster, that's terrible.

erin-o, hrm. That's a hard one. I'd go with the reminding him that it might be statutory, sitting down with her and filling her in on all the shitty stuff he's done to other girls (and possibly making her draw the sex exponents with his known partners -- you know, you're fucking everyone he's fucked, and all the people THEY'Ve fucked, and so on...) and showing her very detailed pix of veneral diseases.

Barring that, just keeping chill. Forbidden fruit is very tasty, especially for teenagers, but the more you are just matter-of-fact and make him less like delicious buttery goodness and more like congealed fat wrung from from a bovine boob, the better .

{{{askye}}}

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e_o: If the boy is wanting to get into the Naval Academy, maybe point out that with a statutory rape charge, he couldn't get in. And even though she wants, it doesn't matter, because the stupid laws don't respect rights of teenagers. But if she really loves him, and wants him to succeed, she needs to stay at arms length from him. Otherwise he will end up a short order cook/gas station attendant/ some other menial job that she would not want to be married to (no offense to those who work those jobs, just trying to sell it in the eyes of a teenager). Just twist the situation to protect HIM, and that she needs to make that sacrifice in the short term, for the long term benefit of their relationship.

What on earth can a (much older) half-sister on the other side of the country do to try and make her see sense? Reason stands no hope against these hormones. *sigh*

What Erin said. I'd also add that if she chooses to do this she likely is chosing to get hurt. Terribly. That you would rather see her initial sexual experiences be something that she looks back on fondly and not with regret. 'Cause she's probably getting hit with a whole lot of "NO! SEX! DIRTY! BAD!" and that can cause as much damage to her as the jerk boy.

Then have a very frank discussion about what birth control she intends to use if she continues to see this boy because sometimes we make bad choices and suffer painful consequences. These consequences can be painful incidents we move past or they can affect us for the rest of our lives.

Then have a very frank discussion about what birth control she intends to use if she continues to see this boy because sometimes we make bad choices and suffer painful consequences. These consequences can be painful incidents we move past or they can affect us for the rest of our lives.

Yeah--if you think there's any chance she'll sleep with him, I'd let someone else do the threatening and the "he'll mess you up!" and concentrate on being cool older sister who will make sure she's protected if she DOES go through...

yes, be the practical one -- which include o_a idea of protecting his ( their ) future

Yeah, that's tough. I was totally hanging out (non-romantically) with the Boy With The Reputation in high school, met and befriended him before the dire warnings came in, and no force in the 'verse could have stopped me at that point, and I didn't even want in his pants.

AND the SO & I had a bigger, similarly problematic, age difference when we met. And no power in the 'verse was going to stop me there, either.

Maybe try to look at, if she's going to have the relationship, how can she make it safer for herself? How can she learn to recognize things that are problematic? How she can make decisions and assert herself. There's a lot of social dynamic going on there outside of the romance itself; there's lots of status associated with her going out with a forbidden senior boy. So she needs to be able to recognize that benefit and weight it against the negatives, and to do that, she'll need to be able to recognize the negatives when they start to pop up. Like, that ignoring the parentals is a lack of respect for her and them, and that rather than sneaking around, if he were willing to talk to them about the problems, that it might give them a chance. Then, if he's not willing which is likely, she might start to wonder why. Aim for reasonableness on your side so that any unreasonableness on his side will be recognizable to her.

And then assert that you will love her no matter what she's deciding, even if you think she's wronger than a wrong thing, and that she can come to you to talk about it, and with any problems. That might help to head off the bigger problems that escalate when she feels like she can't go to her parents or whatnot because they disapproved of the relationship to begin with.

Yeah--if you think there's any chance she'll sleep with him, I'd let someone else do the threatening and the "he'll mess you up!" and concentrate on being cool older sister who will make sure she's protected if she DOES go through...

Plus the person who does this, has a voice that tends, in my experience, to be heard. Not always effectively, but you take the chances you get when trying to communicate with 14-y-o kids.

Condolences, askye.

smonster, I'm sorry about your friend.

I add my voice to what omnis and meara and Trudy and Liese already said, re hormone-addled teenager.

DCJ, sell it for parts, take the money and buy whatever you can get that runs. When it dies, do the same thing again. Repeat ad nauseum, until you can afford something that will last more than two months.

I should have mentioned that the off limits boy skipped a grade in elementary school, and is thus a 17 yo senior, so statutory won't apply until after he graduates. and it sounds like he's super eager to get OUT of rural VA as fast as he can on graduation, so i don't see this going beyond this year. If he were 18, there would already be multiple statutory rape charges against him. parents in the community really don't like this guy. being over 30 i really don't like him either, but i've tried (when talking to Ellie during my visit last week) to ask more about what her friends said about him and trying to nudge her into maintaining her friendships and not getting isolated in Josh-world. There is a lot of starry eyed romance, which is too bad, since just last year i heard her respond "you know how that ends, don't you?!?!" to a friend trying to pull the Romeo & Juliet scenario. She's really smart, but this is her first in person crush and he's a SENIOR and he's really tall (like parting the red-seas in the school hallways tall) and he's the LEAD in the school musical. Or was. Just heard a couple minutes ago from ex-stepmother than the drama teacher kicked him out of the musical for continuing to canoodle with the off-limits freshman girl. Yeah, the whole community is conspiring to make this romance as forbidden as the most delicious fruit and it's WAAAAAY too late to backtrack to chaperoned visitations.

One of the yule gifts i sent her is one of those stuffed microbes for herpes. It's cute and yellow and i included a short note along the lines of "be careful and you won't have to pick up and suffer from less cute varieties of the virus." There have been many talks about birth control....her mom is uber-planned parenthood friendly (offered to take me in to get birth control when i was but 13 and had never been so much as on a date) so i know she's gotten many many talks outside of my bumbling attempts. I just don't think she'd be able to say no to this guy.