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.

How close are you two?

Not so very. About what you might expect with a 19 year age difference and living 3 times zones apart. We've been messaging on facebook, which is slightly more effective than attempting to talk to her in person. We had a long car ride in stony silence my last evening in VA when i tried to get her to tell me what she likes about him and open a dialogue. Stony silence. Then i warned her that Dad had driven all the way to her mom's house so that all three parentals (her Mom, Dad, and StepDad) could confront her with a slew of misery. She wouldn't talk to me about him, or the situation.

This was intervention #3. #2 involved Dad thretening to undermine his application to the naval academy, and Ellie was informed that her future behaviour would determine whether or not that letter got sent. Since that was only intervention #2 and she's now on #4....well, she clearly doesn't care about his future. Or hers. Or there's. For her and her hormones there is only today.

Maybe i'll also send her some condoms and dental dams and explain how the dental dams are to be used. I'm not sure that's been covered already.

Well, there's worse things than having sex with an idiot.

I hate this burden foisted on girls about virginity. You're not a different human once you've had sex - even if it all goes to hell - you just did a different thing.

It's awful to get your feelings hurt. It's awful to have someone betray your trust. Those are the actual problems, you know? Not having "done it".

Daniel, insent.

I use 'bugger' as one of my go-to swear words. Despite the referent, it's really quite mild in the Australian context. (And the English.) I got called out on it once, on a board frequented by Mormons, again by someone who'd spent some time in England. (For some reason they thought I was a teenager going for shock value.) I apologised sincerely, assuring them I hadn't intended to slip anything in through the back door. Signed off with "Roger and out". They complimented me on my courtesy.

So many people would have been nasty, William. I'm glad to see you handled this The Other Way.

Jeez, erin. Recommend she watch some s2 Buffy, starting with "Surprise?"

Yeah, there's no stigma in her house on having sex. Just on getting romantically involved with incredibly innapropriate guys who only want to use her for sex and then break her heart. That's the problem, know that's what's coming.

I mean, there's a teeny possibility that he actually DOES like her for her....but given that he's already slept his way through the current seniors, juniors, and sophomores....well, it's far more likely that she's just giving in to 6 more months or high drama and misery.