The very idea of romance carries with it mystery,otherworldli-

ness and transcending the everyday.You can live your life in pursuit of a frequent state of romance but isn't that just a kind of escapism akin to taking drugs? After a while it too, is just a dysfunctional pattern, that requires the difficult process of coming down from.

Hopefully marriage can provide a life long friendship,an opportunity to really reveal and come to terms with your own character as well as that of an "other" in a enviroment of trust,to see yourself in another's struggles and a to enroll a helpmate in a often difficult and lonely journey through the world.

Sex is part of the human potential,just as is eating, livlihood ,physicality and social activities but we don't demand these aspects of life carry the loaded freight that sex and marriage do.Perhaps that is because in our culture we have repressed sex somehwere down the line to the extent that it has taken on a distorted and overbearing life of its own.

The problem may be with our expectations for marriage as well as the American refusal to grow up and look beyond an adolescent lens.

Save your money,then rent an apt or share with some other girls..Tell your BF until you get an apartment of YOUR OWN you can't see him.If you move in with his aunt(the one who humiliated you & your mother in front of other people,remember) you will be in a situation worse than living at your mom's because at least your mom has a vested interest in seeing you succeed (you can be a model for your younger sister) and she probably loves you after all these years.To this aunt you are just grist for her gossip mill.

Have your little sister overnite a couple times a month and call her frequently.Stop by your mom's to visit now and then. Save your money and start junior college. When you are paying your own rent you can sleep with your BF as much as you want AND your mom can't have a beef about any of it.

Do NOT move in with BF -you will be trading one dictator for another.Make sure he knows that you are a capable person who can survive on her own,if he talks ghetto he may have some funky ideas about respecting women. Make him live up to being with you .Let him miss you a little.

You wanna be treated like an adult - act like one.

Gov Perry of Tx just vetoed a law that would have kept an 18 year old boy who had relations with a girl who said she was 16 ( and was driving a car) from having to register on the sex offender list a-which will follow him for LIFE. In fact she was 14. This is after he spent 4 years in jail for said offense, after being caught by her grandmother en flagrante at the girls home..Don't let this be your son- know the law , and know that girls lie about their age. Once he becomes 18 he will be judged as an adult.

Being a registered sex offender makes early pregnancy look quaintly nostalgic.

Living in the days of the self righteous Christians has become downright dangerous for the young.

I mean really? I wanted to be born rich, blonde, thin or dark exotic and multilingual I wanted to know what it is to be old money where one can assume that certain standards are infallible but my parents didn't cooperate. I wanted to be a singer but I can't carry a tune.I want to live in the Amazon and have tribal ceremonies or be a Druid one thousand years ago.

Instead I'm trying to make do like everybody else I know , trying to be true to the words compassion,perserverance and gratitude no matter that i am living in a city I would never choose but glad to be able to keep my bills paid.Obviously I have settled.

Jennifer - you did not make clear where the need to someone else comes from . Does it require more self loathing or more self loving? What exactly does it take to be willing to mutilate your body for what seems to me a longed for idea in which I shake myself and say

Start here, from where you are..

She's going to be some kind of female Rush Limbaugh purging the country of vipers and claiming the territory for her African witch doctor.

to spend five years trying to be perfect for your BF.

This is also known as groveling and although you may keep your position as head placater inside you are shriveling day by day.Even if you were "perfect" this man's need to blame instead of learning to cope with the ups and downs of life show serious lack of inner reflection and/or a huge amount of anger(Imagine what he would do in a real crisis!) Should you achieve "perfection" he will then bring you down because you gain weight, get gray hairs,or need glasses. It will always be something because it is about HIS anger and blaming habit, not about you.

It may be great to have a BF but not at the price of losing yourself which is what is happening as you spend your time double checking everything to avoid his wrath.Constant critcism is a form of cowardly violence in which he is he cutting you up little by little.This is not love

ask any child who has ever had his toys taken away .