Romantic Encounters of the Wrong Kind

I have three daughters. Sometimes the discussions in our house are rather illuminating. Recently, I listened to my daughters detail situations where they were with a young man who had the wrong idea about their relationship.

This discussion was a bit scary for a mother to hear, though I was not surprised about the problem. When I started dating, my mother warned me, "Men want only one thing." She was speaking about sex, of course. In my mother's day, making a pass--or getting "fresh" was liable to be rewarded with a slap in the face. Nowadays, young women accuse men of "hitting" on them. Whatever term is used, it refers to an unwanted advance and it has been going on since the dawn of time.

There is a crazy statistic making the rounds about men thinking about sex every seven seconds. Snopes has debunked this and you can read about it here. Still, men do have all that testosterone flowing through their veins and it can ruin their judgment at times.

On several occasions, my daughters assumed they had a platonic and casual friendship with a young man. However, the young man had other ideas--and my daughters claimed that very often it was the setting that seemed to turn the young man's thoughts to sex. Granted there are times when a woman would welcome an advance, but that would be with Mr. Right--not Mr. Wrong.

Here is the list they made of situations which could turn too romantic:

• Sitting on a roof together.
  
• Sitting on a couch together.
  
• Playing the guitar, listening to music, or simply hearing music in the background.
  
• Riding in a cab or a car together.
  
• Riding on the ferry together. (In fact, any vehicle other than a bus seemed to be conducive to turning a young man's thoughts to sex.)
  
• Eating together.
  
• Sitting in a park together.
  
• Sitting next to each other at all.
  
• Being near the woods and/or near a body of water together.
  
• Sitting next to a fire together.
  
• Crossing paths on the way to separate destinations.
  
• If either party is staying in a hotel. (i.e. for work)
  
• Drinking coffee together.
  
• Holding onto the same subway pole.
  
• That five minutes when you are at your parents' house but your parents aren't there.
  

As a romance writer, I looked at this list and thought that I could use some of these ideas for my characters, but as a mother it disturbed me. I worry about my daughters.