How can we convince our parents to let us share a room?

Break is coming up and my boyfriend is going to come home with me. We stay over in each others’ rooms at school nearly every night, so I want him to just stay in my room when we’re at my house. My parents have different ideas. How can I talk to them about this?

If you haven’t told them you already sleep together most of the time, that might change the way they look at things. But it might just mean they get mad and tell you that you shouldn’t be doing that even when they’re not there to stop you. You’ll have to guess how your parents will respond.

Explaining that you’re in college and that you need to be responsible for these kinds of decisions could be helpful, though it’s easy for them to counter with something like “I can’t control you when you’re not in my house, but you have to follow my rules when you’re under my roof.”

If your parents would be okay with it if you weren’t straight, you might be able to convince them their rules are silly by asking them how they would respond to boys and girls coming to visit if you were gay or bi. Not letting your friends of the same sex stay in your room because you’re attracted to them might seem more clearly unfair to your parents and help convince them to let this friend stay in your room even though you are attracted to him. If your parents say their policies would change depending on your sexual preference, you can point out that this doesn’t encourage you to be very open with them. You might also ask how they would respond to trans guests or, if they cite the possible of pregnancy as a determining factor, guests who are infertile. Even if they acknowledge that there reasoning doesn’t make perfect sense, though, it might not get you anywhere.

Unfortunately, you might just not be able to change their minds. There’s two ways to deal with that. First, you could go along with their decision. Maybe being mature about their decision, and perhaps a little persistent about discussing it, will encourage them to make a different decision in the future. Alternatively, you could just totally ignore them. Depending on your parents, they might just back down, but again, you’ll have to guess about that.

Recommendations: A book about living with someone you’re having sex with, and a book for parents on talking to teens about all kinds of issues related to sex and relationships.

Where can we have sex?

My girlfriend and I go to a school where we’re not allowed in each others’ dorms. Any ideas where we should have sex?

You might, of course, be able to get away with breaking the rules and just having sex in each others’ rooms. It’s possible that some of the people who are supposed to enforce those rules really don’t even care, though it’s always polite to make it as easy as possible for those overlooking rule-breaking by being discreet and giving them less rule-breaking that needs to be overlooked.

It also depends on what the consequences are for getting caught, since if you do break the rules consistently it’s entirely possible you’ll get caught at least a couple of times. If the consequences for getting caught up to a few times are tolerable, you can break the rules until the consequences for getting caught would be worse and then stop breaking the rules.

Of course, that assumes you don’t have respect for the rules, which you very well might, though your question does imply that you probably at least don’t care much for the spirit of those rules. Regardless, you’ve got some other options.

If the rules only apply to some people, like younger students, you might be able to borrow someone else’s room occasionally. You might also be able to rent a room in a local motel, though that is pretty costly and might only be a reasonable thing to do for a very special occasion. If either of your parents live near by, you might be able to take more weekend trips home, though your parents’ rules might not be any better than your school’s.

There are still a couple of other options too. You might take to having sex outside, particularly if you live somewhere with a warm climate. It might take some getting used to, but some people enjoy it a lot. You might also learn to have sex in public places, though if you’re intent isn’t exhibitionism, you’ll want to look for places like abandoned study lounges and dark corners of the library. You can get pretty sexual while staying pretty discreet with some clever positioning (like having a girl in a skirt sit on a boy’s lap) and a little bit of forethought (like cuddling under a blanket while you watch a movie).

Recommendations: Some books about having sex outside and having sex in public places, and a book that might give you some ideas for positions that won’t draw attention to yourselves (and maybe some other fun ideas too).