1. If you don't trust your partner to respect your wishes if you change your mind about anything, you should not be having sex.

2. You can't get your virginity back once it's gone, so make sure that you are having sex for the right reasons. Emotional blackmail, such as “you would if you loved me”, or peer pressure, such as “everyone else is doing it”, are not appropriate motivations for becoming sexually active.

3. A recent study of sexual attitudes among 14 to 16-year-olds, carried out by researchers from Sheffield University, found that teenage boys thought it was acceptable to pressure girls into having sex and to use alcohol to get them into bed.

4. No surprise then that girls are twice as likely as young men to regret their first sexual experience, and they are three times as likely to report being pressured into unwanted sex.

5. And worryingly, a study from the Centre for Sexual Health Research, at the University of Southampton, which surveyed more than 1,300 young people aged between 16 and 18, found that only 37 per cent of sexually active young people used condoms whenever they had sex.

6. If you don't feel comfortable discussing protection and contraception with your partner, you should not be having sex.

7. While not perfect, condoms are the most effective way of preventing sexually transmitted infections (STIs) such as HIV, gonorrhea, chlamydia and trichomoniasis. Condoms also provide some protection against herpes, syphilis and chancroid, but genital ulcer STIs can also be transmitted by contact with exposed infected skin.

8. Condoms are not a particularly reliable method of preventing pregnancy either. The pregnancy rate among condom users is 12 per 100 women compared with three for oral contraceptives. However, you need to have been on the Pill for at least a month for it to be effective.

9. In the UK it is illegal to have consensual sex if you are under 16, even though nearly a third of teenagers engage in sexual intercourse before this age. A 16-year-old boy who has sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend could, theoretically, be prosecuted.

10. You should know what to expect (take a look at avert.org/sfeel2 ) but not expect too much. Sex is a bit like learning to play the piano. You tend to be pretty rubbish at the beginning, but practice, eventually, makes perfect.

SUZI GODSON

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