Dear Pastor,

I am 18 and have been reading your column from I was attending high school. I have a boyfriend from last year when I was in grade 11. We dated for a couple of months before he told me he was going to Negril to work.

After he left for Negril, we talked over the phone until I met another man. This new man gives me everything I want, but I love my boyfriend. I told my boyfriend the minute I had sex with the new guy. He told me he was going to beat me, so I did not say anything more about it. He left in February last year and he is still telling me to come and live with him. I told him I cannot do that. He did not like the idea of me not coming to live with him.

My boyfriend visited me in the summer. The night he came, he beat me for all the bad things I had done and told him about, then we had sex after. I love him very much. He visited me about four times in the summer and everything changed. We hardly talked. He had a girl texting my phone and I confronted him about it and he laughed. After that, I started avoiding him. He came to see me on Christmas Eve but I was not home because I went shopping for Christmas and the New Year. When I came home in the night and went for a walk, his friends who always call me by his name called me, but I did not answer until I heard his voice calling me. I only turned around to see who it was and continued to walk. When I was passing, he held on to my hand and asked if I did not hear him calling me. I asked him what he wanted, then I went home.

On Christmas night, he was watching me all night at a party I attended. I heard one of his friends calling me. I went and talked to him. I wasn't angry or vexed. Now he is saying a lot of bad things about me and I do not like it, so I disrespected him and told him it was over between the two of us.

Now, I regret telling him, because I love him very much.

I need your advice, pastor.

S.R., St Mary

Dear S.R.,

You are a brave young woman. When you had sex with the new guy, you informed your boyfriend. I don't know why you felt you had to tell him, but right away he promised he would beat you because of what you did. He kept his promise. You are not too young to learn you should not keep two men as intimate boyfriends at the same time. Men fight over women because of jealousy.

I am saying your boyfriend had a right to beat you, but that was his way of telling you he did not want his girl going to bed with another man, because by doing so you are making yourself cheap.

This man in Negril has asked you to come and live with him. He has nothing and he does not have an education, but he wants you to be close to him. You should not go and live with any man unless, of course, you are married to him. While this guy was in Negril, you were here having a ball with this new guy who is spending his money on you and using you as he pleases.

The young man who works in Negril doesn't respect you anymore. You are not trash, but he sees you like that. While you were showing off yourself and cursing him, he was looking at you as a 'sketel.' You didn't have anything good to say about him and he didn't have anything good to say at you.

Try your best to get yourself a job and go back to school. Don't follow in the footsteps of many girls who rely on men to give them money in exchange for sex so they can eat bread. If you are going to have a boyfriend, keep only one. If you feel that you must have sex, protect yourself from pregnancy and STDs.

Pastor