David Cameron has blocked a recent proposal to implement compulsory sex education across schools in Britain, in a move that will undoubtedly maintain its already dire state. Schools that do provide some form of PSHE or sex education find it generally satisfactory to whisk students through crude PowerPoint presentations of STIs and brief demonstrations of how to put a condom on, while academies and faith schools are at leisure to pick and choose what parts they want to include. It is a commonality across the country that where such teaching exists, it is non-standardised and patchy, and this latest move by Cameron betrays both outdated squeamishness on the subject and an attitude of ambivalence, dismissing support and guidance for teenage sexual relationships as superfluous.

Of course, standing on the precipice of my twenties and looking back, there is much about my own early experiences in this area that seem more funny than severe. ‘Love’ was a word that cropped up in every Facebook conversation, and even came in digital form to gift people on Bebo social cred. Courtship in Year 8 was conducted by drawing in biro on each other’s hands, and a middle man approaching you in the social area with the golden refrain: ‘my mate fancies you’. Love was a concept bandied around freely, as relationships were born and broken over things as petty as emojis on MSN. For the most part, this behaviour was harmless. However, I found that this sheen of excitement began to rub off as one got older and things became more ‘serious’.

Suddenly, any sexual behaviour came under scrutiny by a sporadic set of rules determined by peers whose knowledge was no less pretended than your own: have too many sexual encounters and you’re a slut, don’t put out and you’re a prude.

These are all tired stereotypes that remain relevant even to adult behaviour today. However, widespread misinformation and lack of guidance doesn’t only culminate in the kind of spiteful attacks I was witness to (a trauma in itself). More dangerously, a space begins to open up for toxic, damaging relationships to thrive unchecked.

In an experience common to classrooms across the country, my sex education classes provided me with just this: sex is always a penis in a vagina; only men derive pleasure from sex (and it’s over when he finishes) and sex always carries a high risk of pregnancy and STIs. A friend told me the other day that she didn’t know the female orgasm existed until almost two years of being sexually active. On the relationship side of things, there was not a whisper about consent and respect, just the pervasive spectre of the school nurse, whose only advice existed in the form of innumerable free condoms. With this total negligence to deliver thorough information, young people are being left to form their own conclusions about how a ‘normal’ sexual and romantic relationship should function.

When I started going out with my first boyfriend, this meant I had no point of reference whatsoever – school had failed, my parents were splitting up at the time and I was one of the first of my friends to have a steady relationship. The non-pareil of romantic relationships existed to me in fictional forms like The Notebook, in which Ryan Gosling’s character threatens to kill himself if Rachel McAdams’s character does not agree to go out with him. Charming. This provided the perfect environment for the following year and a half of our relationship to appear entirely within the realm of normal as, like so many others, I relied on misleading advice I’d absorbed along the way from a plethora of questionable sources.

To start, his obsessive clinginess meant that I sometimes pretended to stay with a friend so I could be alone – but this to me was a facet of being in love. Persistent ‘jokes’ about how revealing my clothing was, and a stream of check-up texts whenever I went out, was an example of male jealousy. He cut off all of his friends to spend time with me, and manipulated me into agreeing with his opinions. When I discovered I didn’t enjoy having sex, I assumed it was because I was female and wasn’t supposed to enjoy it. Yet for the duration of the relationship, I couldn’t point to why I felt so uneasy and upset, putting it down to a fault of my own and naturalising behaviour that would be considered abusive in adult terms.

Of course, teenage relationships are different to their adult counterparts’, and I don’t suggest that they should always be treated in the same manner. But at the same time, the romantic and sexual relationships we have in our teenage years do not exist in a vacuum, and deserve to be considered more seriously.

For some, they go on to set a precedent for later life, and for others can incur lasting emotional or physical damage, in the same way that adult relationships can. Learning from mistakes is an important part of development in this period, but unhealthy relationships and sexual encounters should not have to be a rite of passage, as they are for so many in Britain.

As long as the current system stays the same, teenagers will continue to needlessly tolerate misinformed attitudes towards sex and sexuality, as well as detrimental, dangerous behaviour in relationships.