Intimate relationships often start during the teenage years. It's common for young people to wonder about their sexuality and experiment with different types of sexual behaviours and partners, including people of the same sex. This can happen throughout life but is usually more intense for young people (those under 25).

Decisions about having sex, or using protection during sex, are influenced by lots of things, including:

• feeling a desire to have sex
• how a person feels about their partner
• whether a person thinks friends would approve
• what the media portrays
• personal beliefs and values about sex
• the family's beliefs
• a person's gender, cultural background and other factors such as religion