My experience is that many people find their mate during social interactions in which they were not even aware of looking for anyone. Some are even friends for years, sort of drift apart as their lives drift in different directions, and then lo and behold before you know it they are in the same town and the courtship is practically accomplished before it is started. More to the point, there have been sexual situations that come up in life between two people who had not the slightest intention of having that happen. Before it happened, they would have said, “Him/Her? You must be joking! No way! They’re (fill-in supposed disqualifying reason)”
It is prudent to realize that sexual temptation is something that can appear suddenly and in the oddest places, and that regular exposure to it (even mentally) can wear down one’s defenses. The truth is, other things wearing down a person generally can wear down defenses. You can wear yourself out being nice to someone who is odious and find that is the very time your defenses against other assaults on your fidelity to God are the hardest to deal with. We all have to push on to the finish line no matter what our bodies are telling us, but we only have so much “won’t” power in a given day. Better not to find yourself having to push through because you weren’t smart about it and “hit the wall” while still in harm’s way. There is a lot of avoidable suffering there.
Your way of having social interactions with boys is a good one. You feel free to know people as friends, whether boys or girls, but you do it in a situation where you’ll have few opportunities to be hit unawares by temptations which are notorious for their power and speed. I don’t mean to be afraid of the opposite sex, but I do think it is wise to take the sort of precautions we do as a matter of course for other powerful forces of nature, such as water, electricity, fire, direct sunlight, dogs, horses, and so on. These are enriching parts of our lives, we wouldn’t dream hiding from them, but we respect their power and the dangers that we would be prone to if we were to ignore the powers in their basic nature. You don’t wade through flood waters that “aren’t that deep”, you don’t work on toasters without unplugging them, you don’t leave turpentine-soaked rags lying around your shop, you don’t get between a dog and its food, you don’t stand directly in front of or behind a horse, and so on. The same goes with someone of the opposite sex who is both a sexual and a fallable creature. You take basic precautions with your nature in mind, and then you can enjoy the blessings of your basic natures in relative safety. It doesn’t matter if you “aren’t interested”. You do it, anyway, just as you’d be careful around a dog that is “sweet” or a horse that “would never hurt a fly”. You use common sense, which is in notoriously short supply in today’s world of dating.
Easy.
