My daughter who is 14 in May has had 3 boyfriends. The first two, their entire relationahip consisted of deliberately ignoring each other publicly.
The new one, going on 5 months 'together' is different. Yuck. I hate everyone who comes within 5 miles of my gorgeous generous kid, sigh.
That said, prior to having 'boyfriends' she ALREADY has a lot of self-respect. I've used that back door approach to keep an eye on their relationship, it's become yet another bonding op for us. We now share 'dumb boy' stories. They have VERY little (if any) unsupervised time together. THey have had a couple 'dates', where I've taken them to the mall, football game etc. I've talked at length with his mom just to see if we were on the same page.
I know I'm gonna get hammered for this but I also spy all the time. I have access to her computer accts, texts, I have even read her journal (sigh, sorry!), and I have not seen anything at all alarming.
She is very open and we discuss all things boyfriend the same way we discuss every other aspect of her life. She makes very good choices every day. I understand there is no telling her she 'can't' have a boyfriend, but I can guide her still to make age appropriate decisions, I see evidence everyday that she is handling it well. Still I am just LURKING at every turn to yank it out from under them! tehehehe, I just haven't had to.