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 Relationships take time, energy, and care to keep healthy. A healthy relationship should bring more happiness than stress into your life, and should make you feel secure and relaxed.
When your relationship is unbalanced and causes harm, stress, and pressure, it becomes unhealthy. If you are feeling anxious, taken advantage of, controlled or scared in your relationship, it's time to reevaluate and possibly get help.
Happy, healthy relationships include:
- Trust, honesty, and compromise
- A sense of playfulness and fondness
- Room for individuality
- Opportunity to bring out the best in both people
- Fairness and equality
- Great communication
Teen Dating Violence
Abuse in teenage relationships, also called teen dating violence, is becoming more common among teens, according to a recent survey by the National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence.
Statistics
- Approximately one in three adolescent girls in the United States is a victim of physical, emotional, or verbal abuse from a dating partner.
- In a national online survey, one in five tweens (age 11 to 14) say their friends are victims of dating violence, and nearly half who are in relationships know friends who have been verbally abused.
Ten Warning Signs of Teen Dating Violence
Is your boyfriend or girlfriend:
- Checking your cell phone or email without your permission
- Constantly putting you down
- Acting extremely jealous or insecure
- Exhibiting anger or an explosive temper
- Demanding to know where you are and whom you're with
- Isolating you from family or friends
- Having big mood swings
- Physically hurting you in any way
- Being possessive
- Telling you what to do
If so, visit the CDC's Preventing Teen Dating Violence web page to learn more about teen dating violence, its warning signs, and how you can get help.
Quizzes
How Much Do You Know About Dating Violence? Quiz 
Dating Violence Quiz (PDF)
How Aware Are You? (PDF)
Useful Links and Information
Transition House
Dating Violence Intervention Program
loveisrespect.org
Online community and resources for young adults
Love Is Not Abuse
Educational tools and information about teen dating abuse
Women Helping Women
Crisis intervention and support services for survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and stalking
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Resources on healthy relationships and preventing teen dating violence
Last revised on November 30, 2011
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