Healthy vs. Abusive Relationships

I was at a meeting this afternoon that was all about Abused Women. It came with a pamphlet from Texas Advocacy Project on what abuse looks like.

Clues to abuse:

  • Someone says something to hurt your feelings on purpose.
  • Someone puts down your looks.
  • Someone makes you describe where you were every minute of the day.
  • Someone calls or texts you constantly to see where you are.
  • Someone says you cannot talk to someone of the opposite sex.
  • Someone does not let you do things with your friends and family.
  • Someone insults you, puts you down or makes you feel bad in front of other people.
  • Someone tries to control what you wear, what you do and say and how you act.
  • Someone threatens to hurt you. Someone does something just to make you jealous.
  • Someone is regularly starting to hit you and stops.
  • Someone throws something at you. Someone damages something that belongs to you to hurt you.
  • Someone asks you to give up activities that you love.

Abuse Defined

Physical: physically hurting someone by hitting, slapping, pushing, restraining, throwing an object at you.

Emotional and Verbal: Name calling of any kind, humiliation, or attempts to lower self esteem.

Threats: Threatening harm on or to you or someone else, threatening retaliation, or threatening to leave the relationship.

Isolaton: Not allowing you to be with friends, family, peers, or engage in things you love.

Harrassment: repeated phone calls, text messages, controlling posts online, excessive calling on the job or at home.

Sexual Abuse: Forced Sex when you say no and the threat to tell others negative things about you if you don’t comply with sexual demands.

Resources: National Domestic Violence Hotline (800) 799-7233
Love is Respect Helpline for young people (866) 331-9474

A Guide to Safe Relationships from Take Care On-line
We asked young people and adults what they look for in their relationships, and they gave us the following ingredients:

Self-esteem: people who believe in themselves and their own worth are better able to believe in the worth of their intimate partner.

Mutual Respect: people in healthy relationships respect each other’s opinions, feelings, goals and decisions even if they don’t always agree with each other.

Trust: people in healthy relationships are not jealous or possessive of each other.

Nonviolence: people in healthy relationships do not hit, threaten, or otherwise scare each other.

Open communication: people in healthy relationships communicate with each other in an open and honest way. They do not use words to hurt each other.

Personal responsibility: people in healthy relationships take responsibility for their own actions and feelings. They do not blame each other if they lose their temper or make a bad decision.

Continue own friendships and interests: people in healthy relationships continue their own interests and friendships outside of their romantic relationship; they don’t feel isolated from friends and family.

Shared decision-making: people in healthy relationships use communication and negotiation to make decisions about their activities.

Non-abuse of alcohol and other drugs: people in healthy relationships do not pressure each other to use alcohol and other drugs. They do not