Red Lights of an Unhealthy Relationship

Does someone you care about?

• Put you down? Criticize you?
• Get extremely jealous or possessive?
• Constantly check up on you?
• Tell you how to dress? What to think? What to say?
• Try to control what you do and who you see?
• Make you feel nervous (like you are walking on eggshells)?
• Threaten to hurt you physically (push, slap, pinch, shove)?
• Threaten to hurt you emotionally (manipulation, threaten, embarrass you, tell secrets, withdraw affection)?
• Ask you to do things that you normally wouldn’t do?
• Ask you to do things that are not in your best interest?

If one or more of these warning signs exist in your relationship, your relationship is not as healthy as you deserve.

Real Advice: My boyfriend hits me

I am 15 years old. My dad is strange, to say the least. He’s sexually hurt others. He has had a ankle bracelet on for a while and just recently had it removed. My mother divorced him and we live with her.

The problem is that my mom works really long hours. I babysit my siblings and mow lawns to make extra money. Everyday, she comes home yelling and screaming. She will tell my siblings to clean house and me to do dishes and other chores. I will usually do my chores, but if the siblings don’t pick up their toys, we ALL get yelled at.

If I make a mistake, she says I’m like my dad.

I’ve attempted to cut myself, but haven’t had the nerve. I backtalked and got grounded for almost a month. My siblings do much worse and get away with it.

I have a boyfriend who is 16. We have been going out for over 7 months and my mother hates him.

I do admit I have an attitude, but I’m 15 for God’s sake! Almost all teen rebel and act like that around this time!

I was told by my friends that if I record her saying “If you don’t like it here, then you can leave” on tape, then I can actually leave and it would be ok because she TOLD me to leave. Is that true?

Is there any way that I can get away from her without going to live with my dad or changing schools?

N, age 15

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She’s an icon, just barely out of her teens. He’s an icon, still in his teens. All those who meet the couple say they are charming, intelligent, gracious.

What went wrong? And why are they back together?

Suzie, that’s love. They are back together because they love and need each other.

No, it’s really not. Because love is kind. Love is self-control. Love builds each other up. Love is lots of things, but it’s not battering the person you care about with words or fists.

So, what can we learn from this? No one gets to hit you and say I love you in the same day. Even if they appear amazing on the outside, if the inside is shallow or broken, that will only widen like a river unless it’s mended by God.   

And you aren’t God.

You can’t fix another person. You can’t love them into wholeness, or do the right thing enough times so that they’ll stop hitting you.

Some helpful numbers if you are being abused:

Youth Crisis Line – 1-800-448-4663

Domestic Abuse/Assault 1-800-333-SAFE (24 hrs)

Covenant House Crisis Support 1-800-999-9999 (24 hrs) 

by Judi Weiss, RTF Staff Writer

I hate injustice. It can drive me absolutely crazy. A big injustice I can witness is when someone abuses their power of authority by speaking harshly to kids when it’s uncalled for. When it happened to my twelve-year-old friend, Jason, in my youth group back in December I brought up the problem with another adult in the youth department, and nothing was done about it.

I did what people thought I should do and let it go.

But five weeks later, I was pulled aside by the same adult I went to with the problem and was belittled and argued with for twenty minutes about the situation. (more…)

Real Teens, Real Stories, Real Life was my first book, published in 2002. I met so many teens as I wrote this book. Many of their stories were powerful. One of those most amazing and difficult story was written by a teen named Nichole.

In her story, on page 69, titled “A Place to Call Home”, she shared what it was like to be raised in a home where dad raised marijuana, where they were kicked out of their home, or ran from police.

One day her parents took all of their belongings to a storage shelter. They left behind all of their furniture, but they also left something else very important behind at that storage building:

Eleven-year-old Nichole. (more…)

City of Warm Rain

by Lydia Rule

This story is dedicated to children across the world who know or have known the torments of an abuser.

The rain is falling, falling from the dark night sky. Each one slaps my face with its frigid presence. Like prisms, the raindrops shatter on the ground beside me.

My skin is a sheath of ice. My blue lips can feel only the pounding of the rain. Perhaps this is not the beginning that you would expect from a story titled “City of Warm Rain”, but it is my story, as short as that may be.

I am lost in this city. I am somewhere alongside an exit ramp to some highway. The cars race by me as I sit alone in a muddy patch of grass. The headlights look bright and warm as they whiz by. (more…)

I love my boyfriend, but he hits me and says cruel things when he is angry. Last night we were walking in a dark parking lot and he pushed me and called me a (derogatory term) just because I didn’t agree with something he said. He has his good moments and that’s when I realize how much I love him. I’m torn. Carey W., Age 16

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