“Where did you first learn about relationships?” 

“What do the relationships between the characters in your favorite movie look like?”

 “What do you look for in a friend or dating partner?”

These are some of the questions I have posed to a room full of young people when I’ve led workshops on healthy relationships and teen dating violence. Most of the adults I know have never had someone ask them these questions or had the opportunity to reflect on how the early messages they received about relationships may have influenced their friendships and partnerships.

I spent a lot of time this February talking to adults about teens and teen relationships. February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention month, and that means I’ve spent almost every February for the last twenty-plus years talking about teen relationships. Some of you reading this blog have been doing the same, and are taking a quick breath to recover in March before gearing up for Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April. Some of you reading this blog may have never heard of Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month. Whatever relationship you have to the month of February, if you have a teen you care about, if you work with teens in any capacity, or if you were once a teen, this blog is for you. 

I started working in this field when I was 15 years old. When I speak about preventing teen dating violence, I am drawing from my experiences doing this work as a teen, as well as from my work with so many teens and so many adults who care about teens over the years. In the last 23 years a lot has changed that has impacted teen relationships and teen dating violence specifically. When I reflect back on the last two decades, what I am struck by is not all that’s changed, but what continues to remain the same; how the challenges we face to effectively address and prevent teen dating violence continue to persist. 

There’s a lot of complexity and nuance to these issues which we really dive into in our trainings and partnerships. Much of what I believe gets in our way from effectively addressing and preventing teen relationship violence is simple but too often unaddressed: we overemphasize the responsibility of young people to solve this issue. We develop curriculums and programs to teach young people about healthy relationships, consent, bystander intervention, and how to support a friend and/or hold them accountable. But many of the people who are delivering these curriculums, running these programs, or hosting them in their classrooms never had the opportunity to learn these topics themselves- as young people or as adults. 

On numerous occasions, I have had teachers and administrators disclose to me their own experiences with relationship violence and sexual assault after hearing a presentation to their students.  On many occasions it was the first time they had been able to tell anyone because they didn’t have the language- until they heard it being taught to their students- to define their own experience. I have also had adults who have made really damaging victim blaming comments in front of young people, and when I have talked to them privately they have identified that they were struggling to hear this content because it hit so close to home. I witnessed first hand how they acted out and tried to push these messages away because it was forcing them to examine their own experiences in a new, and sometimes painful, light. 

If we want to see change in young people’s relationships, if we are worried about the teens in our lives and how they are navigating romantic and/or sexual relationships, we need to take responsibility for our own learning and what messages- implicit or explicit- we are sending through our behaviors and attitudes. Many people who are drawn to violence prevention work are motivated because of their  personal experiences. When I train and supervise preventionists, I explicitly make space to talk about what this work can bring up for us, what it means to be learning how to facilitate dialogues we were deprived of as young people, and the parallel process of preparing to teach what we are still learning ourselves. If we want to do this work well, and if we want our violence prevention efforts to be effective and sustainable, we have to acknowledge the impact this work can have on the people who are doing it. And we have to broaden our focus to continue to work with young people but to also include the adults in their lives to develop the tools that will enable them to learn and integrate this information and process their own lived experiences. 

We all deserve to have healthy relationships, no matter our age. We all have the capacity to learn and develop skills to enable us to promote and embody healthy relationships. If we want young people to have safe and healthy relationships, we, the adults- the ones with the power- need to take responsibility for our own learning and healing. In doing so, we can create the space and opportunities necessary for young people to create meaningful and long-lasting change. 

If you are a parent, a caregiver, a teacher, or you just want to learn more please reach out to schedule a training or learn about our partnership opportunities. February may soon be over, but the opportunity to address and prevent relationship violence at every age and stage of our lives is ongoing and JT Consulting is here to help you feel empowered in the role you can play.