Are you hoping to help your daughter avoid teen dating violence, even if it’s “just” emotional and psychological abuse?

Anne Blythe, M.Ed. interviews Sid, a teenager, who shares her heart wrenching story with empowering tips for mothers of teens.

Teen dating violence never happens without emotional abuse. The best way to avoid teen dating violence is to determine if there’s emotional abuse. Take this free emotional abuse quiz to find out.

If you have experienced emotional abuse and need live support attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session.

Teens Dating Violence Can Start With Lying

Sid shares that early on in the relationship, her abusive ex-boyfriend was kind, flattering, and romantic. The first red flag for her was that he told her a lie.

Abusive relationships are often detectable by the presence of lying. If your teen’s dating partner is telling lies, it is a strong indicator that your teen may be a target of sexual coercion and abuse.

Sexual Phone Calls Are Sometimes The First Signal Of Teen Dating Violence

A teen may feel uncomfortable by the way her boyfriend uses sexually explicit language on phone calls, but she may not realize that this is a form of sexual abuse.

Parents can open preemptive discussions with children who are not yet dating, or initiate discussions with teens who are dating, regarding the red flags of an abusive teen boyfriend.

Teaching teens about sexual coercion is important, so they know what to watch for.

Here are some steps you can take to begin empowering your children to engage in healthy relationships:

• Educate teens about coercion, dating violence, and abuse
• Help teens set boundaries around dating
• Meet the people your teens date

Transcript: Teen Dating Violence

Anne: I have a special guest on the podcast today. It is my friend’s daughter. So my friend Dina runs Educate and Empower Kids. Many of you may be familiar with Educate and Empower Kids. It is a non profit that provides parents with education to teach their kids great online habits and healthy ways of interacting.

And Dina called me to tell me about an experience that her daughter had. This is an important conversation to help teens avoid abuse. So I’m actually going to have her share the experience. She is 18 years old. Let’s just start Sid with what happened. Can you please share your story?

Sid: Sure, so I began dating a guy we’ll call him David. It was the end of my junior year of high school, and we only dated for about five months. It was a difficult experience for me, because of how he treated me. And the habits I learned from that experience of dating him. And I’ve also just begun noticing some patterns that he has with every girlfriend he’s dated.

I know his current girlfriend and I just see a lot of the same things going on with her. I wish she would listen to me. I’ve shared my experiences with her, and it’s just drawn attention to them more to me.

First Signs of Trouble

Sid: So something I didn’t know before this relationship was that an abusive relationship is not just physical. Someone can hurt me emotionally by manipulating me and lying to me over and over again and that is. And I had never learned that before. I didn’t see it in my relationship until it was over. Other people told me how bad it was. So our relationship seemed perfect for the first month.

David would send me poems, and he’d call me each night and tell me how amazing I was. And he dressed nicely and spoke well of others. He was close with his family and a strong member of the church, and he was smooth and ideal. Just the perfect social media looking boyfriend. I thought I found someone I could date for a long time, even forever. Until I found out that he lied to me about some things.

The first big lie, he didn’t seem to care, and he kept making excuses until I threatened to break up with him. It wasn’t that I meant it to be a threat. It was just more like I told him that I was uncomfortable with that. And so, he had told me he hadn’t had sex before, but the truth was he had, and I was worried he would lie to me again. And, it wasn’t necessarily that he had done that before, it was just that he told me a completely different story. He fabricated this whole lie around it.

Confrontation & Guilt

Sid: And he practically begged me to stay with him, and he cried and just kind of made me feel guilty, like I was at fault. And so we stayed together and began to repair the relationship, but it wasn’t really repairing it.

Anne: Sid, how did you find out he had lied to you? By the way for teens and adults, lying is emotionally abusive in and of itself.

Sid: We had a lot of mutual friends. Actually, I met David through another one of my friends, and she knew a lot about him. She had another friend who had dated him in the past. So I had two different, good friends that knew him well.

And they informed me about it when I hung out with them one time. I was talking about him and how good things were and stuff, and how he related to me a lot. And how we had handled relationships in the past. Because we talked about that, and they told me that what I knew about him was actually not true, so they told me the real story.

So I confronted him about it, just you know, to double check if they were lying. And at first he said they were lying. Then I went into more detail of what they had told me. He admitted to it, and told me it was true and he lied to me.

Anne: What do you think would have happened if he had said, these two girls are liars, they’re not telling the truth? Knowing what you know about him now, obviously you wouldn’t believe him, but back at that point, do you think you would have believed him over your friends?

Dating violence: Questioning David’s Character

Sid: I think it would have made me question him and his character more, just because I trusted my friends more. They had told me they would have his old girlfriend, that he had had intercourse with, talk to me about it. Because they were both really close with her. I didn’t know her at all. But I know that I would have been able to find out the truth from those girls, and I would have trusted them more. Because they really didn’t have any benefit in me and David breaking up.

They didn’t have a reason to lie to me about it. Whereas David had a big reason to lie to me about that, because he knew my standards and that they didn’t align with the things he had done in the past. After he like admitted to it and apologized, we had this big conversation about him not lying to me. He acted like it humbled him. And he wanted us to work on things and make it right. So we kind of went through that honeymoon phase, as people will call it, where everything was perfect again.

He was very sweet and respectful to me, and there were always these little blips where he would be overly explicit with me, and I was uncomfortable with that. I didn’t want to do those kinds of things with him.

And so, those were the only things going wrong. But I always overlooked them because of all the other flowery behavior he had. He would buy me things, and he would compliment me all the time. He acted like he cared. So, it didn’t feel like he objectified me as much, even though he really was.

David’s Continued Lies

Sid: After a month of that kind of behavior, I found out that he had lied again, and this time it was much more minor. Both lies were about things that had to do with other girls in the past. So this one was about one of those friends who had originally told me about what he had done with his other old girlfriend. And this girl had also previously dated him. So I had another friend from church, we’ll call her Mary.

Mary is not part of the situation, but she knew David. She saw him flirt with another girl, and that other girl had dated him before. I was kind of friends with her, but not very close. This girl, Mary, told me that it made a lot of other people in the class uncomfortable. Because they all knew he was still dating me, but was acting as if he wasn’t with this other girl. So I asked David if he felt like he had been doing that. He, of course, said no, like, it’s friendly, it’s nothing like that.

Mary sent me a picture of him with his arm around her, and this video clip of him massaging her neck. It wasn’t a huge deal, it was more like he kept being dishonest about it. Then further than that, he tried to make me feel guilty about accusing him of things. He was like, Oh, you’re accusing me of cheating on you. And you’re acting like I’m untrustworthy, even though I’ve tried to earn that back this whole month. So I just felt bad.

Realizing the Truth

Sid: And then he was like, Oh, you’re so judgmental. You’re always making me feel bad about stuff that I do, which at first I believed him. But I’ve talked to so many people and told them about it. And I was really unsure, because in the past, no one had ever said that about me. And so, I started to realize that that wasn’t true, but at the time, I felt like he was telling me the truth. He would say he didn’t lie at all sometimes, and then sometimes he would be super careful with his words.

So that he could be vague and make it seem like I was the one who was wrong. And it’s confusing to explain, but instead of answering a question like, Have you had it before? With a response like, No, I am still a virgin. He would say, I don’t consider myself having had it with her. Or, I didn’t go all the way with her. And various other responses.

So he made me feel guilty for his own mistakes by blaming them on me being judgmental. He made me dig into it and ask specific questions over and over, just to get a simple truth from him.

Anne: Objectification can be the first step to committing teen dating violence. And maybe even then you didn’t get the truth, right? Even when you thought, okay, finally, I’ve hit the bottom of this. It still may not have been. That is emotionally abusive and teen dating violence.

Sid: Yeah, exactly. I could only get the information that other people could prove to me. And to this day, I don’t really know all the things that he could have lied to me about.

Teen Dating Violence: He Lies About Pornography Use

Sid: Maybe it was really just those things that I had found out about just because he’s very good at hiding all the things that he’s done.

Anne: Do you know about his pornography use? And how use can be associated with teen dating violence?

Sid: I had never asked him before until he had told me he had sex before finally, and he admitted to that. He said something to me like, oh well that’s just who I am, like I can’t help that. I’m very driven or something like that and I was like, oh when did that start? I just made the assumption that he had watched it before because I feel like in other relationships I’ve had, there were circumstances like that.

When they would act really explicit towards me, they would admit that, Oh, I’ve watched a lot of pornography, and it’s kind of affected how I see people. Whereas David would tell me, Oh, I’ve seen it before once or twice, just because I know everyone watches it. And I wanted to see what it was about, but I don’t watch it anymore.

I’m not interested in that kind of thing. So, I am really unsure if he has watched a lot, but I would definitely assume just by the things he would say to me. He would use this dirty language with me, and I would ask him to stop. And he would tell me how it’s so common. And I felt like, those things are only learned from explicit material.

Anne: You’re 18, so part of this podcast, I’ll teach you a little bit, but I’m sure your mom has talked about this. That, “I used to watch it, but I don’t anymore,” is extremely common for a current user.

Acting as an obedient church goer

Anne: That’s a common lie they say, which you probably look back now are like, yeah, he had to have kept using it if he was acting like that, right? And especially as an “obedient” church goer. I would say that’s a pretty clear sign that he was currently using.

Sid: Yeah, when we were dating, he went to church a lot. And I’ve heard from other people now that we’ve broken up that he does not go to church anymore. He would kind of go on and off before we had dated.

So I think a lot of the things he told me when we dated were to make me feel like he was a good church member. When in reality I don’t think he has a super strong testimony of it. It was just kind of all that show and that way of manipulating me into thinking that he was someone he’s not.

Anne: Manipulation and control are tactics abusers and perpetrators of teen violence use. So tell me what happens next.

Sid: As we were dating, I made it clear that my standards were that I didn’t want to have it before marriage. I didn’t even want to do anything that would resemble any sort of sexual act. That would include any touching under clothing, rubbing up on each other. I was only fine with kissing or snuggling.

Beginning of pushing boundaries

Sid: On the phone is how it began. He would mention to me, like, oh, I want to do this to you, and he would insert some sort of sexual act. And I would tell him, okay, like, you can make jokes about that, I guess, on the phone. Since it seems like you’re already doing that. I would appreciate if you make it clear to me that you don’t really want to do that. I don’t want to do that.

And he would say something like, oh, well, you’ll come along, or like, oh, you’ll want to later on. So it kind of put this idea in my head, oh, well, maybe I’m supposed to do those things. And I knew it was wrong from a church standpoint and from my standards. But it was hard, because he would talk to me like that so much. And I would definitely feel like I had to or like he didn’t feel like I loved him enough if I didn’t do that.

There were a few times in my car before I dropped him off at home, we would be kissing. And then he would try to move his hand somewhere, and I would move it away at first. But he would try again, so it seemed like he kept trying every time he had a moment that he could. So eventually I would just slowly let it happen. Just these little things would slip. And I think the worst time it happened when there was real coercion would be a few months in.

Dating Violence: He scared me

Sid: We were kissing, and then I remember telling him no. He had started to take off some of my clothing, and then he started to put his hands in places where I didn’t want. I told him no out loud, and he pretended like he didn’t hear me. And so I said it again, and I pushed him off of me. I started to cry because it had scared me.

He stopped and said he was sorry and didn’t hear me. But there was just this feeling in my gut that I knew he had heard me. I knew I had said it loud enough and that he was close enough that he had to have heard me. It was quiet. It was only us. I think that was my first sign that he didn’t care about me.

After that day, when things went far a lot further than I had ever expected. We didn’t have it, but there were definitely things going on that day. I felt a lot of guilt, so I told David that I didn’t want to do anything like that ever again. And that I would prefer if we only had short kissing in a public place as I said goodbye to him, and that I didn’t feel comfortable.

This was a phone call, and he kept saying, Oh, you know, that’s okay. I completely accept that. But from that moment on, he started to distance himself. And I noticed every day that he would just text me less.

He distanced himself

Sid: I didn’t see him super often, because he went to a different school than I did. Much of our relationship during the school year was texting and phone calls, besides seeing each other on the weekends for dates.

And so, immediately that week, I noticed he texted me a lot less. I would know that he had a lot of free time and would deliberately not text me or call me at night. He would say oh, I can’t do that. I have this. So I assumed he was under a lot of stress. I made a lot of excuses for him, because I was too wrapped up in the relationship. I remember asking him about it, and he had turned it around on me. It was like Oh, I feel like you’re bored of me or like you don’t even love me enough. Like you don’t want to do any of this stuff.

You don’t feel safe around me, and it makes me too sad. So I just saw a lot of this time starting to go away from me. He wasn’t interested in me as much. So one night, we were on a date. We were hanging out with some of his friends, and one of his friends made a joke like, oh, did you tell your girlfriend that you skipped school yesterday?

And I didn’t care that he skipped school, but the night before we had been on the phone, and he had gone through this whole day at school talking to me about school and stuff as if he had been there. So I asked him, on the phone, you talked about school as if you were there. Did you not go to school yesterday?

Blaming me & breaking up

Sid: He was like, maybe we should talk outside. So I went outside, collected myself. And then he came out and we started talking. I just started crying. I was like, David, why do you continue to lie to me about things like that? That’s not even a big thing. Why did you feel like you had a lie to me? That just makes me feel like maybe you were doing something you shouldn’t be doing that day.

Maybe there’s a reason why you’re not telling me. And he was again, Hey, you’re so judgmental. I just felt like you were gonna get so mad at me about this. So I shut down, I was like, I feel like we have a lot of problems, and you’re not helping to work on repair with me. I know you’ve been lying to me a lot about other things that I can’t find out about through other people. I can’t tell when you’re being honest with me. You lie straight to my face about things, and it makes me really uncomfortable.

Either I need you to tell me that we’re going to work on this and need to actually make a plan. Or our relationship needs to end. And so he said, oh, we’re gonna make a plan. I was like, okay, I love you. All right, bye. And then he was like, I love you more. And I was like, I don’t think you do. Because you wouldn’t treat me like that if you did.

He was like, you’re right. You love me more. I think we should break up. I lost motivation for you. He just started dropping all this stuff on me. This was teen dating emotional abuse. I lost motivation a few months ago.

Teen Dating Violence: Discovering the Cheating

Sid: We broke up and didn’t talk for a month. The biggest point for me was when I realized how bad our relationship was, when his ex girlfriend contacted me. She told me they were dating again and had gotten back together in August. And mine and David’s relationship hadn’t ended until October. I realized then that he was dating another girl simultaneously, cheating on me for a few months.

And so me and his ex girlfriend and current girlfriend met up and we were talking about it. One of my other friends involved, she was one of the friends that had told me when he had lied to me the first time about having it. They were all kind of mixed up in that mess too.

So the three of us girls were talking about it, and she’s still dating him. So she talked about how he treats her now, and it’s very similar and actually worse than how he treated me.

Anne: Did she perceive it as dating violence and abuse?

Sid: She did not. She perceived it as, Oh, it’s on me, just whatever traits he had told her that she has, that made him act that way.

Anne: Oh, she was blaming herself.

Sid: Yes, so she went into detail of all the things they’d been doing, and how she thought they had been dating for the last few months that I was still dating him. And I told her that’s a red flag that he cheated on me with you. And now you guys are dating. Like, do you not see that he’s going to do that to you?

You know, she was like, Oh, maybe he will. I don’t know. Oh, you’ve given me so much to think about.

Reflecting on the Relationship

Sid: And it just struck me then. That’s how I would have been if I had found out something like that when I was dating him. Just because he seemed like he was this perfect boyfriend. He would do all these other boyfriend things, but when it came down to it, he didn’t care about me. And I only see that now that I’m out of it, whereas his current girlfriend can’t see that.

Anne: Yeah, so this is typical of what wives of explicit materials users and cheaters are going through, all the gaslighting, lying and manipulation. But this is happening in high school for you. So I want to talk about what you learned from the experience with teen dating?

Sid: After the experience and talking to other people, I realized that it’s not okay in a relationship for someone to be dishonest. First of all, and then second of all, to blame you for their own problems. And I also learned a lot about what I deserve, and that came through myself though. I wrote in my journal a lot after the experience, and during the experience, I had written some things too. Just when I asked questions, I felt self conscious about talking about some of the things in our relationship to my friends or even my mom.

And after we broke up, I felt much more comfortable telling my mom everything. I went through it all, and she helped me learn about what an abusive relationship really is, and how what I had experienced could affect me. And so, I wrote in my journal a lot. I would write mostly what I wanted in a future relationship to make it better.

This behavior is more common

Sid: I really set a better standard for what I’m going to expect from someone, so that I won’t accept that kind of behavior again. The thing is, you can’t completely protect yourself from those experiences. I can’t say if I go to college, that I might not end up in a relationship like that again. But at least that way, I can recognize it and end it a lot earlier on.

I think a lot of the damage I’ve taken with me affected how I viewed myself. I felt extremely hurt when I found out that he had completely lost interest and started dating someone else while he was dating me. And I felt completely inadequate as a human being, like, as if I wasn’t enough for him.

Finding that self worth came a lot from Heavenly Father. Just from going to church, the temple, doing service, performing well in school, hanging out with my family and being with people I knew cared about me. Also becoming successful in a way that I valued. Some days it still hurts a lot. Some days I’ll see something on Instagram about him or his girlfriend. And it kind of brings some of it back. I feel sad about it. But I know that it’ll continue to fade away slowly for me, and that I’m continuing to heal every day from it.

Anne: So this type of dating violence behavior is becoming more common. As more men embrace pornography, they objectify women more. They feel more entitled to their own abusive opinions, and other women’s bodie,s using them for their own purposes. Rather than actually caring about them.

Dating Violence: Friends’ Experiences with Abuse

Anne: Talk to me about your friends’ experiences. Have they experienced the same thing with other kids in your school? Let’s talk about what this looks like on the high school level.

Sid: Yeah, I’ve had three friends with major problems, and of course I have friends with more minor abusive relationships. One of my friends, we’ll call her Jessie, was in a relationship with this boy in the ROTC program. And so was she, and so I knew them through some of my other ex boyfriends in ROTC. So this girl, Jessie, had been dating this guy for a long time, maybe six months. After prom, he wanted to have it, and she didn’t want to. So she had left in a rush.

And the next day at school, she had been trying to go to the ROTC room for a meeting. And this young man came up, pushed her against the wall, yelled at her, and punched the wall next to her. It was definitely dating violence and assault. The ROTC instructor saw them and did not report anything to the school. I think only a few other students maybe saw it, and no one did anything about it. He didn’t lose his position in ROTC. I did not see any consequences.

And this girl, Jessie, felt too scared to go to court. She didn’t want to go through all that process. Because she knew it wouldn’t fix the problem that much, as it would make it worse, cause more drama, and maybe he would react in a worse way to that. I just saw that fear in her, and I realized how sometimes you can feel helpless in those situations.

Feeling Helpless & scared

Sid: And how you can be really helpless, especially at school when there are people who won’t help you like they should.

Anne: Yeah, what you’re describing is that a teacher witnessed an abuse episode in an abuse situation. And did not call it out for what it was or try in any way to keep the victim safe.

That’s scary, super, super scary. And the most likely reason why is because they don’t understand abuse and teen violence. Not necessarily because they’re an evil person that likes abuse, but because they don’t know what it looks like. But that’s exactly what it looks like. And it’s happening on school grounds, and it’s happening everywhere. And tell me about your other friend.

Another Friend’s Assault

Sid: Another one of my friends, she had a boyfriend a long time ago. She’s in college now, but when she lived here and we were good friends. She told me how a year or two ago in her sophomore or junior year of high school. She had dated this guy for about a year when it was his birthday. And they had messed around and done a few things before, but not as severe. He wanted to have it, so she thought he might want to do that.

She knew she didn’t want to, and she had told him beforehand that she didn’t want to have sex. But while they were kissing, it went further and further. She tried to stop him, and he forced her to have it with him. At first when things were kind of going on, she had been like, no, no, and he didn’t listen. And she realized he wasn’t going to listen and that he might hurt her if she didn’t go along with it.

And so she didn’t go along with it, but she just said she was just present. So after that, she had gone to church and told her bishop about the violence. And she had felt a lot of guilt. She took it as though we had it, and I didn’t want to, but I felt like I had to. So, she went in and told her bishop about the situation, and he basically told her it was still her fault because they had done stuff beforehand, and he was her boyfriend, and that it wasn’t considered rape.

Teen Dating Violence: Aftermath of Assault

Anne: Wow, sorry, let’s just pause there, everyone. Wow! Okay.

Sid: It was crazy, and she had felt a lot of guilt, and she was young for something like that to happen. And so she cried and she cried, and she continued to meet with that bishop and repent for it, as if it was all her fault for that situation. She and that boy ended up breaking up a while later, and then they got back together and were on and off.

Her family ended up moving away, so she was completely out of that relationship situation by the time she told me the story. So she could look back. And I just remember her telling me that I needed to always remember that if someone ever tries to force me to do something, it’s not on me. And so that she had learned from other people that that was wrong, but how at the time she was so misled, so hurt by that.

Anne: Does she know now that she was raped? Does she call it that?

Sid: Yes, she does.

Anne: Okay, and when she says that, does she seem confident about it? Is it hard for her to say?

Sid: She doesn’t like using the word rape, but she does talk about it as an assault. I can tell that it makes her uncomfortable, and she obviously has only told a few people that were super close to her. I know it hurts her a lot still. It’s been hard for her. She’s dating someone now, but it took her a long time because that was a few years ago.

Clergy’s Misunderstanding of Abuse

Sid: She’s just recently started dating someone again, because the idea of being with another guy scared her. Even just a hug from a boy, would make her tense up a lot, and her heart rate would go up. She just felt a lot of fear from that.

Anne: Yeah, for good reason. Wow, oh my word. That example you gave of clergy not calling it rape is so common and so detrimental to victims. And also doesn’t hold perpetrators accountable for their assault. The more we can educate women about this, in their hearts, they could know what happened and help educate other women about it. And that’s what this podcast is about today.

Sid, for other teenagers who may or may not have experienced an abusive relationship, sexual assault or dating a pornography user. Either confirmed or secret user, what advice would you give them after your experience with dating violence and after what you’ve seen with your friends?

Sid: I would say, first, set your standard, know what you expect from someone, learn what the signs are of an abusive relationship. When you’re in a dating relationship, you start to feel hurt by them in ways that you don’t understand. Talk to your family, talk to people you trust. Maybe people who have experienced things like that and see how they feel about it.

Also, I don’t remember where I got this advice, but I think someone at church once told me. That if a friend told you a story, if you thought they were being hurt, then you would tell them, Oh, you need to break up with them. You need not be with them. And so you need to consider yourself your own friend.

Educating about red flags

Sid: If you were telling your story to someone else. Would they tell you not to be with them anymore? If your story was coming from a friend, would you tell them to stay with that person? Because I know for me, if someone told me the story of me and David as if it was them in that situation, I would 100 percent tell them that they should not be with that person. That what’s going on is not their fault, and that they’re being manipulated.

With that knowledge, now I can clearly see that I should not have been in that relationship. Just becoming more educated on the red flags, so you can see it from the beginning. And keeping in contact with other people, what’s going on, update them, make sure you’re safe.

Anne: Mm hmm. I’m so proud of you. So many times young women are so embarrassed, thinking, well, it is partially my fault, and I don’t want anyone to know. When they don’t realize they were coerced or even raped. And are victims of dating violence and assault. I’ve had several friends who were raped, and they didn’t call it that because they didn’t know that’s what it was. I’m so proud of you.

Share this with other young women

Anne: Thank you so much for coming on today and talking about teen dating violence. I appreciate your bravery and sharing your story. As you can tell, this episode is a good one to share with the young women in your life, to teach them about sexual assaults, to teach them about manipulation and lying,

To help women understand abuse better, if you are on Facebook, please share this link so that we can educate everybody about this. For those of you who frequently share links to this podcast on your social media. Thank you. You are making a difference. And for those who make a recurring monthly donation to support this podcast. Thank you.