Understanding Relationships
Healthy Relationships in Adolescence
During adolescence, young people learn how to form safe and healthy relationships with friends, parents, caregivers, teachers, and romantic partners. Adolescents often try on different identities and roles, and these relationship types contribute to their identity formation. Peers play a particularly crucial role in creating an identity during adolescence. However, relationships with caring adults—including parents or caregivers, mentors, or coaches—are the building blocks for all other relationships, providing examples of how a young person handles them. Here is some information on healthy and unhealthy adolescent relationships including dating, friendships, and relationships with parents or caregivers.
Broadly, healthy relationships are ones where adolescents can safely feel and express respect for themselves and others. This comes from mutual trust, honesty, effective communication, being understanding and calm during arguments, and consent. Unhealthy relationships, by contrast, usually have a power imbalance (for example there is no consent, mutual trust, compromise, or honesty). One or both people in the relationship may have trouble communicating and controlling their anger. Some unhealthy relationships become physically, emotionally, or sexually violent. This document provides further information about talking with adolescents about relationships and tools to facilitate these conversations.
Dating
Knowing how to establish and maintain healthy romantic relationships can help adolescents develop into well-functioning adults with healthy adult relationships. Healthy dating during the teenage years can be an important way to develop social skills, learn about other people, and grow emotionally. These relationships can also play a role in supporting adolescents’ ability to develop positive relationships in other areas including in school, with employers, and with partners during adulthood.
Although young people tend to become more interested in dating around their mid-teens and become more involved in dating relationships as they get older, it is also normal for adolescents not to be in a relationship. Adolescents date less now than they did in the past. Among adolescents 13- to 17-year-olds, two-thirds have never been in a dating or romantic relationship. Adolescent sexual activity also has decreased from previous decades. The percentage of U.S. high school students who had ever had sex decreased from 54 percent in 1990 to 38 percent in 2019.
Meeting Partners Online
Despite media attention, few adolescents meet their romantic partners online. In 2015, only eight percent of all teenagers had met a romantic partner online. Of course, many teens have never dated anyone, but among those with dating experience, 24 percent dated or hooked up with someone they first met online. Among this 24 percent, half of the teens had met just one romantic partner online, while the other half had met more than one partner online.
Friendships
Adolescence is a period of rapid change—physically, emotionally, and socially—and relationships with friends play a key role in the lives of adolescents as they become increasingly independent, develop their own identities, and grapple with self-esteem. Friendships in younger adolescents may be driven by a desire to “fit in” with peers, and these youth may change what they do or are interested in to match their friends’ interests. In later adolescence, youth have more diverse friend groups and have independent preferences that they are not afraid to express within their social circles.
Positive friendships provide youth with companionship, support, and a sense of belonging. engagement: courage or reinforce healthy behavior, like positive academic engagement; and help youth develop positive social skills like cooperation, communication, conflict resolution, and resisting negative peer pressure. Evidence suggests that positive adolescent friendships can lay the groundwork for successful adult relationships, including romantic ones.
Relationships with Parents and Caregivers
The relationship between children and their parents or caregivers (such as guardians, aunts and uncles, or grandparents) is one of the most important relationships in a child's life, often lasting well into adulthood. In adolescence, this relationship changes dramatically as youth seek increased independence from their families and begin to make their own decisions. With increased independence comes the possibility of increased risk, both positive and negative, and teens need parents or caregivers to help them navigate the challenges that adolescence presents. Though some amount of conflict between adolescents and their parents is normal, adolescents still rely on parents or caregivers to provide emotional support and set limits. Both emotional support and setting limits are linked to positive adolescent development and parent-child closeness.
Although teens have increasing independence from their families, including parents and caregivers, these relationships still play a large and vital role in their lives. Parents and caregivers help shape adolescents’ self-control, plans for their future, moral and social values, and their broader worldview. As children grow, parenting shifts from making decisions for the younger child to helping older children and adolescents make decisions on their own, while minimizing the chance that they engage in high-risk behavior. Research shows that parents continue to have more influence than peers on many important outcomes, including whether adolescents smoke, use alcohol or other drugs, or have sexual intercourse.
Characteristics of Healthy and Unhealthy Relationships
Respect for both oneself and others is a key characteristic of healthy relationships. In contrast, in unhealthy relationships, one partner tries to exert control and power over the other physically, sexually, and/or emotionally.
Healthy Relationships
Healthy relationships share certain characteristics that teens should be taught to expect. They include:
Mutual respect. Respect means that each person values who the other is and understands the other person’s boundaries.
Trust. Partners should place trust in each other and give each other the benefit of the doubt.
Honesty. Honesty builds trust and strengthens relationships.
Compromise. In a dating relationship, each partner does not always get his or her way. Each should acknowledge different points of view and be willing to give and take.
Individuality. Neither partner should have to compromise who he/she is, and his/her identity should not be based on a partner’s. Each should continue seeing his or her friends and doing the things he/she loves. Each should be supportive of his/her partner wanting to pursue new hobbies or make new friends.
Effective communication. Each partner should speak honestly and openly to avoid miscommunication. If one person needs to sort out his or her feelings first, the other partner should respect those wishes and wait until he or she is ready to talk.
Anger control. We all get angry, but how we express it can affect our relationships with others. Anger can be handled in healthy ways such as taking a deep breath, counting to ten, or talking it out.
Fighting fair. Everyone argues at some point, but those who are fair, stick to the subject, and avoid insults are more likely to produce a solution. Partners should take a short break away from each other if the discussion gets too heated.
Problem solving. Dating partners can learn to solve problems and identify innovative solutions by breaking a problem into small parts or by talking through the situation.
Understanding. Each partner should take time to understand what the other might be feeling.
Self-confidence. When dating partners have confidence in themselves, it can help their relationships with others. It shows that they are calm and comfortable enough to allow others to express their opinions without forcing their own opinions on them.
Being a role model. By embodying what respect means, partners can inspire each other, friends, and family to also behave in a respectful way.
Healthy sexual relationship. Dating partners engage in a sexual relationship that both are comfortable with, and neither partner feels pressured or forced to engage in sexual activity that is outside his or her comfort zone or without consent.
Unhealthy Relationships
Unhealthy relationships are marked by characteristics such as disrespect and control. It is important for youth to be able to recognize signs of unhealthy relationships before they escalate. Some characteristics of unhealthy relationships include:
Control. One dating partner makes all the decisions and tells the other what to do, what to wear, or who to spend time with. He or she is unreasonably jealous, and/or tries to isolate the other partner from his or her friends and family.
Hostility. One dating partner picks a fight with or antagonizes the other dating partner. This may lead to one dating partner changing their behavior to avoid upsetting the other.
Dishonesty. One dating partner lies to or keeps information from the other. One dating partner steals from the other.
Disrespect. One dating partner makes fun of the opinions and interests of the other partner or destroys something that belongs to the partner.
Dependence. One dating partner feels that he or she “cannot live without” the other. He or she may threaten to do something drastic if the relationship ends.
Intimidation. One dating partner tries to control aspects of the other's life by making the other partner fearful or timid. One dating partner may attempt to keep his or her partner from friends and family or threaten violence or a break-up.
Physical violence. One partner uses force to get his or her way (such as hitting, slapping, grabbing, or shoving).
Sexual violence. One dating partner pressures or forces the other into sexual activity against his or her will or without consent.
It is important to educate youth about the value of respect and the characteristics of healthy and unhealthy relationships before they start to date. Youth may not be equipped with the necessary skills to develop and maintain healthy relationships and may not know how to break up in an appropriate way when necessary. Maintaining open lines of communication may help them form healthy relationships and recognize the signs of unhealthy relationships, thus preventing violence before it starts.