TRIGGER WARNING: This article goes into detail about dating violence.
"You can't talk to him because I love you."
"What do you mean 'no'? Don't you want to make me happy? You are so selfish, don't you love me?"
"Wow, you are being such a bitch right now, get over yourself. You suck."
These are some of the many things my ex-boyfriend used to say to me, and as a naive high school girl, I thought that it was normal. Fast forward to the end of my freshman year of college sitting in a dating violence seminar and it finally hit me.The speaker started listing off examples of what dating violence was and warning signs and the thought that it took me years to realize that this is what happened to me made my stomach drop. I started to feel like I couldn't breathe and that the room kept becoming smaller and smaller.
On the surface, my relationship looked perfect but I kept everything hidden underneath of just how bad it was. I stopped hanging out with my friends as much and my schoolwork suffered because I felt forced to spend all of my time with him. I blamed myself for everything when he would get angry with me. We dated for over a year but after about 6 or 7 months of us dating it got to the point that him even holding my hand made me cringe and feel sick to my stomach, but at the time I just thought it was me, as he would say, "just being stupid". After we finally broke up I started to realize that it wasn't normal how he treated me. But it took me until college to fully realize I was in an abusive relationship. Abusive relationships are always just seen as hitting your significant other or throwing them against a wall. I was never physically abused, but instead was emotionally and psychologically, and these types of abuse are just as bad and just as important to talk to about.
As someone who has been through it, I can tell you that my life has completely changed since then for the better. It took me until now to realize that I experienced dating violence, and while I may hate the way it makes me feel at times, I'm learning how to push forward and use my bad experience to my advantage. I have an absolutely incredible boyfriend who has shown me what it is actually like to love someone, and I am forever grateful to him for that. I am here to tell you that if you've gone through this, or you know someone going through this, it may take time, but if you or they finally take that step and leave them, it gets so much better.
As hard as it is to talk about what happened in my life, I feel like helping other people realize that this can happen to them too is more important, and now I want to be apart of the wave of young people changing how we view, act, and react to dating violence.
According to the One Love Organization:
1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men will be in an abusive relationship in their lives.
It is most common in the ages of 16-24.
The most common form of abuse is not physical, but psychological.
In our society today, we confuse relationship violence with love because of the lack of conversation about it. When I was in high school, nobody talked about dating violence except for one school assembly, and I feel that if I would have known more about it, I would have put a stop to it. A lot of the time as well, young people are written off because of the thinking that it's impossible to actually have a "real" relationship when you are "so young" so there is no way that they're capable of being exposed to dating violence. Let's make one thing very clear: dating violence can happen at any age to anyone and just because someone is young does not mean they aren't capable of being in a so-called "real" relationship.
Dating violence is not sexist either. More often that not issues like this are seen as "women" issues, but men are just as exposed to dating violence as women are. Not long ago in the news, there was a story about a girl named Michelle Carter who convinced her boyfriend to kill himself because "she loved him". On the day that her boyfriend killed himself, he had doubts about going through with it and she said:
“You can’t think about it. You just have to do it. You said you were gonna do it. Like I don’t get why you aren’t,”
This is emotional and psychological dating violence. It is not some made up phrase to make people feel better about themselves, it is painfully real and it does great damage because the person being warped by the abuser thinks that the abuser loves them, and it just isn't true.
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP
As college students, we are constantly surrounded by people experiencing dating violence and we don't even realize it. It can be hard to see the signs of dating violence, because just like I did, people will hide it. Try to have open conversations with your friends just to check up with them and make sure everything is okay. You can say things like "Just wondering how everything is with you" or "I'm always here to talk if anything ever makes you feel uncomfortable or upset". If they decide to open up to you about what is happening, be open and listen to everything they have to say. And even with your friends who make it seem like their relationship is great (which it may be), keep an out for warning signs just in case.
We need to intervene when we see something going wrong with our friends or in our own relationships. A girlfriend being obsessive isn't "cute" and a boyfriend that decides what you wear isn't "looking out for you". Together as a young collegiate nation, we can put an end to dating violence one campus at a time.
If you want to learn more go to:
ImpactProgram.org
CrisisTextLine.org
LoveIsRespect.org
