Tag Archives: relationships

Emotionally Abusive Relationships and Healing: In My Own Words

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The following post comes to us via Ava Budavari-Glenn, a political communications major and a nonprofit communications minor who is entering her sophomore year at Emerson College. She is a writer whose work focuses mainly on advocacy, and a community organizer who has worked for nonprofit organizations and political campaigns. She is a media and communications intern at Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona.

Part I: Signs of an Abusive Relationship

I’m not ready to tell my story yet. I don’t know when or if I ever will be. But I am writing for my younger self, who was in the middle of a toxic situation and didn’t have the language to understand what was happening to her. I have not studied this academically — I am just talking about my own experience. And sometimes that’s what people need to listen to. I know I did and still do.

Emotional abuse is an attempt to control another person through behavior that causes psychological trauma or distress. Continue reading to identify the warning signs of an emotionally abusive relationship.

They body shame you. It may be in a sarcastic tone or disguised as a joke, just ways for them to tease you because they “like you.” It may also be covert; they might not directly call you fat or ugly, but find other ways to degrade your body. Tell you you’re too slow. You don’t run fast enough. You’re not strong enough. They may make fun of your athletic ability, call you names even if you’re just playing a game for fun.

Their mood is unreliable. Everyone has good days and bad days, but the kind of day anyone is having should not determine how they treat people. They’re happy to see you one minute and completely ignoring you the next. They are flirting with you one minute and glaring at you 15 minutes later. You haven’t changed your behavior or what you have said. Whether you can have a nice conversation is totally dependent on their behavior, giving them complete control of the situation. They make you feel like everything is your fault. You find yourself asking questions like, “What am I doing wrong to make this person so upset?” That is a power imbalance, which is one way they trap you: It makes you think that “they have good moments too, they are not always bad” — because if they were always horrible it would make it easier for you to leave. This back-and-forth unpredictability is a way to control you. Continue reading →

May Is National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month

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The following is a guest post by Planned Parenthood Arizona’s Director of Education Vicki Hadd-Wissler, M.A.

mother daughterAt Planned Parenthood Arizona, we hope families are talking about changing bodies, healthy relationships, love, and sex throughout the year, and with May’s National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month, parents and the important adults in the lives of teens have a unique opportunity to talk with teens about pregnancy prevention. The month is aimed at helping teens to identify their plans for the future, and consider how those plans would be impacted by an unintended pregnancy.

Ongoing conversations between parents and teens build in protective factors. Studies have shown that teens who report having ongoing conversations with their parents about sex wait longer to begin having sex and are more likely to use condoms and other birth control methods when they eventually become sexually active. Even more surprising for many parents is that these studies also show that teens want to hear about what their parents have to say about sex and relationships.

Planned Parenthood Arizona can suggest some amazing resources to fit the needs of your family and to start dialogue with a teen you love. Continue reading →

Teen Talk: Am I the Only One Not “Doing It”?

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holding hands from backSometimes, it seems that everywhere you look, young people are having sex. In the movies, on television, in songs; love and sex are all the thing. Are you the only one resisting? Are you the last virgin on the planet? Should you say yes to sex?

First, let me reassure you not all teens are engaged in sexual relationships. Even if many of your peers seem to be talking casually about sex, that doesn’t mean they are actually having sex! The latest surveys have shown that fewer than half of high school teens, 47 percent, have ever had sex. The average age for teens to first have sexual intercourse is 17 years old. And many teens are waiting even longer.

Saying no can be hard, but liberating at the same time.

Sex is one of the most wonderful and intimate experiences you can have with another person. But there is so much to consider before you let your emotional feelings lead you to do something you are not ready for emotionally or physically. Feeling pressured into sex or having a sexual encounter too early can make someone feel uncomfortable, upset, and maybe even regretful or sad. Peer pressure can be strong, especially if you think all your friends are doing it, or if your boyfriend or girlfriend is urging you without listening to your side.

So how do you know if you are ready for sex? And if, after careful thought, you decide you are not ready, how do you say no? Continue reading →

The Golden Rule of Consent … Ask

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The following guest post comes to us via Erin Callinan, who is the training and technical assistance manager at the Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence.

holding handsWhen we look at the issue of sexual violence and prevention, we cannot do so without talking about consent. But what does that actually mean? What does consent look and sound like? Ultimately, yes means yes!

Consent works best centered in communication in words; words in whatever language everyone involved can use and understand. Consent means that an agreement has been made between individuals prior to any sexual activity that clearly communicates what each person is comfortable doing.

Obtaining consent is an ongoing process of mutual communication as sexual activity progresses, regardless of who initiates it. So once somebody consents, are you good to go? Not necessarily. Because consent is a continuous process, it’s a good idea to keep checking in with your partner. Continue reading →

Starting the Conversation: Talking About Sex and Relationships With Your Teen

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mother-and-daughterTalking about sex is never easy, but it can be easier.

A survey released last year from Planned Parenthood and Family Circle magazine, with assistance from the Center for Latino Adolescent and Family Health, found that teens are much less comfortable talking with their parents about topics pertaining to sexuality than their parents are talking with them about the same topics.

Planned Parenthood Arizona will be hosting workshops in Phoenix and Tucson to educate parents on how to have “the talk” with their children.

However, when teens are able to have open, ongoing conversations with their parents about relationships and sex, it makes a difference. Studies show that teens who report having good conversations with their parents about sex wait longer to begin having sex and are more likely to use condoms and other birth control methods when they do become sexually active. Further, when teens are comfortable talking with their parents about relationships and sex, parents are better able to help and support them in the decisions they make.

There is no better time than now to get the conversation started, and Let’s Talk month does just that …

Background on Let’s Talk Month: For those who might not be familiar, Let’s Talk Month is a time during which sexuality education providers and advocates across the country encourage young people and parents to communicate with one another about sexuality. Sexuality comprises a wide range of topics, including relationships, anatomy and body image, reproduction, gender and sexual orientation, sexual behavior, and preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest provider of sex education, offers resources, guidance, and encouragement to teens and parents who are unsure about how to talk about relationships and sex. Continue reading →

The Feminine Mystique in Retrospect: An Interview with Stephanie Coontz, Part 2

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Last month we featured Part 1 of our interview with historian Stephanie Coontz about her book A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s (Basic Books, 2012). A Strange Stirring looks at the history of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, which has been widely regarded as one of the most influential books of the last century.

“Work is still organized on the assumption that every employee will have a wife at home to take care of life.”

Published 50 years ago in February of 1963, The Feminine Mystique was Friedan’s response to the unease and dissatisfaction that she learned was common among American housewives at the time. Friedan hypothesized that the root of their unhappiness was their confinement to domestic roles, which prevented them from finding meaning and identity outside of their roles as homemakers, partners, and caregivers. Entering the workforce and professions, Friedan believed, would provide them the fulfillment they were missing.

Although social conservatives blamed The Feminine Mystique for sowing marital discontent, that was never Friedan’s intention. As Stephanie Coontz explained in A Strange Stirring, Friedan’s book “made a point of not criticizing husbands for their wives’ unhappiness.” Instead, it suggested that “marriages would be happier when women no longer tried to meet all their needs through their assigned roles as wives and mothers.” In Part 1 of our interview, Coontz discussed the accuracy of Friedan’s insight, noting that “today divorce rates tend to be lowest in states where the highest percentage of wives are in the labor force. Marriages where men and women voluntarily share breadwinning and caregiving tend to be very high quality.” Continue reading →

The Family Revolution and the Egalitarian Tradition in Black History

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Sadie T. Alexander

In the interview with Stephanie Coontz featured earlier this month, we discussed the many changes in American households that have occurred in the 50 years since Betty Friedan published her landmark book, The Feminine Mystique. Friedan’s book was a literary catalyst that helped usher in a family revolution, in which the norm of one-earner households was replaced by the norm of the two-earner households we know today; a change that gave many women more equality in their marriages.

A strong egalitarian tradition has long been a part of black history.

What might surprise some readers is that we could have also discussed the many changes that had occurred already, even as Friedan was still writing her manuscript. Among black Americans, much of what Friedan wrote was not prescient, but dated. As Coontz wrote in A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s, “Long before Betty Friedan insisted that meaningful work would not only fulfill women as individuals but also strengthen their marriages, many African-American women shared the views of Sadie T. Alexander, an influential political leader in Philadelphia, who argued in 1930 that working for wages gave women the ‘peace and happiness’ essential to a good home life.”

While sorting out the book’s legacy, Coontz wanted to explain what The Feminine Mystique had gotten right and wrong about American families and women’s domestic roles in the 1960s. A particular problem Coontz addressed was how The Feminine Mystique ignored the experiences of black and other minority women — an omission cited by many critics since the book’s publication. A book Coontz found invaluable in addressing that omission was Bart Landry’s Black Working Wives: Pioneers of the American Family Revolution (University of California Press, 2002). Landry did not write his book as a critique of The Feminine Mystique. Rather, it was while looking at historical statistics on wives’ employment that he decided to write in greater detail about an intriguing difference he noticed between black and white wives: “the employment rates of black wives were about ten years ahead of those of white wives.” Continue reading →