Dating Violence

Recently in my English class, we were asked to write a research paper-the prompt: Choose a topic that interests you and.. well.. research it and begin your paper. My initial thought was oh great, this is going to be difficult, considering there isn't really any guidelines as to what the professor is looking for. However, I ended up googling research paper topics and "Domestic Violence" really stood out to me. I needed to narrow the topic down a bit, so I decided to be more specific and retitle my paper, "Teenage Dating Violence". I thought this would be a great topic to research because I believe that dating violence is a growing concern, especially with all of the new technology and social networking. In addition, teenage dating violence is sometimes over looked, which can prove to have a very dangerous outcome.

Throughout researching Teenage dating violence, I learned many things I had not know about domestic violence. One of the scariest things I found out, was that many dating violence situations start out like any "normal" relationship. Dating violence has a common pattern between the perpetrator and the victim. There are three stages to dating violence-the tension phase, the violence phase and the honeymoon phase. During the tension phase, the victim might realize that the potential perpetrator is showing signs of being overly possessive, or lashing out frequently in anger. The violence phase can consist of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. Ending the cycle is the honeymoon phase where the perpetrator will apologize excessively and in turn the victim will give in and forgive him or her. This is dating violence is labeled as a cycle, because it can occur many times before someone realizes that the relationship may be unhealthy.

The reason I decided to share this is because many people, especially us college kids, don't know how to recognize if a relationship is unhealthy. Most dating violence begins with name calling and continuos put downs, followed by extreme possessiveness, ultimately ending in physical violence of some sort. Being able to distinguish what is healthy behavior versus unhealthy behavior in regards to your significant other is critical in preventing dating violence.

If you are experiencing an type of dating violence, you can call the dating violence helpline at
1-800-799-7233