Healthy relationships are fun and make you feel good about yourself. You can have a healthy relationship with anyone in your life, including your family, friends, and dating partners. Relationships take time, energy and care to make them healthy. This page focuses on dating relationships.
Ask yourself:
- What is important to you in a relationship?
- What would a healthy relationship be like?
- What might be getting in the way of having a healthy relationship?
Think about your current relationship:
- How well does your partner listen?
- How do you have fun together?
- How easy is it for you to spend time with other friends or by yourself?
- How do you feel about yourself in this relationship?
- How does it get decided when you will be sexual and when you won’t?
Feeling good about yourself first:
Caring and loving yourself is the first step in building healthy relationships. When you can recognize the good things about being you, then it is easier to share this love with someone else.
- Recognize your value as a person and treat yourself with respect.
- Choose a partner who feels about themselves.
- Find a person in your life to support you in developing healthy relationships.
You have the right to:
- Be treated with respect
- Share your ideas and thoughts
- Live without fear
- Manage your own money
- Choose your friends
- Express your strengths, abilities, and talents
- Be sexual by choice
- Make healthy decisions about alcohol or drugs
Are you in an unhealthy relationship?
Ask yourself:
- Does my partner mess with my birth control or try to get me pregnant when I don’t want to be?
- Does my partner refuse to use condoms when I ask?
- Does my partner make me have sex when I don’t want to?
- Does my partner tell me who I can talk to or where I can go?
Is your body being affected?
Ask yourself:
- Am I afraid to ask my partner to use condoms?
- Am I afraid my partner would hurt me if I told them I had an STD and they need to be treated too?
- Have I hidden birth control from my partner so they wouldn’t get me pregnant?
- Has my partner made me feel afraid of physically hurt me?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, your health and/or safety may be in danger.
Talk to a trusted adult who can help you, or contact these resources:
- Sexual Violence Center Hotline: 612-871-5411
- Alexandra House (Shelter) Phone: 763-780-2330
- Day One MN Domestic Violence Crisis Line: 1-866-223-1111
