Back to School: Setting healthy boundaries for relationships
Summer is almost over and we are about to begin a new school year. Before we start, here is a quick checklist from One Love Foundation. One Love is a national non-profit organization with the goal of ending relationship abuse. They empower young people with the tools and resources needed to see the signs of healthy and unhealthy relationships and bring life-saving prevention education to their communities.
The following was taken from the One Love Foundation’s website. More information about One Love, healthy relationships, and more can be found here.
Back to School Checklist:
Comfortable Pace
When starting the new school year, it’s important to get on the same page about how often you want to hang out and text. In a healthy relationship, your partner or friend will respect the pace you feel comfortable with. Whereas in an unhealthy relationship, they might pressure you to hang out all the time or respond to texts right away.
️Independence
It’s important to have your own friends and hobbies outside of your relationship. Whether it’s soccer practice or drama club, you and your partner should encourage one another to pursue your passions. It’s good to spend time doing your own thing and a great time to sign up for extracurriculars!
️Honesty & Trust
In a healthy relationship, you’ll feel like you can be honest with one another without things getting ugly. Also, you’ll trust one another without needing validation or proof (i.e. tracking locations or checking phones to make sure someone isn’t cheating).
️Taking Responsibility
In every relationship, bumps happen. What’s important is that each person owns up to any wrongdoing and takes responsibility for the harm their actions may have caused. While you can’t control what’s talked about at school, resolving conflicts in this healthy way can help keep the drama and rumors away.
While everyone does unhealthy things sometimes, we can all learn to love better by recognizing unhealthy signs and shifting to healthy behaviors.
If you are seeing unhealthy signs in your relationship, it’s important to not ignore them and understand they can escalate to abuse. Here is One Love’s 10 Signs of an Unhealthy Relationship List.