Sexual Abuse and Sexual Violence Awareness Week 2024

It’s important to have an awareness of what a healthy relationship does and doesn’t look like. A healthy relationship should make you feel safe, happy and respected. A healthy relationship relies on strong foundations, including good communication, consent, mutual trust, honesty and being understanding of each other’s potentially different boundaries.

Here are some examples of unhealthy behaviour in relationships:

Controlling behaviour This can involve isolating someone from friends and family or making it difficult to leave the situation. This can also be disguised as loving or affectionate behaviour that is used to manipulate you.
Disrespect This can include making fun of the other person’s interests or not taking them seriously. This disrespect can lead to feelings of guilt, shame, embarrassment, or loneliness.
Lack of trust In unhealthy relationships you may feel like you have to hide things from your partner, or you may think they are hiding things from you.
Bad communication Good communication is a key part of any healthy relationship. Unhealthy relationships are usually marked by ineffective communication e.g., not taking about problems, avoiding difficult issues, getting defensive when problems with the relationship are raised, not listening.

Boundaries

When we say boundaries, you may think of building walls between you and other people, whilst in some cases this applies, boundaries can also include e.g. asking someone to not distract you while you complete schoolwork or asking your partner to not go through your phone.

Boundaries are an important part of maintaining healthy relationships and friendships. They also help you maintain your mental and physical wellbeing and should always be respected by your partner. Here are some examples of healthy boundaries you can set in your relationship.

  • You don’t want to message your partner after 9pm as this is when you switch off before bed and take time for yourself.
  • Your sex drive has changed so you no longer want to have sex as much.
  • Your partner is going through a hard time; however, you are too so this sharing of heavy emotional information is affecting your mental health. So, you set limits on how much support you can offer your partner.
  • Your partner asks you to buy things when you’re out together and they don’t have any money on them. However, they’re not very good at paying you back and this makes you stressed as you don’t have a very big monthly allowance. You decide to set tighter financial boundaries with your partner around this to stop worrying.

 

Consent

Boundary setting extends into consent. If this is a new sexual partner, or even your partner who you have been with for an extended period, you should always feel able to share your boundaries and what you want/don’t want to consent to. It’s also good practice to check in with the other person throughout sex to ensure they feel happy with what is happening. Remember consent doesn’t have to be a verbal yes or no, be aware of body language and if they appear enthusiastic. Always remember, sex without consent is always rape. Uncomfortable and non-consensual things can happen in relationships too, this doesn’t make them any less valid.