TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - In this edition of Teen Talk, Family Therapist Jane Marks tackles a question on teens and toxic relationships.
Question: My teenage girl has just successfully navigated coming out of a very toxic relationship. It took approximately eight months and as a parent I feel like it is important that you share with them the warning signs of toxic relationships.
Answer: This experience is so common among teenagers who are certainly entering into their first relationships and don’t have a sense about what clues to look for. We’ll talk about the following signs this segment and then next time we will talk about how to begin the separation process and set the boundaries.
1. The first signs of toxic relationships generally include personality changes like being quiet or depressed or withdrawn. They may change their favorite hobbies, change the way they dress, or even alter their personality. These are signs that someone doesn’t appreciate many of your teen’s characteristics.
2. Your teen begins to stop spending time with friends and only spends time with the significant other. This might be a sign that her partner is trying to isolate her from her friends and her previous other experiences. Certainly, it is an issue with regards to control.
3. Other signs you might see include a drop in academic performance, truancy, secretive acting, constantly deferring to their partner and even eating disorders. All of these need to be taken into account when looking at toxic relationships.
4. You notice that your teen starts to apologize very frequently for small things. Toxic partners tend to have very bad habits and as a result of that, the teen begins to often walk on egg shells so if you see your or listen to your teen apologizing for not calling or checking in, for spending too much time with friends when talking to their partner, this is problematic.
5. For serious cases what you will see is unexplained injuries. You need to always double check your teen’s stories as to why they might have a scratch or red mark, or even something as serious as a black eye.
6. Repeatedly making excuses for their partner’s bad behavior. When you hear them not only apologize but they make excuses in front of you as to why a partner may behave in a certain way. Teens will often minimize inappropriate behavior violations. They cannot see wrong doing in a particular act. You almost see in some cases a form of worshiping and they continue to allow the person to apologize for these things over and over.
