9781422276082

Dealingwith Dating and romance

Introduction

What is dating, anyway? In the past, a “date” tended to be a pretty specific type of event. A boy arrived at a girl’s house, awkwardly greeted her parents, then took her to the movies or dinner. That still happens, of course, but dating doesn’t necessarily look like that anymore. The word dating means different things to different people. Sometimes kids in middle school say they are “going out,” though they don’t actually go anywhere. Often, they text each other a lot, or eat lunch at the same table. For teens, “dating” may involve a lot of hanging out together with a larger social group. These days, of course, dating can involve people of the opposite sex or the same sex. People can also date more than one person at a time, and in “poly” relationships, a group of people may date one another. And then there’s “hookup culture” — casual encounters with people who may be friends but may not even be that. Perhaps surprisingly, our ideas about how abuse can happen in relationships haven’t kept up with the evolving nature of relationships themselves. If you were to picture an “abusive relationship,” you might immediately think of a straight man hitting a straight woman. That’s not wrong, but it’s too limited — in truth, anyone can potentially commit abuse. Not all abusers fit the stereotype, either in terms of gender or sexual preference. In a survey quoted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), roughly 1 in 10 high school students had experienced physical and/or sexual abuse by someone they dated within the previous

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