The danger of falling into an abusive relationship is even greater when you’re an LGBTQ+ teen. Because of the limited dating pool, it can seem like you have to get with and stay with the first person who wants to pursue a relationship with you. Otherwise, you simply won’t get the chance to experience requited love ever again, or at least not for a very long time. This slippery-slope thinking can be very persuasive, especially to teens with little dating experience and low self-esteem.
Additionally, many LGBTQ+ teens aren’t accepted by their families or society. When they can finally date, their first relationship seems sacred, something to be celebrated; it is, but not at the expense of one’s own safety and well-being. Of course, it’s hard to know where a relationship will end up when entering or pursuing one.
A lack of self-confidence can make a person view themself as unlovable, so when someone comes along who loves or claims to love them, they can feel indebted or burdensome to that person and feel that there is only one person who can ever love them. Abusers often exploit these feelings and re-iterate them, making them seem true.
When you love someone, it’s hard to believe they are deliberately hurting you. Even after a person leaves their abuser, the former partner’s words can still leave a mark. Intense negative feelings can make it seem like the wrong decision. The period after leaving an abusive situation or relationship is incredibly dangerous as the heartbreak can compel a victim to return to the situation. It’s easy to feel that they’re in the wrong and that they made the mistakes. An abuser’s “forgiveness” only asserts these feelings and deepens the cycle of abuse.
Additional barriers to LGBTQ+ victims coming forward about their abuse are common misconceptions about men, women, and queer relationships. According to domesticshelters.org, such misconceptions include “that women are not violent, that men are not commonly victims, that LGBTQ domestic violence is mutual, and that there are no significant differences between heterosexual domestic violence and same-gender domestic violence.” However, 44% of lesbian and 61% of bisexual women as well as 26% of gay and 37% of bisexual men have experienced sexual assault, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner compared to 35% of heterosexual women and 29% of heterosexual men. In youth, the statistics are even worse; the HRC reports that a study by The Urban Institute found that 42.8% of LGBTQ+ youth experienced dating violence in comparison to 29% of their heterosexual peers. Finally, abusers may use the threat of outing their victim to their family and friends, thereby potentially threatening their victim’s physical safety and mental well-being.
If you are in an emergency situation, please call 911. For anyone affected by abuse, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233. You can also log onto thehotline.org or text LOVEIS to 1-866-331-9474. For additional information and advice concerning LGBTQ+ teen dating violence, you can visit this website. If you are a teen wanting to know if your relationship is healthy, you can visit LoveIsRespect.org for LGBTQ information and an interactive quiz. More resources and hotlines can be found here. For the study done by the Urban Institute, look here. You are not alone.
Works Cited
“LGBTQ and Domestic Violence.” DomesticShelters.org, 7 Jan. 2015, www.domesticshelters.org/resources/statistics/lgbtq-and-domestic-violence.
“National Domestic Violence Hotline.” The Hotline, 3 Dec. 2020, www.thehotline.org/.
