Here are some warn­ing signs for teen re­la­tion­ships.

Your boyfriend may be abu­sive if he:

• gets very jeal­ous when you talk to oth­er men, even if they are friends;

• crit­i­cis­es your fe­male friends and wants you to stop see­ing them;

• al­ways wants to know your where­abouts and what you are do­ing.

This is the iso­la­tion phase of abuse, where the abuser cuts the vic­tim off from her sup­port sys­tems, so he is the on­ly one she has.

He may be abu­sive if he:

• al­ways crit­i­cis­es what you wear and what you do and con­stant­ly puts you down, of­ten to oth­er peo­ple as well;

• makes de­grad­ing jokes about women or pre­tends to be in­ter­est­ed in oth­er women to scare you or make you jeal­ous.

This is where the abuser at­tacks the vic­tim's self-es­teem, break­ing her down un­til she feels that he's the on­ly per­son who's ever go­ing to tol­er­ate her be­cause she's so use­less.

He may be abu­sive if he:

• of­ten seems de­pressed or with­drawn but won't talk about his feel­ings;

• comes from an abu­sive home;

• has tra­di­tion­al ideas about men and women.

The abuser is of­ten re­peat­ing pat­terns from his own fam­i­ly. Since he's lived with these from ear­li­est child­hood, they are well en­trenched by the time he reach­es his teens and are usu­al­ly very hard to change.

He may be abu­sive if he:

• gets very an­gry over triv­ial things;

• be­comes an­gry or vi­o­lent when us­ing al­co­hol or drugs;

• likes to scare you, e.g., with dan­ger­ous dri­ving;

• gets 'car­ried away' in phys­i­cal play and hurts you or makes you feel help­less and hu­mil­i­at­ed;

• forces you to do sex­u­al things you don't want to do, us­ing ei­ther phys­i­cal force or emo­tion­al pres­sure;

• threat­ens to hit you, hurt your friends or pets or kill him­self if you do not obey him;

• has ever hit you, no mat­ter how sor­ry he was af­ter­wards.

And this is the vi­o­lent phase of the abuse, be­gin­ning with emo­tion­al and ver­bal vi­o­lence (anger, threats), then in­di­rect vi­o­lence (e.g., dri­ving dan­ger­ous­ly), then di­rect phys­i­cal vi­o­lence.

How can you help?

Try­ing to talk a friend out of an abu­sive re­la­tion­ship is near­ly im­pos­si­ble. It's bet­ter to try to stay close to her no mat­ter what her boyfriend does to iso­late her. Find a way to keep let­ting her know that you're still her friend – send texts, leave notes for her at her par­ent's house. Leave in­for­ma­tion on abu­sive re­la­tion­ships for her to read, some­where the abuser won't find it.Keep re­mind­ing her of her strengths and achieve­ments.Sup­port her as much as you can in any in­de­pen­dent steps she takes, like ac­tiv­i­ties she does on her own with­out her boyfriend around.Very im­por­tant­ly, talk to the trust­ed adults in her life and en­list their sup­port as well – they may not be aware of what's hap­pen­ing.Try to find some­one with ex­per­tise in work­ing with abu­sive re­la­tion­ships to talk to your friend's fam­i­ly so they un­der­stand how to help her.

The fol­low­ing fac­tors have been found to in­crease the like­li­hood that the abuser is dan­ger­ous and hard to treat:

• pre­vi­ous his­to­ry of vi­o­lent re­la­tion­ships with women;

• anger trig­gered by in­ter­nal feel­ings rather than ex­ter­nal events;

• chron­ic, sys­tem­at­ic vi­o­lence;

• fre­quent use of weapons; and no re­morse.

The clos­er the abuser's be­hav­iour is to this pat­tern, the high­er the prob­a­bil­i­ty that he will se­ri­ous­ly harm or even­tu­al­ly kill his vic­tim.The prog­no­sis for treat­ment is very poor.If your friend is in­volved with some­one like this, then her par­ents need to take dras­tic steps to pro­tect her as soon as pos­si­ble.