Survivor Spotlight: Jenna's Story

06.08.2009

This blog was written by a teen dating violence survivor. *Jenna's story shows that teen dating violence does not always have to involve hitting, slapping, pushing, or other types of physical abuse. It also shows how violent emotional and verbal abuse can be and the effects that those actions have on a survivor.

My relationship with *Michael started the summer before my sophomore year in high school. We were very happy to be together as we had both recently broken up with other people. For the first three months, we didn’t have any problems and things were great. However, as time went on I began to notice certain patterns of behavior that made me a little uncomfortable. He was very possessive and didn’t like me hanging out with other guys. He got upset when I went to my sophomore WinterFest dance with a friend instead of him, even though he couldn’t be there. We worked it out eventually but I felt guilty even though I had no reason to. At first I thought it was sweet that he got jealous when I went out with other guys, but this only lead to more intense jealousy later.

My senior year, Michael was a first year student in college. He couldn’t come down for Prom, but I told him that I really wanted to go. I told him I was going with a friend of mine *Jay and he reluctantly agreed that this was fine. Prom passed with no incident, and Jay and I had a lot of fun. Nothing about our night was romantic. Then a few months later, Michael came home. One night, he met Jay and I for dinner, and I noticed that Michael seemed cold and distant. Back at my house, Michael told me he was upset because I sat next to Jay and not him at dinner, and because I had a few sips of Jay’s water. He asked me if I had been cheating on him. I said no, but Michael didn’t believe me. Before I knew it he was yelling, and soon he walked out of my room, without his shoes, telling me that he would “walk home” but he lived about 30 minutes away. He left his car in my driveway and started running down the street. Jay and I got in the car to go find him. When we found him, he apologized, but the incident really shook me up. Still, I never told me parents about it, because they were both asleep when it happened, and I didn’t want to scare them unnecessarily because I thought the issue had been resolved.

Then a few weeks later, we were in the car going to visit one of Michael’s friends. We ended up getting into an argument about Jay again, and this time he got so angry at me for “lying” to him about dating Jay, that he sped up and almost hit a tree. I jumped out of the car thinking that he would, but he stopped just short of it. After he collected himself he apologized and said that we should just go in and have fun with his friend. I really didn’t want to hang out with him anymore that night, but I was too embarrassed to call my family or a friend to have them come pick me up, because I thought I would have to explain what happened. So I agreed to go with him.

In August I had to leave for college, and for a while I thought we could have a long distance relationship and I thought things would work out because there hadn't been any more fights or violent incidents. In September though, out of the blue, he called me and accused me again of cheating on him. I didn’t know how to respond because by this time I was so tired of him making false accusations that I just sat there in silence. He interpreted that to be an admission of guilt, and told me he hated me and never wanted to talk to me again. I tried calling him back to explain that it wasn’t true. He never picked up his phone again, and to this day I haven’t heard from him.

Going through the break up was hard on me, particularly because I later found out that Michael was dating someone else while we were dating, even though he accused me of cheating. Yet I knew that since there was no trust or respect, there could be no relationship. Eventually I saw that he did me a favor, and I did one for myself by moving on.

*The names have been changed to protect the survivor.