We don’t talk about the different types of relationships with our children—and maybe we should.

Instead, as a society, we glorify the man or woman in distress who is rescued by their partner aka “the fairytale.”

We don’t teach our children the love they ought to pass up, the kind of love that hurts.

Abuse in relationships is common and the subtle forms of emotional abuse are often hard to recognise by the individual in that relationship.

This is, of course, obvious to the outsider looking in. Looking from the outside, we see the “cycle of abuse.”

Even for therapists working with individuals, it’s a challenge to get people to see and understand their patterns of behaviour. All we can do is educate and support.

For many, the highs and lows of such relationships are a combination of feeling the lowest low, and a feeling of being not worthy mixed with the intoxication of the deadliest form of “love,” the type that makes us lose ourselves while desperately clinging to a sinking ship in a turbulent sea.

This is the love we need to educate and ask questions about:

Does your lover want you all to themselves, isolating you from friends and family?

Do they put down the people in your life?

Does your lover fight to make things better and then blow up and make excuses for their behaviour?

Does your lover “love bomb” you and then retract their love?

Are there moments of silence after arguments or slamming and throwing of objects?

Does this love hurt you emotionally, spiritually, or physically?

Does this lover make you feel like everything is your fault? Do you question yourself and feel like you are going crazy?

Do you feel like you need to defend your lover to others to prove that they are a good man or woman?

This, of course, is just the start. Please share and offer what you think we should tell the youth, the future parents of tomorrow.

What words of advice would you offer?

What kind of love do our children deserve and what kind should they pass up?

Real love doesn’t hurt.