What’s Inside?
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Will you let a young person like Macey know they’re valuable just the way they are?
It’s up to us to help keep the next generation from falling into unhealthy relationships.
Macey thought Nate was so handsome. He was the quarterback on their high school’s football team, always made people laugh during class, and… had no idea who Macey was. Macey tried her best to get Nate’s attention by sitting near him in class, “liking” his social media posts, and smiling at him in the hallway.
Slowly but surely, Macey started changing her habits to try and impress Nate.
You can help young people like Macey know that they shouldn’t change their daily activities and appearance to impress someone.
She started wearing darker colors instead of her normal colorful outfits because that’s what Nate wore. She stopped wearing nail polish and started
wearing more makeup.
And it worked – soon enough, Nate took notice of Macey, and a few weeks later they started dating. Macey was thrilled! Nate — the football star — wanted to be with her!
Over time, Nate started to become jealous and demanded all of Macey’s time. Saying things like, “Why do you want to hang out with Andrea and Kelly? Do you like them more than me?” or “Do you have to go to dinner with your mom? Why don’t you and I get dinner instead?”
Friend, you know that this type of behavior isn’t healthy. But as a young person, it made Macey feel special.
“He wants to spend every day with me, so I must be pretty special to him.” But then he started telling Macey who she could be friends with on social media. He would get upset when she would “like” another guy’s post. Macey began to notice that she wasn’t as happy as she used to be. She missed her old friends and her colorful wardrobe. And if she was being honest, she didn’t really like the way Nate was treating her.
She tried talking to Nate about it. But every time she would try and say something about it, he would flip the conversation. “Am I not good enough for you?”, “You’ll never find anyone else who will actually want to date you.” and sometimes even “If you try to dump me, I’ll tell everyone at school about what a loser you are.”
