Good relationships make you feel respected and safe. This section covers boundaries, consent, warning signs, online safety, and how to get help if something is not right.
Healthy relationships — with partners, friends, or family — are built on respect, honesty, trust, and equality. You can disagree without fear, spend time apart without being punished for it, keep your own friends and interests, and feel supported rather than controlled. Both people's needs matter, decisions get made together, and apologies come with changed behaviour rather than just words. Feeling calm and like yourself around someone is a good sign.
A boundary is a limit you set about what you are comfortable with — your time, your body, your phone, your money, your privacy. Boundaries can be stated simply and do not need long justifications: 'I don't want to,' or 'not right now,' is a complete answer. Someone who respects you will accept it the first time. Consent applies to everything from a hug to sex to sharing photos: it must be freely given, specific, informed, and able to be withdrawn at any moment. Repeated pressure, guilt-tripping, or sulking until you give in is not consent.
Warning signs include jealousy framed as love, checking your phone or location, deciding who you can see, criticism that chips away at your confidence, threats, blaming you for their anger, pressuring you into sexual activity or photos, controlling money, and physical harm of any kind. Abuse often builds gradually and can be followed by apologies and affection, which makes it confusing. It is never caused by anything you did, and it is not your job to fix the person doing it.
Keep accounts private, be cautious about sharing your school, workplace, or location, and remember that anyone can present themselves as someone they are not. Never feel obliged to send intimate photos; if someone threatens to share images to blackmail you (sextortion), stop replying, do not pay, save the evidence, block them, and tell a trusted adult or report it to the police or a reporting service — you are the victim of a crime, not in trouble. Turn on two-factor authentication, use different passwords, and check which apps can see your location.
Trust your instincts: if a situation feels wrong, you are allowed to leave without explaining yourself. Tell a friend where you are going and when you expect to be back, keep your phone charged, arrange how you will get home before you go out, and meet new people in public places first. Watch your own drink and be aware that alcohol and drugs affect judgement — yours and other people's. If you feel unsafe, going to staff in a shop, bar, or station and asking for help is completely reasonable.
If you are worried about a relationship, telling one person you trust — a friend, family member, teacher, school counsellor, doctor, or nurse — breaks the isolation that abuse depends on. Domestic abuse and sexual assault helplines are confidential and can talk through options without pushing you into anything. If you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency number. After a sexual assault, specialist services can offer medical care, emergency contraception, STI testing, and support whether or not you choose to report it. See the Resources page for where to start.