Johanna, a girl in Grade 10, has been going out with her boyfriend for three months. Lately, he has become increasingly controlling and jealous. He doesn’t want her seeing her friends and wants her to spend all her time with him. She is very unhappy in the relationship, but she is also afraid to break up with him. She can’t imagine going alone to parties and not having a boyfriend to go out with on Saturday nights. She would have nothing to look forward to on the weekend. All her friends have boyfriends and she would feel like there was something wrong with her if she didn’t have a boyfriend.
Johanna’s gym teacher has contacted a local women’s centre to organize a women’s self-defence course, to be offered during gym period, for all Grade 10 girls. During the course, the girls talk about different kinds of violence against women. When they talk about violence in intimate relationships during the course, Johanna recognizes her own relationship with her boyfriend. She learns some assertiveness skills as well as some physical self-defence techniques. Johanna still really likes her boyfriend, but she can now see that sometimes he tries to control her. She is planning some assertive things she will say to him next time he acts that way.