Loveisrespect The Ultimate Resource For Fostering Healthy Relationships

Women's Dating

Loveisrespect: The Ultimate Resource for Fostering Healthy Relationships

Hayley Matthews

Written by: Hayley Matthews

Hayley Matthews

Hayley has over 10 years of experience overseeing content strategy, social media engagement, and article opportunities. She has also written hundreds of informational and entertaining blog posts. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Bustle, Cosmo, the Huffington Post, AskMen, and Entrepreneur. When she's not writing about dating news, relationship advice, or her fantasy love affair with Leonardo DiCaprio, she enjoys listening to The Beatles, watching Harry Potter reruns, and drinking IPAs.

See full bio »

Edited by: Lillian Castro

Lillian Castro

Lillian Guevara-Castro brings more than 30 years of journalism experience to ensure DatingAdvice articles have been edited for overall clarity, accuracy, and reader engagement. She has worked at The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, The Gwinnett Daily News, and The Gainesville Sun covering lifestyle topics.

Discuss This! Discuss This!
Advertiser Disclosure

The 411: With more than 88,000 chats, phone calls and texts coming in every year, loveisrespect is the most reliable and authoritative organization focused on helping teens and young adults identify, prevent and end abusive relationships. 

With more than 41 million teens in the U.S, it’s important for them to have a convenient way to get good advice about relationships, and that’s exactly what loveisrespect provides.

Loveisrespect: The Ultimate Resource for Fostering Healthy Relationships

Brian Pinero, National Domestic Violence Hotline and loveisrespect

Launched in 2007, loveisrespect, a project of the National Domestic Violence Hotline and Break the Cycle, is one of the only institutions to offer 24/7 call, text and chat services that help people aged 13 to 26 understand the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships and improve their situation.

When you throw in the fact that the program is staffed by trained peer advocates ,who teens and young adults can actually relate to, it really doesn’t get any better than loveisrespect.

“No matter who you are or what’s happened or how you’ve come to us or what you’ve searched for or what your age is, loveisrespect wants to help you,” said Brian Pinero, chief programs officer.

Creating, providing, ensuring

Users always come first at loveisrespect, and the dedicated team does that by:

  • Creating tools that encourage healthy dating attitudes and relationships
  • Providing an environment where young people feel safe to express themselves
  • Ensuring privacy both online and offline

Besides around-the-clock help via chat, phone or text, loveisrespect also has a popular blog that’s filled with posts that are generated by teens’ needs, including tips on how to communicate, negotiate, recognize the signs of abuse and more.

Creating, providing, ensuring

Loveisrespect’s trained peer advocates respond to live chats, texts and calls, as well as create content for the blog.

Another great thing about loveisrespect is its advocates, including Mikaela, who’s been with the organization for almost two years and is part of the digital services team.

From giving advice to those who’ve just started dating to listening to those who are concerned about the state of their current relationship, Mikaela and her colleagues work hard to provide support and promote healthy behaviors.

“You have to be ready to meet them where they’re at, assess their needs and feelings, and determine how you can best help them in that moment,” she said. “Abuse is something that no one should ever have to experience, so if I can be a part of someone building the relationship foundation that they need to prevent becoming a survivor or perpetrator of abuse, that is an incredibly satisfying feeling.”

Harnessing technology to reach more people

While loveisrespect has already made a positive impact on millions of teens and young adults nationwide, the team hopes to continue improving their services, including adding interactive forums and video chat to the site.

“What would it be like if the person could see us, if we could see them, if they could have that conversation? What would that lead to?” Pinero said. “It’s just continuing to see how people search for our services and look for information.”

Harnessing technology to reach more people

Loveisrespect offers 24/7 call, text and chat services.

They also want to help people who come to them feeling hurt leave feeling empowered and ready to start a happier, healthier life.

“Being in an unhealthy or abusive relationship can make people feel like they’re all alone, like no one understands what they’re going through and there is no way out,” Mikaela said. “It takes so much strength to reach out for help and share upsetting and intimate details of your life, and I always feel so humbled and inspired by that courage.”

If you’re looking for expert advice about healthy relationships, abuse and more, visit loveisrespect.org. You can also visit its partner sites, thehotline.org and breakthecycle.org.

Advertiser Disclosure

DatingAdvice.com is a free online resource that offers valuable content and comparison services to users. To keep this resource 100% free, we receive compensation from many of the offers listed on the site. Along with key review factors, this compensation may impact how and where products appear across the site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). DatingAdvice.com does not include the entire universe of available offers. Editorial opinions expressed on the site are strictly our own and are not provided, endorsed, or approved by advertisers.

Our Editorial Review Policy

Our site is committed to publishing independent, accurate content guided by strict editorial guidelines. Before articles and reviews are published on our site, they undergo a thorough review process performed by a team of independent editors and subject-matter experts to ensure the content’s accuracy, timeliness, and impartiality. Our editorial team is separate and independent of our site’s advertisers, and the opinions they express on our site are their own. To read more about our team members and their editorial backgrounds, please visit our site’s About page.