How Your Brain Affects Your Dating Relationships

Teenage Brain| Teen Dating| Teen Relationships| Teenage Girl Ministry| Transformed4More.com

So far we have talked about what you need to know about the teenage brain and how it affects your relationship with your parents.

Today we are going to talk about how it affects your dating relationships! Woot woot!

You probably already know that you are sacks of raging hormones as a teenager. Couple that with a hyperactive reward center, impaired decision making and lack of realizing consequences and it can wreak havoc on your dating relationships.

Hopefully by the end of this post, you will know how to get a hold of these realities and make better choices in your dating relationships.

Hyperactive reward center

As discussed in the teenage brain post, teenagers have an over active reward center. This causes you to do dangerous and/or silly things if there is a reward involved, even if it’s a small reward.

In a dating relationship, if you allow yourself to enter into a compromising and tempting situation, your physical body will be gnawing at you to keep going. It loves the feeling of the looming sexual “reward” and desperately craves it.

Many who don’t really believe in the consequences of a sexual relationship outside of marriage will give in to this because they have no reason not to. It feels good. Their body is telling them to do it. They think it is good for the relationship. The list goes on.

The most important thing you can do is to keep yourself from getting into these compromising situations. Do everything you can to avoid them because when the hormones kick it, they are insanely difficult to combat. If you want more guidance on this, check out the VLOG we did a few weeks ago here.

Impaired decision making & Realization of consequences

Because your prefrontal cortex is under development, much of your immediate processing and quick decision making skills are left to the amygdala. The amygdala is the “gut reaction” emotional center of your brain and it causes you to act IMPULSIVELY instead of LOGICALLY.

This means it barely process consequences during decision making. It’s more like, “That feels good. DO IT NOW!” or “He made me upset. PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE!”

If you are not 100% grounded in your beliefs and boundaries, you are at a 10838292% greater chance of compromising and giving in if you allow yourself to be put in a tempting situation. [OK so I made up the statistic obviously, but you get the point].

So what can you do?

Do ALL YOU CAN to think of the consequences of your actions and your future. Is it worth potentially living with an STD for the rest of your life for these few minutes of pleasure? What about an unwanted pregnancy? What if the guy leaves you?

Do you know that your brain can influence your behavior in teen dating relationships? Click To Tweet

At this stage in life, your reward center is hyperactive, your quick decision making skills are impaired, and you’re not good at realizing the consequences of your actions. This is not all bad! Your brain is just getting ready for a super speedy fully formed brain.

In Closing

Again, if you would like to see the video on “Six Ways to Avoid Temptation in Your Teenage Dating Relationships,” click here.

We have an entire category on this blog for dating. If you want to read more, click here! We also have a board on Pinterest that has other articles about dating, infographics, and encouragement in this area. You can follow it here.

Want to know more about teenage dating?

Then check out our book, So, You Think You’re Ready to Date? It is a MUST READ for every teenage girl that is about to date or is currently dating. Click the graphic to learn more!