The topic of relationships is always of particular interest with teenagers. They are constantly looking for friends, trying to keep friends and sometimes losing friends. They want to understand love, experience love and be loved. They are also often in search of someone with whom they can have a more in depth boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. At the same time though it’s great to see their desire for wholesome, authentic relationships, for respect, for real freedom, for purity, for true love. And I see more and more everyday that this is truly what they are looking for.
I have visited and discussed the following website with my students various times and found it to be quite useful. Perhaps the site and the following ideas can be an activity for your class. Life Athleteswebsite is a guide to having good, authentic relationships. It’s especially geared toward young people. It’s about athletes who have made a choice about living their sexuality and their relationships and can therefore be good role models, especially for young athletes today.
Show them some of the athletes who are members. It helps them to see that people are really serious about true relationships. If the students follow sports, they may recognize some and be able to relate to them.
- Present the Life Athletes Commitment:
1) I will try to do what is right even when it is difficult
2) I will give myself only to the special person whom I marry as my partner for life.
3) I will respect the lives of others, especially the unborn and the aged.
4) I will not quit or make excuses when I fail. I will try again.
- Encourage them to make the pledge (at least in their heart)
- Have them get together in groups and discuss how they understand them and how they could live them. This has often given rise to in-depth discussions where the students see their own strengths and are therefore encouraged, but also their weaknesses.
Quotes for Thought
“The best anyone can do for another is always what he is for the other.”
Adalbert Stifter
“The characteristic of Christian friendship is that it is not closed. It deepens in the measure in which it opens itself ever more widely to whoever is in need of love.”
Bernhard Haring
“Love wants nothing from the other but wants everything for the other.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“True friendship is experienced when everything around us disappears.”
Anonymous
