Relationship Skills For Young Adults
Author: RJ Barranco · Status: Coming Summer 2026
What this book is about
The relationship situations teens actually find themselves in — friends who only call when they're in crisis, family roles they didn't choose, dating dynamics that drift into coercive territory before either person notices, social-media relationships and sextortion attempts, the guilt-trip that's actually manipulation, and the moments when leaving a relationship safely is the skill that matters. Built around eight "boundary superpowers" and treats the difference between caring deeply and losing yourself as a learnable skill.
Who it's for
Grades 9–12, college first-year, advisory / SEL, Health Education (relationships / mental health / family-life strands), peer-mediation programs, Title IX-adjacent prevention curriculum, school-counselor curriculum support, transition planning, and special-education social-skills programming. Strong fit for any educator running an SEL or relationships unit.
What's inside
Thirteen chapters covering: the emotional backpack (what's yours to carry), energy-draining friend patterns, family triangulation, the Force Field (body / digital / space / energy boundaries), the Mind Shield (caring without absorbing), honest communication, dating without drama (with explicit affirmative consent and abuse-recognition content), friend-group politics, social-media boundaries (sextortion-aware), the GPS Check on whose values you're living by, the Guilt Buster for the predictable backlash, and how to build a diverse support team. Capstone synthesis pulls all eight superpowers into one working toolkit.
Critical adopter note
This is the book in the series with the heaviest safety content — dating abuse, sextortion, self-harm, coercive control. Every crisis-line callout is placed at the moment it's needed (not buried in back-matter). Every "talk to a trusted adult" callout includes a "if you really can't tell a parent" fallback. In-house sensitivity, legal, voice, and fact-check passes are complete. Read the full educator companion guide before adopting.
For educators
The free educator companion guide for this book — chapter-by-chapter teaching notes, sensitivity protocols (especially heavy for Chs 7, 9, 11), discussion questions, and standards-alignment documentation — lives at skillsforyoungadults.org and is freely usable in adopted classrooms and adjacent contexts. Strong adoption fit for SEL, Health Education, peer-mediation programs, Title IX-adjacent prevention curriculum, and school-counselor curriculum support.
The full thirteen-chapter classroom toolkit — twelve files per chapter (lesson plans, anchor-read excerpts, worksheets, student-retained reference cards, project rubrics, Marp slide decks, quiz banks, standards-alignment crosswalks, differentiation protocols, teacher notes; crisis-routing protocols for dating abuse, sextortion, self-harm, and coercive control built into every chapter's differentiation file) — is available to schools, districts, and programs adopting the book for classroom use. Given the safety content, the toolkit's teacher-notes files include explicit mandated-reporter and counselor-routing protocols. To inquire about classroom adoption + toolkit access, contact skills@mojavepublishing.com.
Get the book
First seven titles in the series arrive Summer 2026. Sample chapters and direct-purchase links will be posted here as the book ships.
For press, school visits, librarian inquiries, or institutional licensing: skills@mojavepublishing.com.