As teens move along the continuum from friendship to romantic involvement, both boys and girls experience the aggressive and coercive behaviors that sometimes accompany these new emotional and interpersonal situations. The responses to the scale items show that these fearful and aversive dating situations are experienced by both genders. The boys appeared more fearful of their dating partners than the girls. The findings add to the emerging literature that boys are not necessarily all powerful in early dating relationships. Given the high prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) experienced by both males and females, researchers have begun to take a closer look at the direction of the violence, though the research to date has focused mostly on adults. There is growing evidence that the violence is bidirectional. National studies on adolescents provide preliminary evidence of the same bidirectional for teens. With evidence of violence as a prominent issue in adolescent dating relationships for both genders, how violence might develop between teen dating partners is considered. This study sought to assess fearful and aversive aspects of dating relationships among teens and to examine those experiences by gender. The study examined both survey data and cognitive interviews with teens to understand how teens experienced their dating relationships and how they interpreted the meaning of the items in a fear measure modified for use with teens. Tables and references