Social Media and Relationships

Love can be a beautiful thing, and when you are in love you want the whole world to know. People tend to get on sites such as Facebook and express how good or bad their relationship is going. Most people discuss the good things, while some speak of the bad ones. The thing that a lot of people tend to forget is that the statuses that they are posting will be viewed by hundreds, maybe thousands of people. First, I will break down how people view the things that you post about your relationship.  

About 50% of your Facebook friends will think it is nice that you are posting the good things about your relationship, or they will be truly concerned about the bad things that you post. Each of those Facebook friends might even be in relationship too. Those are the main ones that will like or comment on your status.

There will be about another 40% that will not see it or they will see it, but they will not pay much attention to it. This does not mean that they dislike you or that they are jealous of you, it just means that the status may not interest them or perhaps they did not get online that day.

Finally, there is one more group; this is the final 10%. This is the group that is jealous because you have something that they wished they had. They could be the ones that were single for a long time, and constantly see you updating your status saying how much you love your significant other, and how happy you are to be with them. Your happiness hurts them, because they want to experience true love, and knowing that you have found that before they did makes them want to ruin what you have going on with the person you love.

The 10% will do whatever it takes to put an end to your relationship or to cause problems for you and your significant other. They will also do whatever they have to in order for them to find out who you are in a relationship with, and they will ease their way into his or her life. They may start out by liking some of their statuses or pictures. They may comment on their page off and on. Eventually they will message the person that you are in a relationship with. They will pretend to only want to be their friend, like most people do when they first meet. Eventually, the person that you are in a relationship with may give him/her their phone number so that they can contact each other outside of Facebook. Most men are aware of the real reason that they are getting a girl’s phone number, and that she may want more than a friendship if he is in a relationship, because plenty of women want what another woman already has. Females on the other hand may not realize a man’s intentions, especially if they are approached while in a vulnerable state. I am not saying that all men wait until a woman is going through problems before they get to know her because it will be easier to get what they want when she is like that, but a lot of them do.

Once the person from the 10% gets your boyfriend/girlfriend to contact them outside of Facebook the next step will be for them to meet in person. Plenty of you may read this and say that your man or woman will never fall for that, but you would be surprised at how wrong you are. And if you think that way, you probably were already in that situation and were unaware of it. The 10% of people who are jealous of your relationship will go through a lot to hurt your feelings and end your relationship, but there are ways to avoid this.

1. Always be aware of statuses that people may make toward you without saying your name. Some people will make it known that they are jealous, but they will create a subliminal status to get it off of their chest, while keeping your name out of it. You can easily delete them before they even attempt to break up your relationship. 
2. Pay attention to the people who comment and like your status. Most of them may have good intentions, but some of them may comment or like your status only to be nosy, and to see all of the comments that you receive on it before they inbox and attempt to try to get to know you while you are going through relationship problems.
3. You need to understand that anyone can become jealous. Do not think that only your enemies and people who you do not know will try to sabotage your relationship, because a friend will do it too. Think about it, a friend sees you talking about your how good your relationship is online, and in person. If it is a friend that is not loyal they will eventually get curious about what he or she is doing to make you so happy. As time passes they will want what is yours. Even though you all may hang out together in person that might be too risky for him/her to try to talk to your man or woman when you are around. They may flirt with your significant other while you all are in public, when you are not paying attention, but they will not do anything to make you curious. Ask yourself, what is the easiest way for them to try to talk your boyfriend or girlfriend? The answer is by messaging them on Facebook or a similar social media site.
4. Be aware of a person pretending to care in order to get close to you and to separate you from the person you are with. Everyone needs advice sometime, but be aware of people that will try manipulate you to get what they want. We can easily say Facebook destroys relationships, but we as humans have free will so we are the only ones can mess up our relationships by giving in to temptation, and by not showing self-control.

Why are you afraid?

A wise man once said that fear is a form of insanity, because we fear situations that we have yet to experience. Think about it; you might fear that you are going to lose your job, you might fear that you won’t have enough money to pay your bills by the time they are due, you might fear that your boyfriend/girlfriend might break up with you, all of these things are scenarios that you have created, because you are letting external situations control you instead of you controlling those external situations.

These different scenarios that you create with your imagination are the type of scenarios that creates fear. How many times have you been afraid of what might happen only to find out that things did not turn out the way that you thought they were going to turn out, and you realized that you were afraid for no reason at all? This form of insanity has become acceptable, because most humans suffer from it. We believe that it is normal for humans to fear the unknown, but you can change this way of thinking.

To overcome fear you have to step outside of your imagination, and live within reality. Your imagination will drive you crazy if you constantly use it to try and figure out what might happen in the future. When you are rooted in reality, and focused on the present, you will not worry about what might happen, and you will devote the energy that you were wasting on fear into regaining control of the situations that caused you to be afraid in the first place.

Life is too short to live it fearing things/situations that have yet to come into existence; it is a terrible way to live. Remember that we all have freewill and you can use that freewill to fear what might happen in the future, or you can use it to regain control of those external situations that are making you imagine what might happen. Do you want to live your life consumed by your fears or do you want to live your life to the fullest? The choice is yours.

SHE DESERVED TO BE RAPED?

A few days ago I was at a store not too far from where I live, and I overheard two guys, and a woman talking about another woman that accused a guy of raping her. I can tell that they didn’t believe her, it also seemed as if they personally knew this woman. The woman said that the girl was a liar and an attention whore. That is when one of the men said, "She is always dressing like a whore; if it did happen she probably led him on."

Lately, I have been hearing plenty of men saying that women deserve to be disrespected if they wear revealing clothing. In this particular case, the woman in the store agreed with them. Sometimes I think that men just speak without even taking a second to think about how stupid they are about to sound. I don’t care how revealing a woman’s clothing is, no woman deserves to be raped, or disrespected because of what they are wearing.

Men are known for making those ignorant comments, but it really baffled me to know that there are women that agree with them. If it was their sister, mother, or their daughter being violated for what they were wearing, I am positive that they would start to see things differently. It is a shame that it takes for a person to personally go through this, or for them to have a friend or family member become a rape victim before they realize how insensitive they were being by disrespecting those women that have been hurt by these animals.

When people say that women deserve to be disrespected because of what they are wearing, they encourage this type of behavior and make it acceptable by blaming the victim. These women aren’t asking to be disrespected; they are not asking these men -not men, more like sexual predators- to rape them. We need to hold these men accountable for their actions instead of demonizing the victim who had no control over the person that chose hurt her.

I don’t expect too many men to change their ways, because for years women have been trying to show them that they should be respected regardless of how they are dressed, and they are still blaming the victims. I hope that all of the women that have started to support the nonsense that some of these men have been spewing will realize that women have been through too much throughout our history, and to tear each other down by saying that some women deserve to be violated isn't conducive to all of things that women have been fighting for and are still fighting for.

The next time that any of my readers see a woman that is wearing revealing clothing; don’t be so quick to assume that she is a whore or a slut. Some women are proud of their bodies and they love to show it off, it doesn’t mean that they should be hurt because of it. There are some women that like to rebel against what most people consider to be normal, and by wearing what they want they are showing the world that they refuse to conform to what society views as being acceptable. I used to be one of those foolish men, judging women based on their appearance. Now I know that I should never do that, and maybe, one day, the majority of men in the world will see things the way that I see them.