Sexual abuse is also referred to as molestation. It is an unacceptable sexual behavior where one person tries to force themselves on another person.

This is when they try to take advantage of another individual to satisfy their sexual desires. The person who offends is called a sexual abuser or molester.

Here are some of the tips to fight against sexual abuse

Educate people

Many people don’t know that sexual abuse can take different forms. This is why some of them might not be aware that a molester has taken advantage of them until they are told. It is important to educate people on the various ways in which sexual abuse can occur.

For instance, some little children might not be aware that when someone fiddled with their sexual organs, it is a form of abuse. They need to be educated on how to recognize sexual abuse in any form and take the necessary actions.

Report to the necessary authorities

When you have been sexually abused, or you know someone who has been molested, it is important to report them. You can begin by reporting them to those they are accountable to, or the authorities that handle sexual abuse cases.

Also, when you don’t report these offenders, they might continue to take advantage. Reporting them helps to keep other potential offenders in check so that they don’t repeat the same mistake.

Teach children to protect their private parts

Many parents and caregivers often miss out on the opportunity to tell their children the importance of protecting their privates.

There is a global pandemic where molesters prey on children because they have unlimited access to them.

They do unthinkable things to them, including toying with their private parts. It is important to let kids know that it is wrong for anyone to play with their private parts.

Another profound way of fighting against sexual abuse is for the government of each country to put strict laws in place that deal with sexual abuse offenders.

Sexual violence is a sexual activity that is devoid of consent and it is a big problem all over the world today.

It would amaze you to know that sexual violence impacts both genders, communities, ages and the likes. This means that anyone can experience or perpetrate sexual violence.

Usually, sexual violence is perpetrated by someone who is known to the victim. In most cases, it could be the family member, close friend, erstwhile intimate partner, coworker, neighbor and a long list of other categories. And the sad part is, sexual violence is associated with some economic and health consequences.

Sadly, in the promotion of sexual violence, the media currently plays a vital role and this is why sexual violence is on the increase. One of the ways the media plays a role is via pornography.

There are thousands of pornography sites on the internet today and one feature common to them is the videos which people seem to fantasize about.

For example, you could see a pornography video where a stepfather sleeps with his daughter, or a co-worker sleeping with his female boss.

People make the mistake of fantasizing over this, and applying it to their personal lives. And this is one of the reasons why sexual violence occurs.

Usually, the perpetrator of the act thinks it would play out the same way in the pornography video, but they end up being wrong.

The worst part about sexual violence is, the victim remains stigmatized for the rest of their lives.

A good number of them develop unnecessary anxiety, depression, PTSD and the likes. And this stigma goes ahead to affect their perspective about life.

To stop the rate of sexual violence, it is imperative that pornography sites cut down on the kinds of content they curate. At this point in the world, it cannot be banned, but they can structure their content to suit those who love them.

It is important that people who are victims of sexual violence receive help in every way possible, so that they would lead better lives.  

When it comes to the concept of love, the media has led many astray and this is why we have lots of failed marriages and relationships. People are often sucked in by the false depiction of love on the media, and they make the mistake of applying them to their personal lives.

People who do this fail to realize that, this false depiction of love was done either in a bid to market a particular product or service, or it was done to subtly promote a certain notion or ideology.

This is why you will find people comparing what happens on the media instead of focusing on their lives.

One fact people need to realize is, we are all structured and wired differently. This implies that what works for one will certainly not work for the other.

When it comes to the issue of love, it is best to approach it based on an individualized standpoint instead of following what the media depicts.

Another fact people need to put into consideration is the false definition of love. What a good number of people think is, love is based on the emotions we feel within us. And this is why several people fall out of romantic relationships because these emotions have a seemingly expiry date.

The real definition of love is, seeing your partner for who they are, beyond their inadequacies. If you love someone, you must be willing to go the extra mile for them even though they are underserving of it.

However, many people get stuck at this stage because they are not willing to practice this.

The emotions we feel within us are simply hormones that are produced on a continuum in our body chemistry. It is important for us to feel these emotions that are triggered by hormones, but it is not enough to sustain a relationship.

We only begin to love truly when we care for the other person beyond their faults. When the chemical hormones seem to fade off and we don’t want to be involved with the other person, we were never truly in love.  

Everyone falls in love at one point or the other in our lives. Falling in love is a beautiful thing, it is a phase which many people do not want to leave.

When you see two people who love each other, it started off first as an attraction, which developed to a strong form of attachment. These two people find it hard to let go of each other. This form of love is known as romance.

Asides romantic love, there is the love which parents have for their children and vice-versa. This type of love comes with no form of romantic attachment.

There is also the love which we have for our friends, that would make us go lengths for them. Sometimes, love in friendship is usually devoid of romance.

• 

In this piece, we would be majoring on romantic love. This is a form of love which has seemingly been bastardized by the media. These days, children grow up knowing the wrong definition of romantic love, and the media is highly responsible for this.

For some people, romantic love only exists when both parties are able to make out on a regular basis. The absence of this supposedly signifies the disappearance of love. This is largely false.

Romantic love does not just boil down to making out and having a nice time with your partner.

One of the strong pillars of romantic love, is commitment and tolerance. This requires you to look beyond the faults of your partner, and keep up with them, hoping they get better.

In romantic love, each party is expected to give the other benefit of doubt, and room for them to become better. When there is no tolerance, romantic love tends to die out.

The media has a lot of work to do in order to correct the mindset of people, educating them that love does not just boil down to the feelings we have inside, there is a lot of work to be done in order to sustain the romantic love.

Movie and TV shows watched by quite a number of people are changing the way people think about relationships and romance. Exposure to romantic novels and movies has made people have a greater tendency to believe that love can overcome any challenge or obstacle been faced. Also, exposure to romance movies cause people to believe in the concept of love at first sight, and that true love is nearly almost perfect without any constraint.

Thus, research has shown that behaviors exhibited in such mass media genres usually influences and has an impact on people’s views and opinions about relationships and romance. The influence of movies, novels and TV shows is instilling a confused sense of a perfect relationship within the society, and providing unrealistic expectations about relationships.

Although, adults should be able to tell the differences between over-emphasized love and healthy realistic love, but in the real sense, people’s lives, whether young or old, are a replica of what is actually portrayed on-screen.

The scenario which the fairy-tales and illusions that movies depicts, ends immediately one decides to enter into a relationship. As people are perplexed and mystified by the media’s view of love, romance and sex. It is becoming a norm for relationships and marriages to be based on a strong desire for happiness and personal fulfillment, and when these feelings fade or vanishes, people think the love they once felt is gone and forces them to move from one lover or spouse to the next.

Just as pornography in a way sets up unrealistic expectations for sex and other related activities, even so media whimsical stories of love and romance spur people to expect an unlikely mode of relationship. The media sells the most exciting part of love as the one filled with a lot of fun and entertainment, through movies and novels, but there is more to the concept of true love than just fun and entertainment but also the place of purpose and fulfillment.

Also, media has been used to promote sex in a rather negative way. Products are being sold, businesses have been on the rise as a result of the sale of tickets that gets our attention. All these continuous exposure, can lead one to develop absurd expectations for sexuality. So, many are of the view that sex should never be uncomfortable, and the people engaged in it would receive maximum satisfaction with just little effort.

Studies has shown that individuals regularly and commonly communicate inauthentic and insincere loving messages to their partners. There are different motives for this act of deception which includes emotion management, conflict avoidance and a need to save one’s face.

It is important to note that a crucial part in maintaining deep relationship, is in effective communication of love and affection. Affectionate communication is considered to be an adaptive behavior which leads to long term endurance of a relationship. Affection is a basic interactive resource, and research shows that individuals identify affection as a very important feature in their mates.

Deception is regarded as a message which consciously transmitted by the sender to intentionally initiate a false belief of affection in the minds of the receiver. Having known that honesty is a desired characteristic in mates, hence, one may have the opinion that deception rarely occurs in romantic relationships. According to research, one in three interactions with a non-married romantic partner is contained a considerable element of deception.

It is no news that most romances in film and other media outlets have at least some elements of delusion. Although, fantasy is not a negative thing, but it has the potency to create manipulative concept of love, relationships and marriages and owing to the fact that there is a lot of dependence on media on a daily basis, one cannot totally avoid having false expectations that would end up creating a lasting negative effect on the individual.

There is a faux depiction of romance on TV shows and movies which take romance to the extreme rather than the ordinary. A real relationship is faced with challenges and that is what makes it unique and interesting, rather than the mundane relationship settings exhibited by mass media.

They can actually manipulate and influence their affectionate messages by stimulating, or over emphasizing a fantastical concept of a relationship.
Largely showing how unavoidable daily media intake is, it is important for those in a relationship to be aware of the necessary distinction between the love and affection we see in films and movies, and the unrealistic concept and expectations they create.

There is also a distinction between love and marriage where love is viewed as a fun filled experience and marriage a platform at which love dissolves. Marriage is and has always been portrayed as the unsuitable aftermath of weddings.

It is seen that marriage is dull and quite boring unlike weddings which are glamorous and interesting, and a common feature in movies is to have the wedding scene at the end of the movie leaving the marriage aspect to be pondered on by the viewers. This is in a considerable contrast to how relationship works in real life

Love addiction may be considered as involving in a repeated uncontrollable and negative behavior as a result of obsession over a particular person or thing. Love addiction is often regarded as a process addiction such that it is related to a form of persistent behavior that at first may result in some form of delightful feelings, and captivating thoughts and this feelings and thoughts may be described or explained as a craving for a continuous connection with the love object.

A key feature of love addiction is a belief that there are relationships which have the potency to surmount any challenge or obstacle.
Love addiction may arise from abnormalities in social learning process, which may be influenced by some mass media portrayals or some other cultural events. There are certain views and opinions that romantic love does exist in long term relationships. However, fixation is only found at the beginning of love relationships.

It is important to note that love addiction may not only arise from aberrations in social learning process, but also from developmental experiences such as formation of social attachment in childhood. Hence, if love addiction tends to stem from difficulties in attachment right from childhood, then it is possible to observe addictive behavior occurring even in their teenage years and also adulthood.

The mass media may have an important role to play in the selling and development of love addiction. For instance, in pop music for young ones, love is connected with emotional craving and obsession, a responsive high fantasy, a longing for a loved one, obsessive thinking and imagination, romanticism and extreme or over dependence on the love object.

There are many mass media outlets that can transfer love addiction qualities via romance novels, movies, television, music, greeting cards and other online mediums. For instance, chat rooms provide a means intense, intimate and cozy relationships and communications, while leaving out or omitting a range of visual signals or reminders and mandating one to take turns in interactions. This then creates fantasies and illusions about the daily lives of other persons staying far away, and leading to an immature expression of love without having any personal or physical contact with such persons.

Love addiction shows a confined pattern of repeated behavior directed toward a love object or being and hence, leads to a negative role and other negative consequences. It is most likely depicted and established in media outlets as a means to real and true love.

The media has a way of shaping the minds of individuals on how they perceive relationships and sex. In most media outlets, sex and relationships are always so amazing and at every point in a relationship, it is always a bed of roses and there are little or no challenges faced and the couple or partners involved, always gets their happy ending, with their love being so sweet and effortless.

Even though there are a lot of brain-washing and deception about the concept of relationship as against the reality of life, it is quite difficult to form expectations and assumptions about love, sex and romance without the media having their role to play.

The media influences and manipulates people by making them believe in the wrong ideals of how a realistic relationship should look like, and this has a great impact on people’s relations and romance life, because they tend to fall deep into the deception that keeping a stable relationship is quite an easy task.

As a result of this deceit, they enter into a romantic relationship with a false notion of what it entails but in reality, a relationship is not that easy to manage because it involves a lot.

It is important to be aware that those involved in a relationship are quite different and have different behaviours and notions. There are times where there might be differences in views and opinions concerning a particular matter pertaining to their relationship, but a key determinant is that both are in constant communication and passionate about something which implies that there is a particular thing both partners can agree on.

Also, the media portrayal of relationship, sex and romance is not realistic because they do not face the main issues pertaining to a relationship life. They do not talk about the common struggles those in a relationship face. What they showcase usually is that either two parties engaged in a relationship are rich and financially buoyant or they are destined to be together right from childhood and that is a false and an inaccurate depiction of a realistic relationship.

It always seems so easy and always without no stress or difficulty, and sometimes very perfect according to what the media portrays. However, in reality, it is great and also very challenging but not in many means perfect.
Furthermore, the media depiction of an unrealistic relationship sets people on course for attaining unrealistic goals when they finally enter into a relationship.

The mass media has so much encapsulated and captured the minds of people drowning them in a sea of information. Movies, books, televisions and also the internet in a way influences people and the decisions they take as regards relationships.

From the information garnered, people are educated about sex, romance and relationships. However, it is unfortunate that most of the information received are biased and deceptive, and even sometimes incomplete. As a result of this fact, quite a number of people are left with unrealistic expectations of a good relationship, hence leading to future relationship problems and issues. Sometimes there will be people who have chosen to turn to the addiction of alcohol, and should seek professional advice from support for alcohol addiction Manitoba.

Media influences the minds of people, and teaches them to desire the negative tendencies and inclinations as regarding relationships. For instance, it has been a constant discussion as to how pornography negatively influences a relationship but less attention and focus has been paid to the fact that there are negative effects of mass media such as in the show case of romantic movies, overrated TV shows and also the sale of romantic books.

Moreover, a larger percent of the blame still goes to the individual who deemed it fit to purchase such movies and books rather than the impact of inaccurate and inauthentic media portrayal and social influence. As a result of this, quite a number of individuals are not aware they are misguided and for those who are actually aware and are finding it difficult to abstain may be afraid of not being labelled irrational.

It is important to note that it is even possible to have a twisted view of how the media portrays love, sex and romance but that does not mean one is crazy or abnormal, it is just a state of misinformation and misconception which has resulted in thoughts or beliefs that will not help one find through love or satisfaction with a relationship.

Letting go of false expectations one might have derived from mass media portrayal, is key in removing the influence it has on a relationship or sex life. It is good to see relationships as both individuals working to meet the needs of the other, an undergoing a cordial exchange of feelings and worth for a mutual and common relationship balance and satisfaction.

Therefore, rather than simply being focused on one side of the relationship, which may be as a result of faux expectations derived from the media, it is important to see what the two parties want in the relationship and see what they can both share.