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Over the past summer, one of my closest friends started watching Jersey Shore.  She would binge watch the show for days, would always tell me crazy stories about what was going on in the show, and started picking up on the catch phrases they would use.  Her attitude and the way she handled her relationship also started changing.  Jersey Shore is an example of how young adults act which persuades the viewers to act the way as the actors do, which has an effect on the viewers behaviors.

Jersey Shore is a show about eight young adults who spend an entire summer together in a group house on the coast of New Jersey, and basically party and get drunk every day, but they are all strangers when they first stay together in the house.  The actors are being paid to be on the show and are being portrayed as good people from what the show makes it out to seem like, but it's just promoting their viewers to act crazy like the actors because they think the characters are good people and it makes them think it's normal to act that way.

In Jersey Shore, two of the house members – Sammi and Mike both hooked up and became a thing.  Mike would cheat on Sammi, they both argued a lot and were verbally abusive towards each other.  After my friend started watching this show, it seemed she started letting the abuse and controlment in her relationship get out of hand.

The problem with Jersey Shore is that it is all drama, none of the situations going on in the show is fully real and it is all staged.  The show puts an idea into the viewers head that all couples will have a lot of issues and how it is normal to break up and argue constantly in a relationship, but in reality it isn't.  Some of the young adults watching this show start picking up the attitudes that they see these actors acting out, in which a couple could be acting verbally/physically abusive towards each other and think that's okay and how it might seem normal in a relationship to act that way.  In our time of day, some young adults go through abusive relationships and are either too scared to get out of it or don't even realize that they are in a toxic relationship.  Some of these reality television shows portray relationships as abusive and controlling, and never show the couple trying to work out the issue.

It is hard sometimes to notice the red flags while in a relationship being unsure if your significant other cares about you or is just being controlling, because you may really like the person and become so blinded by love to realize what is actually going on.  I have been in a relationship where my boyfriend at the time would tell me how I could or couldn’t dress out in public, would flirt with other girls in front of me and I would just tell myself he was just being friendly or messing around and wouldn't actually do anything with anybody else while in a relationship with me.  My ex would always call me rude names and make me feel like there was always something wrong with me.  I never realized the problems in our relationship because I was too blindsided trying so hard to make things work to even realize that I wasn't in a healthy relationship.  All the information I gathered then on how relationships are was mainly all from the shows I had been watching, and a vast majority of the shows I had been watching was reality television.

In some of the relationships we see on these tv shows, the men play as the victim and how the women they're with are crazy, so it puts an imagine in some of women viewers head that they're the problem which makes them stay in the abusive relationship that they are in because they feel as if they are the problem and not the man.  Men are not the only ones who play a part in being abusive in a relationship, it goes the same for women too.  No matter what the situation is, if you're in a relationship and constantly feel like you're always the problem and the person you're with constantly makes you feel bad about yourself, it is not a relationship worth being in.  If a person truly cares about you, they will not constantly try and talk down on you and make you feel bad about yourself.

My friend was always a sweet girl and was always very shy and not very outgoing.  Ever since she started watching Jersey Shore her whole attitude basically flipped.  About 5 months ago she started dating this guy who treated her good and seemed great for her, who which turned out to be the complete opposite.

Whenever I am around my friend and her boyfriend they are always arguing.  They throw mean comments at each other and do not seem to trust each other at all.  Her boyfriend never lets her go hangout with friends after eight at night because he feels she might cheat on him.  If I ever ask her to stay the night she tells me she needs to ask her boyfriend if she can, and majority of the time he will just tell her no like he is her third parent.

He has made her cut off some of her friends that he did not care for, and if he knew she was sneaking around hanging out with them now he would most likely break up with her.  They constantly are always breaking up and getting back together and never are trying to fix or talk about the problems that are going on in their relationship.

Reality television is entertaining and can be fun to watch, but we shouldn't let these shows define how relationships and life works.  Notice the signs of an unhealthy relationship.  Being hurt and abused isn't worth staying with and fighting for a person that will never realize your true worth.