My Thoughts On This Class

My favorite thing about this class was the ability to see my peers’ thoughts and ideas on the reading and in turn get their responses on my thoughts on the reading. It made the class more interesting and made me look forward to seeing if anybody responded to any of my posts.

My least favorite thing about the class was the 12 hour restriction. Being required to post our responses 12 hours apart made things difficult on weeks when I was completely swamped with work because I would sometimes completely forget to post a comment or a response even though I typically already had it written out. Having to wait to be able to post my responses really hindered me.

The 12 hour restriction is the only thing I would change about this class. I found everything else to be thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking. I felt that the word count requirements were just right and got us to explore topics in-depth.

What I've Learned

I’ve learned that there are a multitude of things that contribute to our communication that most of us are either completely unaware of or are aware of but don’t really think about. For instance, take how we create our “self-concept”. It’s fascinating that “…the self starts from the outside – front how particular others view us.” We communicate with particular others, in other words people who are important to us, and in the process of doing so we absorb what they tell us about ourselves to create our self-concept. Personally, I never would have thought about something like that but after reading about it I realized how true it is.

Another concept that really stood out to me as something I never would have thought to define is the idea of “styles of loving”. In my mind I knew from experience that there are different forms of love and ways to show your love but I never thought to classify them and define them. Although I probably wouldn’t have been able to even if I tried since feelings of love can be confusing and complicated to describe or define depending on circumstances.

 Overall, I think I’ve learned to understand the intricacies of communication and its role in our day-to-day interactions and relationships. I believe I’m much more emotionally intelligent as a result of this course and can more effectively communicate not only on a verbal level but nonverbally and emotionally as well.

Make Daily Choices That Enhance Intimacy

One thing I found interesting in this chapter was the section titled “Make Daily Choices That Enhance Intimacy”. The reason I chose this section is because I personally tend to forget to pay attention to the decisions I make in my relationship on a daily basis. For instance, sometimes I’ll spend the whole day with my boyfriend upset about something that happened, either having to do with us or with something completely unrelated, and I forget that my decision to remain upset is affecting him and the quality of the time we’re spending with each other. Small things like that can have a really big impact on him, which I don’t always remember to take into consideration.

So now every day I try to focus on doing all kinds of little things that’ll make him happy or that will show him how much I really do care about him. I’ll randomly hold his hand, sneak up behind him and hug him, let him know that I miss him when he’s not there, and other things like that. I’ve noticed a HUGE difference in the time we spend with each other when I do things like that. The whole atmosphere with us is obviously much happier and we enjoy each other’s company so much more. :)

Marriage in 50 Years

I think that we’ll probably continue to see shared gender roles within marriages increase. As women become more assertive in society we’ll see a decrease in the need for more traditional gender roles in relationships and marriages. As a result there may be more stay at home dads, more women becoming the sole or main providers financially, and so forth.

One other change that we will most likely see in marriage is more acceptance and legalization of gay marriage. Our generation has grown up seeing the struggles made to get gay marriage legalized. We’ve also been more exposed to the idea of homosexuality in general and thus are becoming more comfortable with it. In 50 years I think (and hope) we’ll see full legalization of gay marriage and wider acceptance of all LGBT people.

Families

In my opinion, a family is a group of two or more people that typically would live with each other. I think there have to be children in order for the group to be considered a family, whether that means it’s a single parent, two heterosexual parents, or two homosexual parents.

I think that family members care about each other and support each other. The parents take care of the children emotionally, physically, and financially. The children are affectionate and respectful either overtly or covertly. Family members should be able to confide in one another or at least with one specific family member.

Styles of Loving

One of the most interesting concepts from this chapter to me was the idea of "styles of loving". There are six styles of loving, three primary, and three secondary.
The primary styles are:
Eros - dramatic, passionate love
Ludus - playful love
Storge - comfortable, stable love

The secondary styles are:
Pragma - a combination of Ludus and Storge, practical love
Mania - a combination of Eros and Ludus, manic, unsure love
Agape - a combination of Storge and Eros, selfless, passionate love

The reason I found this so fascinating was because I had never thought to put the different ways people love each other into categories. It made so much more sense once each type of love had a title. Also, as I was reading I was trying to categorize myself into one of the types, but then after describing the styles Wood mentioned at that we all tend to have combinations of styles and that they can change based on our experiences. This totally opened my eyes to the complexity and subtlety of love and loving. After thinking back on my past relationships, I found that Wood was completely right. I found that the styles I've experienced are Eros, Storge, and Mania, with some touches of Ludus and Pragma. I was amazed by how inconstant we are with the way we love. Overall, this was a compelling, fascinating concept for me :)

Commitment and Love

Personally, I've never experienced a relationship that had commitment but not love. However, there was a relationship (if you can even call it that) where I was very much in love with a guy and was completely committed to making it work, but he didn't see "us" the same way I did. We liked each other a lot and I eventually fell in love with him, although I'm not sure if he ever really loved me. He was hung up on his last girlfriend and would keep telling me that he just needed a little more time before he would be able to be in a relationship again. He led me on with that same line for almost an entire year, and I was so blinded by my feelings and devotion that I never realized he had no intention of committing to me. I eventually came to see that we were never going to work out and severed ties with him, although it was incredibly hard to let go. Even though that experience was over 3 years ago it still hurts to think about it because I put my faith in him that he would come through and he completely shattered it.
Conversely, I have experienced a couple relationships that had love but no commitment. One of them was with my last boyfriend, who I dated for about 5 months during my junior year of high school. We loved each other very much but neither of us were really committed to making it a long term relationship. There would be talk of future plans but never anything too far into the future. Whenever the topic of college came up we tried to avoid it. We never said things like, "We should do this next Christmas," or anything that implied being together for longer than a few months. Although the end of our relationship was technically because he cheated on me, I believe that this lack of commitment was probably what led to him being unfaithful in the first place. He couldn't see our relationship lasting that long and therefore probably had less of a problem with doing something that could cause the end of our relationship.
These two relationships were incredibly hurtful and frustrating for me and caused me to lose faith in relationships for quite some time. Any time I was interested in somebody I would get this nagging thought in the back of my head that they would eventually just betray me. Eventually I met my current boyfriend though, and after a very gradual and steady process of learning to trust him I've come to see that not all relationships go wrong and that sometimes you just need to wait it out, and test the waters before you go and jump right in.