Marriage

To get married you need to date a variety of people and do a variety of activites. If you only let yourself date one person exclusively, then you are not exploring you options. Your emotions might take over. You might make some rash decisions, that you might regret later.

When we date, we need to communicate between each other and know what kind of expectations we expect out of life. Some of the things that we need to communicate would be things like how many kids we want or when to start having kids. Also an important thing to discuss would be if you are ok for both the husband and the wife to work. We can't assume that the other person in the couple knows what we are thinking or how we want life to go. We can't go half way into the marriage and realize that they had planned something else. This will probably cause a rip in the marriage and lead to a divorce. We need to know the person longer than a couple of weeks or months. The longer we get to know somebody the better.
When we finally do get married you need to spend more time planning the marriage then planning their wedding. The couple needs to spend time together and rely on each other when it comes to tough decisions and not have the in-laws involved in these decisions. You need to know that you are both in 100%. If the relationship is 50-50 or 60-40 it probably won't work. Communicate and try to understand where each other is coming from, and rely on each other and not others for the everyday decisions as well as the big decisions.

LOVE

There are a couple of different kinds of love. I had no idea there were 4 different kinds of love. The different kinds of love are storage, philia, eros, and agape. Storage love is the love between a parent and child. You might have a responsibility or a connection with them, and you have a commitment and emotional tie to them. Philia is the love between friends, brothers, sisters which is specific to one person. Eros is the love we most often think about which has to do with physical, lustful, sexual, and romantic. Eros is the love we feel like we always have and might be the only kind of love we have for someone. If you love someone for this reason you probably don't know them, and have no compassion. Agape is the genuine compassion, charity or concern for someone that you have met or not met.

If you truly love someone it might be a combination of all 4 types of love. You will have a responsbility or connection to them, you have a friendship with them before marriage, it may turn romantic, and then you have genuine compassion towards your significant other.

This statement is based off of the Relationship Attachment Model (RAM). You must know more about them than you trust them. Trust more than you rely on them. Rely on them more than you are commited. And be more commited than you touch them. It is true, it is a good thing to know way more about a person than you would ever touch them.

I hope to be able to recongnize what kind of love it is when I think I have fallen in love with Mr. Right. I hope I can really know the person and not get caught up in LOVE.

Gender and Family Life

This topic for this week classes was so broad and I felt like we just skimmed the surface of this topic. We talked from men and women and how they different to same-sex attraction.

Men and women are different and I am glad for that. Females are more detail oriented, are verbal, know landmarks, and more cooperative. Men are competitive, task oriented, protective, and spatial oriented. As far as parenting goes for each gender women are more gentle, comforting, and domestic. Men are more apt to tell their children to toughen up, are rougher, and want their children to have careers, and leadership. With all of these differences it helps compliment each other to make it work. When the woman is worried about something the man is able to calm her worries. Men are able to focus on one task and the women is able to multi task. They bring out the best in each other. Whoever is good at one specific job/task then have them do it. No matter the gender. If it isn't split up equally it is ok, do what you are good at and perfect it. Lean on each other. We were made different for a reason and strive to be the best we can be.

Another topic we covered this week was same-sex attraction. I thought it was interesting that studies have shown that some end up being gay from being molested. Another reason was if the mother is overly involved in the childs life and pulls the child closer, then the child tends to pull away into a same-sex attraction. Also another reason a child might have same-sex attraction is if you keep telling the child that they are gay all the time, after awhile the child starts to believe it. It is very sad how we judge people like that. In some cases we as the public maybe could of prevented the child from being gay by just our words. Sometimes we are too harsh on each other.
I feel that some people can be born having feelings for the same sex. I don't think that parents go out and on purpose tell their children how to love the same sex . Or I don't think they tell them that their same gender is better and they should have a life with them. Even though they are different we should try to accept them as humans. I don't believe in marriage between same-sex, but people should have the freedom to date or marry who ever they want. Also I don't care if the person is gay, but I don't want to see public displays of affection for each other. I won't display it if you won't. I know this is a little contradicting, but this is my honest opinion.

Social Class

It is sad how we judge people based on what they look like and how they dress, where they shop, or where they live. We also judge them by the activites they partipated in. I am very guility of this. We need to watch how we judge people and why we judge people. We need to remember to try to be in their shoes and figure that they are trying their hardest to survive and possibly move up in the world.

If you don't think that there is social class that would be a lie. There is a definite line between the high, middle and lower class. The higher class have pretty much what they want. The middle class is ok but struggle sometimes and the lower class is trying to make it by on what is left behind. Each of us perceives the different classes in different ways. Some of us move up, some move down and some stay in the same place. The higher class to me don't really move down in rank at all. Middle class move around alot in rank. They could be very successful with business but also move around alot too. The lower class could have different disadvanatges by moving up which is rare or by trying to live paycheck to paychek. We just need to put each other into each other shoes and see how they live and what situations could be shaping their life. We must not be quick to judge. Remember to soften our heart and let other into our lives and not judge without getting to know them first. Be nice and love another.