Family First

According to me every family starts with the old generation seniors followed by their off springs and so on.  These are the people who extend their family and set particular traditions, values, and customs to share, with each other.  Since I am brought up in big joint straight Asian Indian family, I define family as closely related generations of members who care for each other and safeguard the vulnerable members of their family.  Family members are tied to each other tightly with the special bond of love and commitment.  Although I belong to a conventional family model rooted from a man and woman heading the family tree, I can understand today’s diverse aspect of family. Living in today’s world and being a part of the progressive society I want to extend my support to all the unconventional family models as long as they do not hurt others and secure their family members.

Styles of Love

Everyone has different views and ways of expressing love.  These ways and means of showing love are a mix and match of different love styles.  According to Wood in chapter 11, The 3 primary styles of love are eros, storge, and ludus. 

1. Eros is powerful, passionate style of love that blazes to life suddenly and dramatically.  It is an intense kind of love that may include sexual, spiritual, intellectual, or emotional attraction or all of these. Research indicates men are more likely than women to be erotic lovers.

2. Storge is a comfortable, even keeled kind of love based on friendship and compatibility.  Storgic love tends to develop gradually and to be peaceful and stable.  It grows out of common interests, values, and life goals.

3. Final style of love is ludus means playful love.  Ludic lovers see love as a game full of adventures, challenges, puzzles, and fun.  For ludics commitment is not the goal because they don’t take love seriously.

Love & Commitment

I have seen many arranged marriages with total commitment towards each other without the factor of love.  These couples are in the marriage because of their children.  Children are their mutual interest, which they do not like to shackle and so they continue in marriages.  I think commitment in a relationship without love is like walking in an empty room.  Love brings commitment because of the emotional and physical closeness that bonds two people together.  Even without marriage there are so many couples living together for years because of their commitment.  Their relationship starts with love, but somewhere down the line they lose the love interest, yet the fact of being used to each other keeps them committed in a relationship.  These kinds of relationships get in trouble when one of them meets someone more interesting, caring and loving outside the relationship.  So for the success of any romantic relationship in long run, love and commitment should go hand in hand.  Love or commitment without each other does not kindle fire in any romantic relationship.

Deception in online versus Face-to-face relationship

I totally agree with the critics that deceit in online relationships is more than Face-to-face relationships because to start a relationship there is no prerequisite of any identity proof in first place.  Internet enables people from different locations on the globe to hook up with each other and there are innumerable cases of fraud and deception that take place everyday for false identity, gender swapping, and cheap thrill.  Internet is the place to where people experiment with different things because of anonymity freedom.  The FBI warns people to not get lured by online dating because most felonies are a result of inappropriate motives.  Although these match making and adult mingling websites guarantee success in finding someone special, no one can bet on the authenticity of the identity, character, history of the members.  My experience with most of the couples who get in relationship over the Internet look totally mismatched in reality because they themselves tell that they fell for each other based on similar likes and dislikes as conveyed online and not the physical appearance.  If they had known each other in person, probably they would not have married each other, because the physical image of their better halves seemed to be totally misrepresented.  I believe there are fraud cases in Face-to-face relationships as well, but at least the people involved in these relationships know whom to look out for in case of fraud.

Competing Friendship

The competing demands of friendship are very nicely described in chapter 10 by Wood.  Friendship exists within larger social systems that affect how they function. Friendship can overlap with our romantic relationship or other relations like family, relatives, and so on.  We may not have enough time or energy left to maintain friendships even those that matter to us because of our work pressure or hectic schedules.  Friends might feel neglected if we are stuck up by the family tensions between parents at home.  Friends might feel that we ignore them when it comes to spending time with romantic partners.  Thus friendship can clash with other relations or demanding workload.  In such a case if the friend feels ignored, we need to talk to him and communicate the problems that we are facing recently.  By not meeting the friend, or not spending enough time does not mean that he or she is not special, but it just means that life is demanding in this particular phase where we are caught up in some other things.  However, we will spend time with the friend whenever there is a little relief from the present day stress.