Sexual intimacy and the part it plays in marriage

Sexual intimacy is both important and dynamic part of marriage. There are two main similarities that both male and females experience while engaging in coitus. The brain releases dopamine, the feeling of absolute cloud nine. The next is the chemical serotonin, which causes us to feel calm. There are many differences in mental, physical, and emotional that divide men and women while engaged. Let’s first delve into the drive of men to have coitus. Men want to have it to feel safe, close, and warm to his mate. However, for the woman to want to engage in coitus, she needs to feel close, safe, and warm with him first. This can create a problem in the marriage or relationship. The man may seem like a sexual innuendo in her eyes. In his eyes she may seem cold and uncaring, when, for them to be fulfilled they need to understand each other and respect each other. Only communication and understanding of one another can alleviate this. It also helps when they both brainstorm ideas to help each other in small ways around the house, to help each other. When going about doing good, the most important aspects to keep in mind are communication, selflessness, togetherness, and remembering the reasons and purposes of marriage. Keeping these aspects in mind these aspects will not only make each other happier but improve love in the bedroom and out. The improvement of one’s relationship with one’s spouse will lead to increase of satisfaction of life for both parties. But misunderstanding leads to division, and not understanding your partner can lead to heart break and emotional damage while engaging in intimacy. This intimacy is not meant to be a bad thing, but one that is meant to bring all closer to God, their creator that cares about them.

There is a lot of stuff to marriage that are very real today. The main issue is the cost that is spent on an average  wedding, which is $30,000. This is, from my perspective, a huge amount of money. Which is, in my perspective, a waste. I know weddings are important, but I also know that you don’t need to spend so much money to have a decent wedding. This high cost of marriage can cause some major disruptions later. There are three solutions that often occurs to afford the cost of marriage when it is so high. The first is that the in-laws or parents take care of it, usually on one side of the family. This can cause so early tension between couples, because the ones planning the marriage, who also want to be involved the most since its their money, are the parents, usually on the bride to be side of the family, particularly her mother. What often happens is that the bride, instead of bonding with her husband over planning, instead reinforces her relationship with her mother in their mother-daughter relationship. Instead of bonding to a husband-wife relationship. There also comes the notion or concept of debt to those parents, like the new couple needs to “pay back” that debt by going to that parent’s house for the holidays over the other parents. This can cause some major contempt between the newly married couple and reinforce the relationships that should not be reinforced during this time. The focus of a marriage is to reinforce the relationship between the husband and wife to be. It is integral because they want to hopefully spend the rest of their life together, and if this early relationship development at this new stage doesn’t happen, there will be a lot of conflict. To clarify I am not saying that parents should not be involved in the marriage itself. Both sides should be, but they should not be providing the backbone for the marriage to be happening. When they do, problems between the marriage will arise, and there will be conflict that drives the husband and wife farther apart rather then closer together.

            The next two major problems with a high cost marriage lie in the other two solutions. The solutions are either delaying marriage until it is affordable or go into debt. The problem I see with delaying the marriage is that it has potential to just never happen. Funds may never be available and eventually the relationship will stagnate just from a lack of progression towards marriage. Something that I have learned is that if you’re not progressing towards a goal your regressing instead. It is normal to not be progressing all the time, especially when it comes to dating, courting, engagement, and marriage, however, it is important to make sure there is more progression then there is regression. The last solution to pay for an expensive marriage is to go into debt. I know many people adults know this, and I am beginning to learn is that debt just sucks. It drains your resources and can ruin your life. Which is why for my personal wedding I will not be doing this option either. Going into debt has two major effects, the first is that often education is delayed, which hampers the ability to get a better job sooner to sustain the marriage. But also, it delays having children. Americans are having marriages later and later in their lives, and children are important because without them society collapses. The generations become less populous and can’t support the older generations or keep the economy as robust since there are less people to fill the demands of society. It is important to have children, since Americans are having children later in life, mid 30’s, debt would only delay that further and by that time people become too old to have healthy children anymore.

Preparing for marriage is a very interesting topic because its dynamic has changed so much with the technology that has developed. Technology has a major impact on how we date and how much communication takes place. There are apps for meeting people and texting to stay in contact whenever we please. But does a constant stream of texts make or break a relationship? For myself if I text a person too much, I end up not having anything to talk about when I see them in person. The same thing goes when I hang out with friends to often, I find my relationship whether that’s romantic or not weakened because we fail to connect due to over communicating. A way to circumvent this is to limit your communication via technology or at least find topics you can talk about other then your daily grind, that way you can have meaningful conversations with the people around you. Something that I learned, and frankly started to get tired of was all the planning that goes into a date. I got tired of trying to be creative and just wanted to do something I knew a girl liked rather then trying to guess. In a class I am taking on campus, my teacher took a poll of all the girls in the room who preferred a date that was planned and specific and nearly every girl’s hand,  about 15-20 hands, went up and it shocked and surprised me. This also strengthened my resolve. For any man struggling to figure out ideas on what to do for a date, I would suggest first deciding what you would like to do and make a list of things you think would be feasible. Good dating qualities to have are planning, scheduled time for pick up and drop off, and clear communication between what you expect of each other, meaning like setting up a second date. While on the date I would encourage all men to find a way to provide, preside, and protect on each date. For every woman I would suggest clear communication of feedback (how you liked the date) and showing appreciation for whatever, the guy may have planned. This is huge, especially for me, because I am seeking ways I can improve, I know I won’t be offended, and if a guy really likes you he would be willing to change and seek to include your interests in dating. This would really help any man when he is planning a date.

My second point about dating would be that there is a clear difference between hanging out and dating. What is interesting to note is that I used to think they were one and the same. I learned differently, I learned that dating requires a sort of pairing and dedication to another. Hanging out is loose, there is no pairing, nor is there any dedication. It becomes harder to communicate to a specific person. The expectations in hanging out are far lower and loose then on a date. A date creates responsibility, hanging out does away with it.

Finally, getting to know a person takes time. I have learned that it takes a minimum of three months to begin to get to know a person. Over this time period both shared experiences and communication are needed to get to understand them as a person. If these things aren’t happening, then it is likely you don’t know a person’s character. To me it is important to know a person before dedicating myself to them. However, the path to accomplish this takes a lot of time and a lot of energy. If you’re not dedicated to put an amount of time into a relationship, then it will suffer and eventually die. Thanks for reading this week’s blog!

This week’s blog is extremely controversial, you will be hearing my own views as well as what I have recently learned from several articles that I have studied. This topic is that of Gay people and the Gay community. Recently in an article I read (see link below, it is long) that Gay people for the most part do not act out due to their genetics but rather some disruption in their family life that brings them to be disconnected to boys and eventually turns into a fascination with boys. The article claims that this is the case for 90% of all gay people. This is mainly due to the article studying twin boys, and recording which was gay and which was not, and about 90% of those boys who were genetically the same one was gay and the other was not. Suggesting that being Gay does not originate from genetic code. Like I mentioned earlier this was surprising to me because I had never considered something like being Gay being the result of a traumatic or rejection event in a boy’s life. Causing a shift and a re-prioritization, in other words, they seek to find the connection to boys that should have developed long before they went into puberty. However, what is interesting still is that through counseling and succeeding in finding fulfillment in whatever activity or aspirations they hold themselves to, reverts the mind back to its original state. Meaning that a person that is Gay can become attracted to a woman now that the mind has fulfilled what was disconnecting or interfering with it originally. This leads me to view being gay as more like a mental challenge or disorder rather then a state you are stuck with since birth. It can indeed be treated if desired. One viewpoint of mine that has changed again with this topic is that often we, both as adults and children are treated to fill a certain mold based on our sex. What is interesting is that often what we mistake for a “Gay” behavior is actually a behavior that we do not expect to find in a young kid for that kid’s sex. For example, boys tend to be destructive in their play while girls are nurturing. When a boy instead of liking to destroy things takes on a more nurturing role, we often make judgement is saying that he is gay rathe then acknowledging that often we don’t conform to the strict expectations for boys and girls. What is also interesting is that if a girl takes a more “boyish” play we call them a tom girl. We don’t call them demeaning or assuming titles. So, as a society we often treat each member of the opposite sex with both rigid expectations and when those expectations are breached react differently to both. One being more destructive and assuming then the latter. We as human beings are unique individuals, and some tendencies, well a lot of tendencies we have are very similar to each other. That does not give us an ounce to judge another for small infringements of protocol or to make assuming judgement calls when we do not conform to these expectations. It then becomes important that we do not judge or assume out of context of situations in our lives. It is up to you how you treat the people around you no matter the age, experience, or sex of that person.

Homosexuality: Innate and Immutable? What Science Can and Cannot Say, by A. Dean Byrd

Classes in Society

We all know the different classes within society, the upper, middle, and lower classes. We often separate ourselves and others into these separate classes often by the amount of money they have. We often make assumptions based on other factors such as clothes, formal education, size and location of the home, speech and manner, and the activities kids or adults participate in. These assumptions are made by observation alone. When we break cultural normal, for instance, maybe getting married to someone who is more better off, others of their class may look down on the spouse that is from a lower class. Based on the assumptions made from observations, classes make judgements that are often negative. Like it is a bad thing, something to be frowned upon to be associated with someone from another class due to the access of resources they have. This is a very dangerous mentality, it can lead to a cultural divide, segregation, and even prosecution. Take bullying for example, the source (though I understand this can be much more complicated, but for the sake of the example lets assume this is the cause) could be that the victim dresses in a funny way, or doesn’t talk the same maybe they have a lisp. Either way, they are a victim to harassment due to the outward observations of class. This is a huge problem, humans, especially in the United States, often come to conclusions from observations all the time. It is how we perceive our environment. It often takes a disciplined mind to correctly conclude that does not lead to a divide of a sorts. It takes a positive attitude and a dismissal of assumptions. Often, I find that making a positive assumption about a person, even when faced with a negative behavior from that person, allows me to set aside this difference and move on. A good example of this is the drivers in Arizona or often bad. This is due to a lot of factors but that is besides the point. When I see a person speeding, when I am cut off, I think to myself excuses of why they might of done that that sheds a positive light rather then a negative one on them. “They may have some kind of emergency or are late to something important, that must be why they are going so fast.” Or “I wish they wouldn’t get in front of me like that, perhaps they really needed to get out of the turn lane and had no other way to go.” I try to keep my assumptions positive rather then negative. I try to find an excuse that isn’t bad. I find that this helps me live happier, instead of being angry I can move on and use the energy that I would’ve used being angry with something more productive. I believe that for society to start improving (this will not solve major problems but make them more bearable) we need to stop assuming in a negative fashion and start assuming in a positive one. A major example I learned about was the strain put on a Mexican family seeking to live in the United States. They love their families and want their children to have major benefits, the main one being able to speak English and Spanish. They often send father ahead first to secure finances for everyone to cross. However, this man used to be an accountant belonging to a major law firm for instance. He can only secure a less then minimum wage job in construction for instance. All because he could not afford to enter the United States legally. Due to the threat of deportation they often accept these jobs and keep them for years. The separation of father from the children can alienate his relationship with them. They are no longer a successful family in Mexico but are strained to make ends meet. This changes the family on drastic levels, in ways we often do not understand or bother to understand. This made a huge impact on me learning about this, because the media often puts refugees in a negative light and allows us to make negative assumptions. I did not know that families in Mexico, ones that were successful were also trying to come to the United States. It changes so much of their family dynamic, all so they could find a better quality of life. I am not saying this is the main group of people coming but it helped broaden my view on this controversial subject. We too need to broaden our perspectives and not take everything for granted.