"Love is a many splendid thing."
"Love lifts us up where we belong where eagles fly on a mountain high"
"Love makes us act like we are fools"
"Love is like oxygen"
"All you need is love"
"Love is patient, love is kind"
"Love is a lie"
"Love is when you can't stay mad at each other for long"
"Love is the golden Rule"
"Love is what makes the world go 'round"
Any of these sound familiar? How many times have we heard others or we ourselves attempted to define what love is? What are some definitions you've heard? Perhaps it's a scripture from the New Testament, perhaps it's a good old saying from a grandparent or parent, perhaps it's a definition that's gone through some evolution as you've evolved yourself with experience, perhaps your definition is cynical at this point. Whatever the case may be, I've discovered- from what (little) I've tried- that defining love with words is impossible.
I cannot think of one definition I've heard in a speech or a song or a conversation that perfectly defines love in its all-encompassing nature. However, I do believe that it is possible to define love through actions. We define how we show love and why we love someone/something by the way we treat that someone/thing.
This week in class we've been talking about the beginning processes to how families are formed: dating and marriage (*insert most quoted scene in movie history of the priest in The Princess Bride beginning the ceremony*). This was a super fun topic of the week, especially for us college students because it's even more personal and relevant to us. Dating alone was an intriguing discussion as classmates opened up about what they consider to be the definition of a "date", or even the term "dating"- should the guy always pay for everything, should the girl plan any of the dates, when people are "dating" does that mean they're exclusively together as boyfriend and girlfriend, etc. The deepest part of the week was when we moved onto engagement and marriage, specifically how to prep for it. Relating all this back to the topic of love, I think one of the most important concepts I learned was that when it comes to your romantic relationships, you CANNOT make proper judgments just going off of feelings.
Now, that alone seems like a controversial topic in and of itself. Doesn't loving someone mean you feel love for them? Aren't your feelings involved quite heavily when you're becoming attracted to someone? What about all those butterflies in the stomach things that seem to go hand in hand with falling in love?
Our teacher, Brother Williams, is seriously one of my favorite professors I've ever had. He's so energetic and really knows how to connect with his students, and I love the fact that his profession is marriage & family therapy- the very career in which I am interested in pursuing. I value his opinions highly because he has decades of experience as a therapist, and he's seen all the patterns of relationships, especially marriages, that can determine whether or not the relationship makes or breaks it. I loved when he said towards the end of class, "Stop trusting your feelings so much! Who in the world told us that we need to use our feelings to gauge our reality?!"I was inspired by his passion and how vehemently he implored us to see the bigger picture when it comes to our romantic relationships, and the see it for others as well. With what little experience I have with romantic relationships, I can testify alongside his words that that is SO true. I wish I was clever enough to come up with something to switch out the phrase "falling in love"; I've come to have a bad taste in my mouth about the idea of "falling" in love with someone. I certainly agree that you can love someone and not be in love with someone, but truly loving someone is no accident. There are countless, purposeful decisions made towards investing in that person because of some kind of attraction. I do believe love is meant to be very natural and it most certainly does involve our feelings, but our minds are very involved in the process of love. We decide how much time we want to spend with them, how much money to spend on them, how many pet names to refer to them as, where to go on dates, what to talk about, etc.
There was a book mentioned in class that I've yet to get into (just started it) called "How Not to Fall In Love With A Jerk", and the author became famous for what he refers to as the RAM- Relationship Attachment Model. I wish there were a way for me to draw it out here, but it's a model to illustrate the proper levels of certain feelings towards a special someone. The list goes (from left to right on the model) Know, Trust, Rely, Commit, Touch. The idea is that everything to the left should be higher than the one to the right; so you should know someone more than you trust them, you should trust them more than you rely on them, you should rely on them more than you commit to them, and you should be committed to them more than you touch them. I LOVE this model because it perfectly depicts what the ideal, most healthy romantic relationship should look like. All too often we mix these things up so it's completely backwards- there's a lot more touch than commitment, there's even less reliance, then even less trust, and even less knowledge about a person. You might trust the person you're macking on is a good kisser, but that's besides the point.
I've definitely been the girl who has all those attributes mixed up and been backwards in how my relationships with guys progressed, and thus they didn't progress. The important thing now is that I know I can work on these things, not in the sense that every new relationship can be a love laboratory where I use someone to better myself, but in a way it is like a laboratory; love is full of experiments that you don't always know are going to work, there's observations and testing done, and conclusions are drawn. Both partners are meant to be the scientists working on experiments together, mutually studying and working together to see if the experiment between each other works.
I hope that when I find my special someone someday, the man whom I'll marry and be an eternal teammate with, I can be smart enough to know how to run those tests and observe carefully. I know now better than before how to guard my heart and be careful with my romantic decisions because they do always have an impact on both parties of the relationship. I want to be aware of both of our realest intentions with each other and believe in wisdom more than compromise. I believe in love and I love love, and it's because I love the idea of being in love so much that I want to prepare myself for it by being a good, smart scientist:)
Saturday, October 27, 2018
What Your Class Says About You/Your Family
So this post is LONG overdue, but not only do I have to get this done for a grade but this topic was actually really interesting to me. For this topic's week (yes I meant that, not this week's topic) we studied how class can affect family life.
There was yet another movie that kept coming back to my mind, but instead of a cheesy church musical it was F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. I love this story because it perfectly depicts a world obsessed with materialism and wealth, and the main character, Jay Gatsby, is the illustration of what can happen when climbing the social ladder becomes one's #1 priority. The sad part-or maybe I should say the ugly truth- about the story is that the story also reveals a truth that not many people know or understand, and that is that if you don't start out with the high class life, you'll never be accepted into the high class life. There's a series of fascinating videos that are all compiled into a documentary made back in the early 2000's, possibly even late 90's, called "People Like Us" that investigates and interviews all kinds of people from different parts of America from all different classes (these links are my personal favorites, most intriguing to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvibi2Cph-E&list=PLC6D871A2A8C3C8EF&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf2dScTlvOQ&list=PLC6D871A2A8C3C8EF&index=7). The story that made the biggest impact on viewers was the story of a woman named Tammy who lives in a small town in Ohio with her 3 children. They live in a trailer with hardly any appliances or furnishings, and Tammy has been working at Burger King for almost two decades. They don't have a car so Tammy walks 10 miles to work and 10 miles back every single day, two hours each way by foot. She revealed that she wanted to be a teacher and she hoped to go to college and get a degree so she could teach at an elementary school, but according to the latest video made four years ago, she's still working at Burger King, still walking for hours a day. The follow-up, 'where are they now' video showed the kids living a similar life to their mother; some got into drugs and lost jobs, got their girlfriends pregnant in high school and now have a child to take care of, and have low-income/minimum wage jobs. It was sad to see this story because watching anyone barely getting by and living a poor lifestyle is hard for anyone to see, and you naturally take pity on them. Watching Tammy made me think about the 18 months I spent in Nevada as a missionary, and to be completely honest with you one of the things I remember the most about my mission was the concept of social class.
In the beginning of my mission I started off in Elko, a quaint little town somewhat close to the border of Utah, and this place seemed to have low to middle class people. I saw mostly the same social demographic in the ward in which I served, but there were plenty of times we'd be out knocking doors in the trailer park part of town, 'the other side of the tracks', meeting people who were hardly ever well-educated, they didn't always have straight teeth, they spent a lot of time just sitting outside, it wasn't hard to differentiate the type of people who were lower class and the people who were higher class- not just because of where they lived, but because of their choices of behavior and the way they generally carry themselves. The longer I was on my mission, I progressively moved up the social ladder, in a sense; I gradually moved from a relatively poor area to areas filled with people of higher and higher class, so by the time I was ending my mission I was knocking on heavy double doors with statues of lions or pillars behind us- I felt like the houses we were visiting were mansions! As a missionary, you meet dozens of different people every day, and you come away with thousands of stories to tell about the fun and crazy people you come across. But one thing I decided to observe specifically was the differences in lifestyles of how people lived; when people come over, how do the kids react, are they respectful and inviting, do they yell for mom or dad to come? When guests come over for dinner do they bother to set the table, does one of the family members invite you to sit down in their living room to make polite small talk before the meal, is the living room cleaned up at all, do the family members take any notice of the general cleanliness of the home? How do they talk to each other and/or to strangers? How do they start and end conversations on the phone? Do they mumble or slur their words? Do they tend to talk about negative things and complain? How do they dress? How often do they smile? Does their aura seem warm and inviting or reserved or even cold? I tried to look at everything and decide what things I liked or did not like, and I also compared what I saw to the home I grew up in.
I never in my life considered my family to be well-off, and I still don't; I think both of my parents are hardworking people who have very high expectations for themselves and their children, but they've never shown any kind of desire for materialism or wealth. Despite having 8 kids, my parents always provided for us and we never went without food or clothes. I still remember while my mom and I were driving around running errands and we were coming home, I was thinking about how my mom was willing to buy me a new dress that day even though we didn't intentionally go into the department store to get me anything. I guess at that age I was starting to think about things associated with money, and I tried to articulate a way of asking my mother why she was willing to do that. I'll never forget how she responded to me, even though I don't remember verbatim what she said, but I remember that she expressed her desire to make sure her children looked nice. She said there was no reason all eight of her kids couldn't wear nice dresses and suits to church and "every once in a while" get a new pair of shoes, or wear clean cut shirts and well-fitted pants to school. She said that she believes appearance is important (still does) and that if we look good, then we'll feel good. I've never forgotten that conversation because it changed the way I looked at my family; I saw my appearance as even more important than before, that not only was it important to me to wear something shiny or made me feel like a princess, but I realized that my appearance actually meant something. My choice of appearance was a symbol of who I was.
This topic has been on my mind a lot because it presents (again) an ugly truth about society. Gatsby may have climbed his way up to the top of the social ladder through selling booze and going to the right schools and getting the right connections, but even after spending a lifetime of climbing, he was never accepted by those who'd already been partying at the top rung. The same is true today; no matter how much you study and primp and prep yourself to become part of a higher social class, it's REALLY REALLY REALLY hard to be accepted at the top by those who have been living there all along.
My personal takeaway from all this is not that I want to try climbing any kind of social ladder to challenge that theory, but that I want to make sure that no matter what class I am or marry into, I want my behaviors to be uplifting to others; I want to build a home and family life that's inviting and accepting of all others, that makes people feel comfortable but not necessarily luxurious.
There was yet another movie that kept coming back to my mind, but instead of a cheesy church musical it was F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. I love this story because it perfectly depicts a world obsessed with materialism and wealth, and the main character, Jay Gatsby, is the illustration of what can happen when climbing the social ladder becomes one's #1 priority. The sad part-or maybe I should say the ugly truth- about the story is that the story also reveals a truth that not many people know or understand, and that is that if you don't start out with the high class life, you'll never be accepted into the high class life. There's a series of fascinating videos that are all compiled into a documentary made back in the early 2000's, possibly even late 90's, called "People Like Us" that investigates and interviews all kinds of people from different parts of America from all different classes (these links are my personal favorites, most intriguing to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvibi2Cph-E&list=PLC6D871A2A8C3C8EF&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf2dScTlvOQ&list=PLC6D871A2A8C3C8EF&index=7). The story that made the biggest impact on viewers was the story of a woman named Tammy who lives in a small town in Ohio with her 3 children. They live in a trailer with hardly any appliances or furnishings, and Tammy has been working at Burger King for almost two decades. They don't have a car so Tammy walks 10 miles to work and 10 miles back every single day, two hours each way by foot. She revealed that she wanted to be a teacher and she hoped to go to college and get a degree so she could teach at an elementary school, but according to the latest video made four years ago, she's still working at Burger King, still walking for hours a day. The follow-up, 'where are they now' video showed the kids living a similar life to their mother; some got into drugs and lost jobs, got their girlfriends pregnant in high school and now have a child to take care of, and have low-income/minimum wage jobs. It was sad to see this story because watching anyone barely getting by and living a poor lifestyle is hard for anyone to see, and you naturally take pity on them. Watching Tammy made me think about the 18 months I spent in Nevada as a missionary, and to be completely honest with you one of the things I remember the most about my mission was the concept of social class.
In the beginning of my mission I started off in Elko, a quaint little town somewhat close to the border of Utah, and this place seemed to have low to middle class people. I saw mostly the same social demographic in the ward in which I served, but there were plenty of times we'd be out knocking doors in the trailer park part of town, 'the other side of the tracks', meeting people who were hardly ever well-educated, they didn't always have straight teeth, they spent a lot of time just sitting outside, it wasn't hard to differentiate the type of people who were lower class and the people who were higher class- not just because of where they lived, but because of their choices of behavior and the way they generally carry themselves. The longer I was on my mission, I progressively moved up the social ladder, in a sense; I gradually moved from a relatively poor area to areas filled with people of higher and higher class, so by the time I was ending my mission I was knocking on heavy double doors with statues of lions or pillars behind us- I felt like the houses we were visiting were mansions! As a missionary, you meet dozens of different people every day, and you come away with thousands of stories to tell about the fun and crazy people you come across. But one thing I decided to observe specifically was the differences in lifestyles of how people lived; when people come over, how do the kids react, are they respectful and inviting, do they yell for mom or dad to come? When guests come over for dinner do they bother to set the table, does one of the family members invite you to sit down in their living room to make polite small talk before the meal, is the living room cleaned up at all, do the family members take any notice of the general cleanliness of the home? How do they talk to each other and/or to strangers? How do they start and end conversations on the phone? Do they mumble or slur their words? Do they tend to talk about negative things and complain? How do they dress? How often do they smile? Does their aura seem warm and inviting or reserved or even cold? I tried to look at everything and decide what things I liked or did not like, and I also compared what I saw to the home I grew up in.
I never in my life considered my family to be well-off, and I still don't; I think both of my parents are hardworking people who have very high expectations for themselves and their children, but they've never shown any kind of desire for materialism or wealth. Despite having 8 kids, my parents always provided for us and we never went without food or clothes. I still remember while my mom and I were driving around running errands and we were coming home, I was thinking about how my mom was willing to buy me a new dress that day even though we didn't intentionally go into the department store to get me anything. I guess at that age I was starting to think about things associated with money, and I tried to articulate a way of asking my mother why she was willing to do that. I'll never forget how she responded to me, even though I don't remember verbatim what she said, but I remember that she expressed her desire to make sure her children looked nice. She said there was no reason all eight of her kids couldn't wear nice dresses and suits to church and "every once in a while" get a new pair of shoes, or wear clean cut shirts and well-fitted pants to school. She said that she believes appearance is important (still does) and that if we look good, then we'll feel good. I've never forgotten that conversation because it changed the way I looked at my family; I saw my appearance as even more important than before, that not only was it important to me to wear something shiny or made me feel like a princess, but I realized that my appearance actually meant something. My choice of appearance was a symbol of who I was.
This topic has been on my mind a lot because it presents (again) an ugly truth about society. Gatsby may have climbed his way up to the top of the social ladder through selling booze and going to the right schools and getting the right connections, but even after spending a lifetime of climbing, he was never accepted by those who'd already been partying at the top rung. The same is true today; no matter how much you study and primp and prep yourself to become part of a higher social class, it's REALLY REALLY REALLY hard to be accepted at the top by those who have been living there all along.
My personal takeaway from all this is not that I want to try climbing any kind of social ladder to challenge that theory, but that I want to make sure that no matter what class I am or marry into, I want my behaviors to be uplifting to others; I want to build a home and family life that's inviting and accepting of all others, that makes people feel comfortable but not necessarily luxurious.
Saturday, October 20, 2018
Homosexuality
SO. Another week has passed. But the thing about this week is that I reflected a lot more on how I think about certain things, and this week it was how I view a particular group of individuals who, stereotypically, tend to make themselves into their own kind of species, if you will. This week we covered the topic of homosexuality.
Growing up in my household I don't recall any time when my parents talked about what homosexuality is; honestly I can't even remember how I learned what homosexuality even was. I know in some of the more risque PG-13 movies I watched at a much younger age I occasionally saw girls making out with each other and I thought it might have been something they did when they were drunk (one particular scene that comes to mind, probably when I saw it on screen for the first time, was in Mean Girls when the main character Cady arrives at a halloween party and one of the first things she sees is two girls making out and some guy behind them cheering them on. I still remember looking at that and wondering what in the world they were doing). But somewhere along the way I learned what homosexuality was, but for me personally it's never disgusted me or bothered me a lot. I know it's something I myself am not at all interested in, but again I never felt personally disturbed by it. I know my parents certainly are, especially my mother, and I imagine that's probably why they never talked about it with us. Their strong opinions about homosexuality was probably one of the reasons they established very rigid gender roles in the home.
What I found most interesting about our topic for this week was not so much how homosexuality can affect a family, but where homosexuality can stem from (according to research) and how to work with those who have unwanted homosexual attractions. We all watched this fascinating video (I'll post the link down below) where a few men who have/currently struggle(d) with SSA/SGA (same-sex attraction/same-gender attraction) opened up about how they became "gay". I'll just go ahead and refer to them as "gay" for the sake of typing time, hope that doesn't offend anyone. I was astonished to learn that all of these men had been molested by someone at a very young age (and thus learned about sexualizing things at way too young an age), had poor relationships with their fathers and had very very (almost too) close relationships with their mothers, and felt that they were 'different from the other boys'. In the beginning of their what I'll call 'transition', when they were drawn to other boys, it wasn't even because they were sexually attracted to them- that came later with puberty and pornography- but because they wanted physical manifestations of acceptance that they never received before- a strong pat on the back, a slap on the butt for a good play, a bro hug, something that gave them validation from the guys that he was one of them.
I still remember my sophomore year of high school when I gained a new best friend who was openly gay. I remember feeling just as astonished then to learn about how he became gay, because up until that time I'd thought being gay was something just wrong with their heads, like a hormonal imbalance. He told me that because he'd seen his parents being so openly sexual around their children and trying to make their children feel like that was a good thing, he felt disgusted with the idea of men and women being intimate together, so he turned to the next best thing in his mind. I still love this friend of mine to death, and he's even more openly gay than he was before. Even though I don't agree with his lifestyle, I am genuinely happy that he is happy.
Overall, this week helped me gain SO SO SO much more compassion for those who claim to be homosexual, especially those who have unwanted gay attractions. They are just people who were not loved in the ways we think are ideal; they are people who, like us, are seeking for acceptance and validation for who they are. We all sometimes go through crazy avenues to find those things, but the important thing is to keep an open mind and an open heart to let them know that at least we accept them as real people.
Growing up in my household I don't recall any time when my parents talked about what homosexuality is; honestly I can't even remember how I learned what homosexuality even was. I know in some of the more risque PG-13 movies I watched at a much younger age I occasionally saw girls making out with each other and I thought it might have been something they did when they were drunk (one particular scene that comes to mind, probably when I saw it on screen for the first time, was in Mean Girls when the main character Cady arrives at a halloween party and one of the first things she sees is two girls making out and some guy behind them cheering them on. I still remember looking at that and wondering what in the world they were doing). But somewhere along the way I learned what homosexuality was, but for me personally it's never disgusted me or bothered me a lot. I know it's something I myself am not at all interested in, but again I never felt personally disturbed by it. I know my parents certainly are, especially my mother, and I imagine that's probably why they never talked about it with us. Their strong opinions about homosexuality was probably one of the reasons they established very rigid gender roles in the home.
What I found most interesting about our topic for this week was not so much how homosexuality can affect a family, but where homosexuality can stem from (according to research) and how to work with those who have unwanted homosexual attractions. We all watched this fascinating video (I'll post the link down below) where a few men who have/currently struggle(d) with SSA/SGA (same-sex attraction/same-gender attraction) opened up about how they became "gay". I'll just go ahead and refer to them as "gay" for the sake of typing time, hope that doesn't offend anyone. I was astonished to learn that all of these men had been molested by someone at a very young age (and thus learned about sexualizing things at way too young an age), had poor relationships with their fathers and had very very (almost too) close relationships with their mothers, and felt that they were 'different from the other boys'. In the beginning of their what I'll call 'transition', when they were drawn to other boys, it wasn't even because they were sexually attracted to them- that came later with puberty and pornography- but because they wanted physical manifestations of acceptance that they never received before- a strong pat on the back, a slap on the butt for a good play, a bro hug, something that gave them validation from the guys that he was one of them.
I still remember my sophomore year of high school when I gained a new best friend who was openly gay. I remember feeling just as astonished then to learn about how he became gay, because up until that time I'd thought being gay was something just wrong with their heads, like a hormonal imbalance. He told me that because he'd seen his parents being so openly sexual around their children and trying to make their children feel like that was a good thing, he felt disgusted with the idea of men and women being intimate together, so he turned to the next best thing in his mind. I still love this friend of mine to death, and he's even more openly gay than he was before. Even though I don't agree with his lifestyle, I am genuinely happy that he is happy.
Overall, this week helped me gain SO SO SO much more compassion for those who claim to be homosexual, especially those who have unwanted gay attractions. They are just people who were not loved in the ways we think are ideal; they are people who, like us, are seeking for acceptance and validation for who they are. We all sometimes go through crazy avenues to find those things, but the important thing is to keep an open mind and an open heart to let them know that at least we accept them as real people.
Friday, October 19, 2018
"The *Insert your last name* Way"
As much as I'd like to believe that I am my own person- in that all my behaviors are my own and the way that I think about the world around me is compiled of my own personal experiences based on what I've seen myself, that's not all completely true. No matter how much I- or anyone else for that matter- would like to think that, my family does have an influence on me. The way I was raised still plays a big part of my life and I cannot help that,. Even though I totally believe that people can change (if they're serious about doing so), it's not like everyone can be like Jean Valjean from Les Miserables and flip a total 180 and totally leave their past behind. Everyone's past/background still influences them in their present life. What I wanna talk about today is family culture- how they're established, what 'rules' exist in each kind of family system, and my own past & future family cultures.
This week while we were learning about different theories for what makes a family culture, the one that stuck with me the most- because this theory makes the most sense to me as well as the fact that it gives me what feels like a microscopic view of what makes a family, the nitty gritty- was a theory that proposes the idea of family subsystems: that within each family there are multiple alliances, if you will; there can be sister-sister alliances, brother-brother alliances, youngest kids, oldest kids, mom & dad, dad and son, mom and daughter, mom and son, dad and daughter, etc. There are multiple different relationships that make up the family culture. Ideally it starts off with a relationship between the husband and wife- there's one subsystem (if you will) right there. Then a baby enters the family, and then there are 3 subsystems in the family unit- mom and baby, daddy & baby, and the original husband and wife relationship. Then another child enters the family and then immediately there are three times as many subsystems to include a sibling-sibling relationship along with each child's individual relationship with each parent (again this is all ideal). Each subsystem/relationship within the family unit is unique and different all on its own.
Another aspect of this theory is that within each subsystem there are 'rules', spoken and unspoken. I've even venture to say that there are more unspoken rules than spoken/written ones. One may consider them boundaries, but regardless, the function of these rules is to maintain the culture of the relationship- whether that be the subsystem or the entire unit itself. While I tried to think of 'rules' in my family- specifically the unspoken ones- I had a hard time remembering how I even learned them. I know I always followed them, but one suggestion brought up in class that made a lot of sense to me is that the way we learn the unspoken rules is when we break them- unintentionally, of course.
I remember one time when I learned an unspoken rule when we were at the dinner table eating dinner, and even though I can't remember what was being talked about I remember for some reason that I brought up making out or some kind of somewhat sexual thing, referring to the people my family was talking about. I remember as soon as I said that, my whole family was silent. I remember seeing my two brothers laugh and my mom gave them a chiding look, but looking back I think the only reason my other sisters were silent was because they were surprised I even knew about any kind of 'sex stuff'. Granted I didn't know what sex truly was until I was 15, but I knew about other stuff, and no one recognized that until it was blasted into the open. I remember immediately feeling embarrassed, that I'd done something wrong, because I wasn't getting a response- at least until I heard my parents say, "Sarah, we don't talk about those things. Especially at the dinner table." Then Dad proceeded to ask us about what else we learned at school. It wasn't until I broke that rule that a rule was officially made- at least official to my knowledge.
I can think of plenty of rules that we all knew about because they were stated out loud (mostly by Mom)- we always eat dinner together as a family at the table no matter how much homework you have unless you have a sports game or performance or Dad has a meeting, as soon as Mom calls you come out of your room to answer her rather than just saying "What?!" from your bed, no listening to music through BOTH headphones- other wise you couldn't hear when Mom or Dad ask you to do something, girls can't have their ears pierced until they're 15 years old (and anytime you ask for it earlier there's another year added), etc. But there were way more unspoken rules- don't get caught staying up late after we've had family prayer before going to bed, no walking around the house with your shirt off or with not very much clothing on, you don't talk about ANYTHING sexual around Mom and Dad, and when you're opening up about your emotional problems.... don't do it very much...and if you do, do it with God in prayer fist and then talk to Mom or Dad about it.
There aren't many things I'd change about the way I was raised, I certainly appreciate more things about how my parents raised me now that I'm an adult, but I want to make my future family culture open to not having the subsystems be a secret or the kind of relationship that thrives off of secrecy. I want to establish my future family culture around openness. Open-heartedness, open-mindedness, open emotions, open space to share, open kitchen and pantry (except Mom's sweets drawer for me), just general openness. I want to make sure that all of my kids know that they can come to me or my husband about anything and we will be good listeners. I want my kids to not feel uncomfortable about the human body, especially about sexual things. But basically, general openness.
What kind of culture did you grow up with? What were some unspoken rules in your home? I'd love to hear:)
This week while we were learning about different theories for what makes a family culture, the one that stuck with me the most- because this theory makes the most sense to me as well as the fact that it gives me what feels like a microscopic view of what makes a family, the nitty gritty- was a theory that proposes the idea of family subsystems: that within each family there are multiple alliances, if you will; there can be sister-sister alliances, brother-brother alliances, youngest kids, oldest kids, mom & dad, dad and son, mom and daughter, mom and son, dad and daughter, etc. There are multiple different relationships that make up the family culture. Ideally it starts off with a relationship between the husband and wife- there's one subsystem (if you will) right there. Then a baby enters the family, and then there are 3 subsystems in the family unit- mom and baby, daddy & baby, and the original husband and wife relationship. Then another child enters the family and then immediately there are three times as many subsystems to include a sibling-sibling relationship along with each child's individual relationship with each parent (again this is all ideal). Each subsystem/relationship within the family unit is unique and different all on its own.
Another aspect of this theory is that within each subsystem there are 'rules', spoken and unspoken. I've even venture to say that there are more unspoken rules than spoken/written ones. One may consider them boundaries, but regardless, the function of these rules is to maintain the culture of the relationship- whether that be the subsystem or the entire unit itself. While I tried to think of 'rules' in my family- specifically the unspoken ones- I had a hard time remembering how I even learned them. I know I always followed them, but one suggestion brought up in class that made a lot of sense to me is that the way we learn the unspoken rules is when we break them- unintentionally, of course.
I remember one time when I learned an unspoken rule when we were at the dinner table eating dinner, and even though I can't remember what was being talked about I remember for some reason that I brought up making out or some kind of somewhat sexual thing, referring to the people my family was talking about. I remember as soon as I said that, my whole family was silent. I remember seeing my two brothers laugh and my mom gave them a chiding look, but looking back I think the only reason my other sisters were silent was because they were surprised I even knew about any kind of 'sex stuff'. Granted I didn't know what sex truly was until I was 15, but I knew about other stuff, and no one recognized that until it was blasted into the open. I remember immediately feeling embarrassed, that I'd done something wrong, because I wasn't getting a response- at least until I heard my parents say, "Sarah, we don't talk about those things. Especially at the dinner table." Then Dad proceeded to ask us about what else we learned at school. It wasn't until I broke that rule that a rule was officially made- at least official to my knowledge.
I can think of plenty of rules that we all knew about because they were stated out loud (mostly by Mom)- we always eat dinner together as a family at the table no matter how much homework you have unless you have a sports game or performance or Dad has a meeting, as soon as Mom calls you come out of your room to answer her rather than just saying "What?!" from your bed, no listening to music through BOTH headphones- other wise you couldn't hear when Mom or Dad ask you to do something, girls can't have their ears pierced until they're 15 years old (and anytime you ask for it earlier there's another year added), etc. But there were way more unspoken rules- don't get caught staying up late after we've had family prayer before going to bed, no walking around the house with your shirt off or with not very much clothing on, you don't talk about ANYTHING sexual around Mom and Dad, and when you're opening up about your emotional problems.... don't do it very much...and if you do, do it with God in prayer fist and then talk to Mom or Dad about it.
There aren't many things I'd change about the way I was raised, I certainly appreciate more things about how my parents raised me now that I'm an adult, but I want to make my future family culture open to not having the subsystems be a secret or the kind of relationship that thrives off of secrecy. I want to establish my future family culture around openness. Open-heartedness, open-mindedness, open emotions, open space to share, open kitchen and pantry (except Mom's sweets drawer for me), just general openness. I want to make sure that all of my kids know that they can come to me or my husband about anything and we will be good listeners. I want my kids to not feel uncomfortable about the human body, especially about sexual things. But basically, general openness.
What kind of culture did you grow up with? What were some unspoken rules in your home? I'd love to hear:)
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