New families and ways of relating

Dear all,
we start this year with the first topic in our course:
Marriage and love affairs. 
However, this title is getting more and more outdated, due to the emergence of new family models, and new modes of loving and relating. How to speak now of "love affairs"? How to talk only about heterosexual marriage (still the biggest and largest institution, true, but not any more the mandatory one) if there are so many other ways of establishing relationships?
What matters now is freedom. Osho used to say that freedom is above love, because there cannot be love without freedom.

 Freedom is essential for establishing authentic love relationships. Freedom is scary, though. It does not imply doing whatever you one want, it requires a great deal of responsibility for the free choices you make. And many people fear taking responsibility over their one own life decisions. That is why dictatorships exist or have existed, and some people have even preferred them to democracies. It is easier not to take decisions. You stay in your comfort zone, you don't take risks, someone else, or society, takes them for you.
Well, the same goes for marriage. Probably most people marry because they really want to, but others may just marry because it is "the thing to do", what they are supposed to do. And they do not even think, deep inside, whether it is really what they really want to do. So of course, later on comes divorce...and so on.
And you? What do you think about society and the new ways of creating a family and bonding?
Have you watched Modern Family?

Do you remember Married and with Children?

Share your ideas and experiences with us!

If you want to practice your reading skills, you can check this article too:  New Family Models: Same-Sex Marriage and Descendants
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137033949_5


PS. Please note: the personal opinions conveyed here are just mine, no indoctrination or whatsoever is aimed with them. This blog is an informal why way of encouraging English as a Foreign Language students to write and practice their English skills. The ideas contained in them are just examples of how to express views and ideas, no judgement should be made on either of them. 

What is love..scientifically?

Dear students and followers,
in our first unit we discuss about what each of us thinks about "true love".
Here you have a good conference on what is love from a scientific point of view. I invite you to watch it and leave your comments below!

https://youtu.be/0akiEFwtkyA

When LOVE wins over FEAR

Now that the topic of racial discrimination is at stake again, due to the latest misfortunate happenings in the USA, this small video can make us become aware of how idiotic it is to judge others by their skin color...on both sides. Also, this video is an example of how loving and caring attitudes, compassion towards others, and understanding, can heal our hearts from all kinds of prejudice, fear and rage.
Enjoy it!

Are love affairs a matter of cultural differences?

I believe yes, they are. In some countries women or men are more "possessive", "traditional", and "exclusive" (e.g. Mediterranean countries), and in other countries affairs outside marriage are not so important (e.g. North European countries)
Which country is yours? And, what is your position in this? I personally do not have a specific position in this topic, it all depends on the circumstances. For me, it is a matter of the person you are with, how you both understand a relationship.
I have been jealous sometimes, open-minded others...I don't know why, but in my case it all depends on so many factors that I cannot provide a specific point of view. For me, betrayal consists of lying, of breaking someone's trust and confidence. If an affair does not involve lying, it is not so important for me.
I could consider certain attitudes as much more offending than an affair if they involve lying and being disrespectful towards the relationship. For example: if my boyfriend seduces every woman he meets on my back (or even in front of my eyes) I will feel much more offended than if he comes one day and tells me that he just had a one-night stand with someone else. Feeling attraction towards someone else is inevitable and I can forgive easily if a mistake is just a matter of uncontrolled impulses. However, lying is done premeditatedly, and there is no excuse for this. It just stems from cowardice. We all have fear, what makes a woman or a man courageous is how she or he can handle that fear.

Here I give you the link to the blog entry of a divorce expert: she does not tell anything new, but it is good to remember some of the essential points in a healthy relationship:

Why is a love affair so intoxicating?

Enjoy!

Leave your comments below!

BABIES

Release Date: April 16, 2010
Genre: Documentary
Director: Thomas Balmes
Writer: Thomas Balmes
Studio: Focus Features

Plot:
Everybody loves... BABIES. This visually stunning new movie simultaneously follows four babies around the world - from first breath to first steps. From Mongolia to Namibia to San Francisco to Tokyo, BABIES joyfully captures on film the earliest stages of the journey of humanity that are at once unique and universal to us all.

We propose an interesting discussion: how much do we have from culture? how much do we have from our own individuality? how much do we owe to our parents? The eternal debate is now, thanks to this documentary, again open and live, but it can be traced back, in fact, to Aristotle, who defended that Man is a social being...and continued with Hobbes' (XVIIth c.) and his revival of Plauto's (III B.C.) Homo Homini Lupus est (Man is a wolf for man)...opposed to Seneca's Homo sacra res homini (Man is sacred for man...)

Check this trailer and the one of ENTRELOBOS, and tell us what you think!

Marriage and Love Affairs: Diversity of LOVE

How do we see LOVE nowadays?
Is LOVE the engine of our lives?
How do different cultures express (and feel) LOVE?
Is MARRIAGE, as Frank Sinatra sang, the main -and basically the only- social institution for the construction of LOVE? http://www.lyricsfreak.com/f/frank+sinatra/love+marriage_20056073.html
LOVE...the most discussed word and concept of all our times, as old as man, is not connected to MARRIAGE any more...or at least, not necessarily.
Even scholars do research on LOVE, which comes to be, eventually, something cultural...or not?:
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/1/4/8/6/p14869_index.html#abstract
We encourage readers to participate in this proposal: Post here your own main LOVE experience (or one from someone that has really shocked you or called your attention)
Let's not judge anyone nor anything, let's just share experiences, stories, and learn from each other!
(Opinions on this post welcome too)