Family, Attachment & Intimacy

It is interesting to read about academic ideas love and attachment. As I’m reading, I keep asking myself “oh – is that really how it’s supposed to happen? Am I supposed to feel that way?” Because I come from a divorced family am I really going to have a first-love-that-fails and a second-love-that-works? All though I am not in control of my emotions, I don’t think anyone truly is, I’m not sure that I would subconsciously sabotage an otherwise perfectly fine relationship in order to “project everything bad” onto him so at a later date I could project “everything good on someone else.”

However, I really enjoyed Hochschild’s ideas on feelings, especially in a situation when we know what our reaction should be, and our reaction is completely different. This has most definitely happened to me. Here’s the thing, I’m a crier. I cry at the movie theatre, watching Izzy Stephens and Alex Carev getting married on Grey’s Anatomy, and seeing Tracy Porter catch the game clinching interception at last years Super Bowl. Within a social-situational measuring rod, I’m pretty sure I have violated certain norms in situations based on my tears. For example, no matter what funeral I’m at, I’m going to cry. And I’m not a pretty crier. I get red, and blotchy, and my eyes turn an eerie green. Essentially, if I cry, you’re going to notice. So, even at a funeral of someone else’s grandparent, who I do not know, where I’m just going to show moral support, I end up being in tears as much as the immediate family. Not so appropriate when everyone is looking at you and trying to console you.

Reading Roseniel and Budgeon really made sense to me. Even before my parent’s separated, they relied a lot on the support of friends, as both of them were not from Toronto, and had no family living closer than two hours away. If they couldn’t pick us up from school, one of their friends did. After my parent’s got divorced, each of them definitely leaned on their close friends even more than before for support. My father moved into a house with 3 of his friends, who he remains close with today. My mother, who kept the house in the settlement, leaned on old friends and made lots of new ones. We would go for dinner’s at friends houses, go on vacations with friends of my parent’s and their children (often other divorcees as well). It makes sense to lean on to support from friends when family isn’t available.

1. Do you think that Karen and Polly’s living arrangement is better for their daughters that raising them on their own? Is the “queering of the family” a source of confusion for children?

2. Do you believe that the “Cinderella Complex” is detrimental to woman in a relationship? Or in order to have a successful relationship in modern times does a relationship need to “cool” and more detached?

3. Helen Fisher describes romantic love of having the same symptoms of addiction? Do you think that “romantic love is one of the most addictive substances on earth”? Do you think her dating site, Chemistry.com, would be more effective than other dating sites?