Week 10 - Post 3

I found systems theory to really ring true for me. It lines up with the idea that for relationships to work, they require work. When a relationship becomes something that you don’t want to work on any more it dies. This could be a case of the chilling effect where you care intensely about the relationship but are afraid to work on it because you fear rocking the boat, or because you’ve lost your passion for making it work and you’ve become indifferent.

In the case of my marriage, we often have to take a holistic approach the considers the needs of us as a couple or as a family over our individual needs. Acting on self-interest would cause a lot of problems and likely disrupt the homeostasis of the relationship. But the work you put in to a relationship doesn’t have to be hard if you value that relationship. You might want whatever it is that you want, but much more than that you want the happiness of your system.

Week 10 - Post 2

I’m pretty levelheaded and a good judge of character so a lot of my attributions are accurate. In the relationship that I’ve blogged about a lot this semester, I was able to recognize Sean’s behavior as part of his character and something he would repeat so I left that relationship. In general I'm able to recognize people’s motivations and protect myself when necessary. I’ve also left an employment situation after accurately attributing abusive intentions to the employer. Eventually my coworkers realized it as well and got out too, but only after a lot more hardship.

However when it comes to the love of my life, that sweet wife of mine, I frequently mistake her intentions and end up in hot water. We understand each other pretty well and so we don’t fight very often. When we do she usually needs to exit the situation and cool off for a while. I know this is her habit and yet I can’t help but attribute the most random and terrible things to her intentions. I’ll imagine terrible things like her being dissatisfied with our relationship, or I’ll paint a picture of her as terribly unreasonable and unforgiving. Those things are never true though and the conflict seems to melt away when she finally returns and we begin to talk about it.