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.

Week 10 - Post 1

I thought the six question was on point because it looked at the different connotation of these three concepts, something which I had an inkling about but hadn’t bothered to look into. What I found was essentially what I expected. Hello no see the statistics that I gathered; I noted the number of search results for each word, the top five websites that turned up as well as the very telling related searches that was suggested by Google.

The results for forgiveness are mixed between religious and science-based sites in addition to the obligatory Wikipedia page. All of the sites talk about the benefits to the forgiver when they let go of grudge. While the scientific sites look at measurable benefits to our medical and psychological health, the faith-based sites talk more about spiritual health. There was even a Christian musician talking about god’s forgiveness. The related searches show an even stronger leaning towards the religious theme.

With slightly fewer results, the reconciliation search continues to show a religious theme, but less pronounced. Several of the sites simply define it, but they include the religious sacrament, financial/account reconciliation along with relationship and legal reconciliation.

With five times the results, revenge is clearly the most prevalent term, which could be a terrible sign of our culture. Of course, the numbers are likely seriously inflated by the popularity of the television series of the same name. There isn’t a single link devoted to the idea of revenge until the second page of results. I still think that our culture glorifies revenge. In storytelling terms, it’s just a sexier idea. Forgiveness and reconciliation make for humdrum Lifetime movies - revenge makes for a blockbuster hit.

Forgiveness - 55,300,000
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgiveness
www.mayoclinic.com/health/forgiveness/MH00131
http://christianity.about.com/od/whatdoesthebiblesay/a/bibleforgivenes.htm
www.psychologytoday.com/basics/forgiveness
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Lu5udXEZI

Searches related to forgiveness
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Reconciliation - 51,900,000
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconciliation_(United_States_Congress)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconciliation
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reconciliation
dictionary.reference.com/browse/reconciliation
www.americancatholic.org/features/special/default.aspx?id=32

Searches related to reconciliation
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account reconciliation
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Revenge - 264,000,000
beta.abc.go.com/shows/revenge
www.imdb.com/title/tt1837642/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_(TV_series)
https://twitter.com/Revenge
www.tvguide.com/tvshows/revenge/319536

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Week 9 - Post 3

What I found the most interesting this week was the very definition of forgiveness, “letting go of feelings of revenge and desire to retaliate”. In my experience, forgiveness is often conflated with reconciliation, which is when “we take actions to restore a relationship or create a new one following forgiveness”. In my life, I’ve been accused of being unforgiving, like in the situation I described a few posts ago where I explained how I lost trust in my former fiancé when he cheated on me.

Several mutual acquaintances believed that I was in the wrong for ending the relationship, but I knew that I couldn’t rebuild trust in that situation. But I did forgive him, at least eventually. That our friends told me they felt that I was unforgiving led me to see myself as such. I’ve thought of myself a very forgiving person in the past - but being perceived as unforgiving in that situation brought it in to question. Was I only forgiving up to a certain point?

Reading about the distinction between the two helps clarify my self-perception. As the book states, we may not want to reconcile, “particularly if the offender is likely to violate again”. Given that Sean as cheated again and again, I feel confident I made the right decision. But I did forgive him, there’s nothing in me that wants revenge or needs to retaliate.

Week 9 - Post 2

A few years ago, my mother left my father. After over 30 years of marriage, neither he or I saw it coming. In fact, it was her plan to literally sneak away to live with my sister without saying a word to my dad. One morning he had a doctor’s appointment and rather than go together she said she had a headache and wanted to stay behind but in reality my sister would be shortly arriving to pick her. Since my family is terrible at keeping secrets though, word have gotten to my dad and he’s already canceled his appointment so instead he sat down and watch a pack and leave without saying a word.

It has taken a long time for me to forgive my mother for leaving in what I saw as such a selfish manner. Our relationship can’t really be the same again, I see what happened as new information about her character. And, while she has acknowledged that I was upset with her for what she did, she has never provided a reason why or expressed any kind of regret. By involving my sister there was an awkward rift in the family for some time and we couldn’t celebrate holidays together.
For both my father and me, forgiving her was done for the sake of family stability. We wanted our holidays together and we didn’t want anyone left out. My father visits me (or at least my kids) twice a week and the subject of the separation is still a frequent topic, there are definite emotional residues. I have such empathy for his deep hurt over the issue. His world was very black and white and now a lot of his fundamental assumptions about the world have been upset.

I’ve made it through many of the levels of forgiveness now but I have trouble moving in to “seeing myself as like her”. The fact that she left is not a terrible thing, it’s how she did it. I can’t imagine myself giving up on a marriage like that, not trying to work it out, and trying to just disappear. It’s still a process for me. My mother has other selfish behaviors and, whereas I could ignore those things in the past, they all seem sharply in focus to me now.

Week 9 - Post 1

I do my best to keep my Facebook profile locked down so that it can’t be viewed publicly. Part of the reason for that is that as a foster parent I have an obligation to preserve the anonymity of the children in my home. And of course, like most other people, I am also concerned with what a future potential employer might find and pass judgment on from my profile.

Since this means that only people who I love and trust can view my Facebook profile, I am free to be myself. Admittedly though, those people who I love and trust cover a broad range of people in my life from relatives to in-laws to former coworkers and I am more reserved with some of those people when I have face-to-face communication. The face I put forward on my profile is my most polite self, while also not shying away from my strong opinions and often biting humor.

There have been occasions where a friend has tagged me in a post that is more crude than I would have shared, but I don’t make an issue of it. I also refrain from commenting on posts from my friends of that nature because I know that they will show up on my profile as something I’ve commented on. I’ve also occasionally been drawn into liking a company because of some incentive they offered, but I try to limit how that shows up on my profile. Social networks are a greta tool for keeping in touch but I try to limit what it makes public about me and avoid having that commercialized.

Week 8 - Post 3

When I was younger I was no stranger to distress. I’m so thankful that it’s not something I struggle with now, but it has hit my life and several points and when it did it totally consumed me. Just as was described in our book, I experienced a lot of stomach upset during one of the worst bouts. That should have been telling to me, but instead I couldn’t see it. I underwent countless invasive medical tests to find out what was wrong with me and they were all inconclusive. They told me that I should evaluate any stress in my life and try to reduce it but I was still oblivious to the issue.

In that particular case it was actually the same relationship that I described in my post on forgiveness. The fact that Sean cheated on me certainly ended the relationship but there was a litany of other reasons that the relationship needed to end. I wasn’t being true to myself. I’m not cut out for an open relationship and of course there’s also the fact that I’m gay. I hadn’t come to terms with it at the time because I had bought the stories that were told to me by my family and church: that kind of life could never be a happy one. I was making myself miserable trying to avoid misery. Life hasn’t been perfect since coming out but the predicted misery and unhappiness has simply not been true. Not only am I being my authentic self, but our world has changed and misery is no longer the certain outcome that it once was for the LGBT community.