The Love, Relationships, and Controversy Series Part IV: Couples

Now that it is more than a week past when I originally planned on posting this, I am finally getting around to typing out the last of my posts in this series. Thus far I've talked about the way we develop friendships and express love, the kinds of love and friendship between men, and the kinds of non-romantic kinds of love and friendship between people of different genders. At last it has come time for me to write about what we all typically think of when we think of love and relationships.

Within my personal social circles there are very few topics discussed and debated quite as much as that of relationships and how they should be handled, viewed, carried out, introduced, etc. etc. It is a topic that people tend to be both passionate and biased toward, and one where there is a great reluctance to listen to any contrary pieces of advice or suggestions from anyone else because either A) there is no way anyone else could ever understand what they are thinking or B) they have enough experience under the belt and have studied relationships enough that they clearly know better than anyone else how relationships should function. It is a topic where the pendulum of opinion seems to either swing toward the extreme of absolute slackness and freedom within a romantic relationship to the extreme of their being only one proper way for every relationship ever to be handled.

I am going to try and walk the line between those tempting extremes and lay out what I have observed, experienced, think, and feel about the whole subject in a way that you can at least appreciate if not agree with. The key thing to understand when thinking about relationships of a more romantic nature is that, while there are certainly truths and realities about human nature that apply to pretty much the entire human race, everyone is different and when you start putting two people together, an even more unique situation occurs. It absolutely a good idea, in my opinion, to draw upon past experiences and knowledge you have gathered in your own relationships and the relationships of friends/siblings/children/parents etc, but always try to keep in mind that the circumstances and nature of every relationship is going to vary. This is something I tend to have trouble remembering myself, but I encourage you all, as I divulge my personal opinions, to take my words with a grain of salt and understand that I am not trying to lay down an unwavering ultimatum.

No, on with the show...

Because there is a kind of natural chronological progression for romantic relationships between the interest being sparked and the knot being tied, I figure it makes the most sense to start at the beginning and conclude with the ending.

I know it sounds a little bit cheesy (w are talking about romantic love here), but your future spouse should be your best friend, and I think every romantic relationship should be founded on a strong friendship. Feelings and twitterpation are all fine and good, but they aren't going to stand the test of time all on their own. Before you even consider entering into a more serious, romance orientated relationship with someone, you should a friendship already established and a friendship based on common interests and beliefs. Your significant other should be someone who believes the same foundational principles as you when it comes things like politics and especially religion. While it is entirely possible for relationships between people of different political stances and faiths to work out, I don't see how that could ever be easy and I've seen several scenarios where it makes things rough for both the couple and their children. If you think about it, your religious faith is a pretty massively important thing, and if you really believe the teachings of your religion that you have to hold those teachings above your personal feelings for another person. If you can't have common ground on issues like then you are asking for trials and troubles ahead.

Long term, functional relationships are going to need some kind of common ground to stand on when the going gets rough and the rough gets going, because real life likes to throw a lot of curve balls our way, and during those times we tend to get depressed, frustrated, angry, and confused and if you are in a relationship with someone where your passionate feelings and emotion based love for them is what you are depending on for success, that depression, frustration, and anger is going to override your twitterpation and things are going to go south pretty quickly. (No offense Texas.)

Of course, this is all assuming you are looking at relationships being a long term investment in the first place. For me, when you enter in a romantic relationship with another person and become "an item" you are making a decision to work towards something. These relationships aren't stationary things that exist in some kind of limbo. The longer you are in a relationship, the more difficulties and temptations you are going to face, and if you don't have some kind of goal or purpose to which you are working, things are going to get messy. Regardless of how you operate your boyfriend/girlfriend experience, I firmly believe that every romantic relationship should be founded on the purpose of either moving towards marriage or determining that your boyfriend/girlfriend isn't someone you could marry. If you reach the latter conclusion you should back out and end the thing, because otherwise you are committing more and more of yourself and your time into something that is going to escalate without ever having a way to vent or focus that escalation.

I have heard the argument that you have to date a variety of people, or enter into open ended relationships because otherwise you don't have any way of finding out whether or not someone is "the right person" or not. There appears to be this idea that it is only through expressing outward romantic affection, dedicating vast amounts of time to a specific person, and potentially going as far as living with/sleeping with someone are you able to determine whether or not they are someone you could marry and love for the duration of your life. I would like to propose that this way of thinking is utter nonsense.

Firstly, if you are getting to know someone as a close friend like I have already suggested as being important for a relationship to work well, than you should know that person pretty well already before you ever enter into a relationship with them. When you are in dating/courting someone you do learn things about them that you don't in regular routine interactions, but when it comes to figuring out whether or not someone is the kind of person you could spend your life with, it is the day to day routine activities that are most likely to make or break the deal. How someone handles stress/frustration/anger disappointment, how someone treats other people of your gender, how someone treats their parents and siblings, and how someone juggles their responsibilities are all things that you can learn pretty easily without ever moving in with them. These things, along the previously mentioned political and religious beliefs, are significant traits and points of interest about someone that you find out about just by being close friends.

Secondly, you don't exactly "figure out" whether or not someone is a person you can love and dedicate your life to. Twitterpation and infatuation are all fine and dandy, but the lightheaded thoughts and feelings you experience about that special person early on in a relationship aren't going to last indefinitely. so it isn't like you've found "the right person" as soon as your heart starts fluttering. The  kind of love that is associated with couples is the kind of love that you chose. You make the individual choice to personally nurture and grow the relationship between yourself and another person, and from that comes the kind of lifelong, steadfast, loving relationships that we see in couples celebrating their 40th, 50th, 60th, and greater wedding anniversaries. It is true that when you are in a relationship with someone before marriage you should be looking for evidence that you two will be able to function as a couple later on in life, as well as reasons to why you wouldn't make a good married couples (if you find those you need to address them or end the relationship), but ultimately you have to choose whether or not that relationship is going to work and then you make it work.

Relationships are growing and changing things, and like and growing thing, you have to care for them and watch over them to make sure that they remain healthy and strong. The most beautiful and magnificent flower in the world will wither and die if left uncared for, and if you "find the perfect person" and then decide that you were meant to be together and that nothing could go wrong as a result, there is a lot of potential for things to turn pretty nasty. Likewise, a neglected and seemingly unspectacular plant could end up growing and flourishing under a nurturing and tender hand. A seemingly unlikely relationship could end up working out quite well if both parties decide to actively work together on it. Love is something you have to work at, and you have to choose to work at it. When you enter into a relationship with someone you have to commit to putting your back into it and pouring blood, sweat, and tears into making it turn out right.

Eventually, once you and your best friend have made the active and continual decision to pursue a relationship, and you have found that you share enough common ground, beliefs, and opinions that you actually want to spend the rest of your lives together, you get to move onto the next stage: Engagement.

Again, I understand that everyone is different, but I don't understand the decision to enter into an engagement and then wait two... three.... four... or more years until you actually get married. Once you have made the for sure decision to get married and share your lives than you don't want to wait any longer than you have to. I haven't been engaged myself, but I've known quite a few people that have been engaged and I've watched a lot of those relationships go from beginning to end. During the engagement seems to be when emotions are the most fevered, and feelings are the most sensitive. That's when people seem to start questioning their decisions and getting panicky just because the time to make that final commitment is rapidly approaching. Once you have gotten engaged though, you have essentially promised to make the vows that you will on your wedding day. You aren't actually married yet, but you have promised each other that you will be, and I don't see why you'd want to drag out the time between making that first promise and fulfilling it.

Instead, it seems to me like it would be so much more helpful to you and your spouse to be if you wait to get engaged until you actually are ready to fully commit and get married in the very near future. Spend the time leading up to that point getting to know each other better and better, because there is really not much you can do as couple before engagement that you can do as couple engaged. Like I said, I haven't been engaged yet myself, but the only thing I've seen prolonged engagements do is weaken relationships because the hype surrounding them can only last so long and eventually seems to turn into impatience, frustration, and a lack of interest... but that's just my two cents.

When the day finally comes for the wedding however, I feel like there are a few things that I can speak to with absolute certainty. For one, we are far too receptive to the idea of divorce in our culture. When you get married you are making a promise, a very serious promise, to love and cherish your spouse until death do you part. Baring abuse, there is almost no good reason for two people to divorce. The wedding is that point where your choice to continue loving and caring for someone gets locked in, and you really shouldn't be able to just back out anymore. You take relationships and engagements leading up to that point seriously, because once you have exchanged vows and the service has ended things should be set in stone.

Honestly, I think one of culture's greatest weaknesses when it comes to this entire topic is that we don't, as a whole, seem to really understand what marriage really means. When you marry someone you are leaving your mother and father behind and are becoming one flesh. You and the person you marry are entering into a vocation ordained by God, and it is a vocation that should not be taken lightly. What God has brought together let no man break asunder! Marriage is really not for the sake of personal convenience or pleasure, it is for the benefit of the community and world at large when husband and wife appreciate and understand the significance of their duties to each other, and to their children. If you never get married there is nothing wrong with that, but if you do it should not be because you want to make yourself, or even your spouse, happy. Marriage is about family, it is about the church, and it is about making you and your spouse better people for the wider community.

Unfortunately, what I cannot figure out how to say what I want to any more eloquently than that. For honestly, what more is there to be said? At its heart love is a choice that you make, and one that you fight for against you own sinful temptations and flaws. Acknowledging this, and acknowledging that love and relationships are not about us and our personal happiness, makes everything so much clearer and easier.

I cannot say that this series went exactly the way I wanted it to. I never feel quite satisfied with what I have to say once I finish, and I fell way behind schedule, but my hope is perhaps some of you gained some insights from my thoughts, or at least enjoyed/appreciated reading them. The whole topic is infinitely more complex than what I touched upon here, and I could write a million posts without being able to say all that there is to say, but hopefully what I did say is worth reading.

If you got this far, than thanks for reading and have a Merry Christmas!

Pax

The Last Post is Coming Soon...

So, I know I am way behind schedule with my last post in my blog series, but I just finished Finals today and things have been kind of crazy around here with getting through the last stretch of the school year. I wanted to make sure I put the right amount of thought and time into this last post, and hopefully over the next week I'll have more freedom to do that.

The post is coming and has been started... I've just bee slackin' too much to get it out yet...

The Love, Relationships, and Controversy Series Part III: Friendzoned

My have I fallen behind. My plan was to crank one of these out posts every week of November and I have two left to complete and only two more days to go before December begins. Ah well, I said I would complete four blog posts in this series and four blog posts I shall complete.

Last time I talked about the significance of love and friendship between men so the next topic I want to address has to do with love and friendship between men and women apart from romance, twitterpation, dating, and marriage. In the same way that brotherly love and companionship among men is important, non romantic friendship is very significant and healthy between young people of different sexes. There is this stigma that seems to be prevalent among men (at least of my generation) that if you are going to be "friendzoned" then there is a any reason to develop a close friendship with girls.

That's stupid.

Regardless of whether or not their friendship becomes one of a romantic nature, there is a lot that young ladies and gents can learn and gain from each other just by being friends. It helps to reduce, if not eliminate, confusion over how the opposite gender thinks and communicates, it treats guys how to be respectful of women, and teaches women what it means for a guy to be a proper gent. In the cases where close male/female friendships do grow into a more romantically inclined ones, I think things are going to go significantly better and run far more smoothly if a strong "friendzone" based relationship was already in existence.

Again, I can't very easily talk from the standpoint of a girl, but I have experienced firsthand a lot of the benefits that come from getting to know a girl as a strong and close friend and companion without any romantic activity involved. This summer I have had a lot of opportunities to play big brother to a few very remarkable young ladies, and I have learned a lot from them through our conversations and interactions.

Talking these girls, getting to know them better, and building a sense of trust between us has helped me to understand a little bit better the thought processing and rational of the female gender, it has provided many more opportunities to operate as a respectful and supportive gentlemen (not that I always take advantage of those opportunities as much as I should), and has broadened my capacity for compassion, empathy, and sympathy. The more people that open up to me, the more sensitive I become of the feelings of individuals around me and the more understanding I become of everyone in all the different spheres of my life.

I can't claim to have gained infinite wisdom and constant compassion through this friendships, but they have helped, and I would like to think that they have helped me to be a more sage and sympathetic as a result of getting to know these girls.

On a more selfish level, developing this friendships and learning to love these girls has done marvels to boost my self esteem and confidence. I am single right now and was feeling pretty depressed and frustrated with that for quite a while, but the bigger role I begin to play in the lives of my various female friends' lives the less I am bothered by the fact that I don't have one particular girl for whom I can dedicate my time and interest. I am consoled by the fact that, for as long as I remain single and unclaimed, I have the opportunity to serve and support all of these girls like they are my sisters and that my friendship seems to mean a lot to them.

Too often guys complain about being friendzoned and criticize girls for "stringing them along" and acting like they were interested when all they really were interested in was being friends, but more and more I am seeing that girls (especially in their young teens) are really appreciative and desirous of having a guy that they can trust and depend upon without that friendship necessarily being tied to romance. In our selfishness, the masculine gender doesn't seem  to take that seriously or understand that, but when I look around the teen and young adult women I know, I see them desperate for proof that there are guys that they can trust and count on for more than just being interested in them for sex and romance.

Women have great value that extends and greatly exceeds their body alone, and in a culture that seems intent on sexualizing and romanticizing all male/female friendships, that value is too easily disregarded and thrown out the window.

When the young teen several years my junior comes to talk to me about the emotional turmoil in heart over another guy, the exhaustion she struggles with from sleeplessness, and the frustration she has over the behavior of another close friends I am not going to turn her away simply because she has put me into the "friendzone" and I have not romantic benefit to gain from our friendship. The sad fact is that, for some people, that may sound like me bragging about how chivalrous I am, but honestly, every man should be willing to listen and respond to any female that comes to him for comfort and advice.

I argued in my last post that men need other men as close friends because there is support and comfort that guys can provide for each other that their female friends can't, but it is also true that there is a lot of support and comfort that can occur between male and female friends that is not going to come as smoothly in a friendship just between guys. Men and women are different (sorry feminists, but it is true), and male/male friendships are just as necessarily as male/female friendships, and they are both necessarily because the provide different things and meet different needs.

Then, of course, boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse relationships are on a completely different level that meets and entirely different set of needs.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I personally think that the friendzone is an integral part of growing up and has a lot to offer. Whether or not you agree with me won't change the fact that I am going to continue doing the best that I am able to learn and grow from the friendships I have been given with girls that I will never date and never marry, and God willing they will benefit from knowing me as much as I benefit from knowing them.

Pax

p. s. Happy Thanksgiving!

The Dangers of Minimum Wage

(Note: I apologize for the weird font/type size. I copied and pasted parts of this from my outline and it messed the formatting up slightly. :P ) 

So, I have been falling terribly far behind in my series of posts for this month. It was probably not a good idea for me to plan on tackling big topics at the same time that all of my semester projects are coming due, but I will get the last two installments of the Love, Relationships, and Controversy series finished and posted at some point. If they end up leaking into December, then so be it.

In the meantime however, I've had several requests for a much easier post to write. Over the last week I participated in a Speech competition at my university and last night my speech actually won me first place. A number of my friends and family members requested that I post my speech somewhere for them and this seemed like as good a place as any.

Every time I gave the speech it was slightly different, because I was working off an outline rather than reading off the text, but this is a pretty close approximation.

The Dangers of Minimum Wage 

By: Nicholai Stuckwisch 

        Wouldn’t it be awesome to be making ten dollars an hour? If you already making that much or more then you may not care, but if, like me, you work at a minimum wage position you may be feeling the brunt of the economy downside and wishing that a $10 an hour minimum wage requirement was installed. In fact, according to the GallopPolitics statistics website, an overall 71% of Americans approved of raising the minimum wage to $9 back in March of this year. Underneath the outward attraction and appeal of a higher minimum wage, however, there are some major risks that go along with it. 

          I’m no Ben Bernanke, but in the course of pursuing a business degree here at IU, I’ve taken a few Economics classes and the principles that expose the risks associated with the minimum wage are pretty fundamental and important. Using these principles, I hope to show you how the seemingly amazing ideal of a high minimum wage could actually be highly detrimental to the lower classes. The sad truth is that a high minimum wage decreases employment for young and unskilled employees, increases market prices, and actually widens the economic divide between classes. 

         All three of these points may seem counter-intuitive, but I can support each of them. 

         Firstly, higher wages create higher labor expenses for people that often translate into layoffs. If it costs you more to employ a position than you will be forced to either to make job cuts or take a loss in profit. At the same time, because the minimum wage is not very high right now, some employers can afford to hire young and unskilled employees, but it the cost of employing those individuals became more expensive, employers would be pickier about who they hire because it is costing them more. 

         The wage level that works best for our society is determined by the economic principles of supply and demand. Essentially, what supply and demand tell us is that at some point the demand for something and the supply for something are equal, and at that point you have an overall, optimal equilibrium level that is best for society. If wages are raised above their equilibrium level, you end up with a dead weight loss that translates into layoffs and unemployment. Professor Dr. Gregory Mankiw, author of the textbook Principles of Microeconomics, states that “If minimum wage is above the equilibrium level… The result is unemployment. Thus, the minimum wage raises the income of those workers who have jobs, but it lowers the income of workers who cannot find jobs.” 

         Those enamored with the idea of raising minimum wage in order to increase income are often oblivious to the impact it will have on those who end up with no income at all. Sadly however, the dangers of raising the minimum wage are not limited to employment. 

         The second point that I would like to address is that higher labor costs result in higher prices. If employers want to maintain a similar staff to one they held prior to a wage increase, they will be have to raise the prices of their products and services to compensate. It makes sense if you think about it. If it costs more to produce something, you will have to charge more for that something to balance things out. 

         The increase in price that occurs as a result of trying to balance things dilutes the effectiveness of a greater income. Just because you might be making more money under a higher minimum wage law, doesn't mean you are better off if you then have to pay more in order to acquire the things you purchase. According to Christina Romer, a journalist for the New York Times, “[A] reason that employment may not fall is that businesses pass along some of the cost of a higher minimum wage to consumers through higher prices. Often, the customers paying those … have very low family incomes. Thus this price effect may harm the very people whom a minimum wage is supposed to help.”

       Also, it is unfortunately true that the amount of money people are being paid to accomplish a job does not increase the usefulness of that job. Just because it costs you more to produce something doesn't mean that thing you are producing is worth any more than it was previously. Susan Rhea, and journalist for the Huffington Post writes in an article that “[T]he middle-lower class, barely gets by because discount stores like Walmart have taken over the mass retail market. If Walmart were to start paying employees … a living wage, and [gives] health care to all employees, their prices would go up.” 

       Increasing payment for a job that paid out just as much as it did previously raises prices and dilutes the value of the dollar. 

       One of the major arguments for raising the minimum wage right now is that the rich are earning far too much compared to the poor. Unfortunately however, raising the minimum wage can actually hurt the lower classes without damaging the upper classes nearly as much.  

      The last point that I want to make is that a nation-wide wage increase actually helps to create a wedge that creates an economic divide between classes. When layoffs from a forced wage increase occur, they occur for those working at minimum wage positions, not those earning a large salary. Typically, people working at these lower wage positions are working there because they are either A) new to that job, or B) working a job that is not entirely vital to the life of the company. So, when cuts occur, they are going to occur at the minimum wage positions. 

      On top of that, increased prices, while not fun for the wealthy, are not nearly as damaging for the upper class as they are for the lower classes. The wealthy already have enough money to spare so if everything rises in price they won't be happy, but they'll ultimately be fine. The lower classes, and those on fixed incomes however, are often already strapped for funds and barely get by at the current wage levels. If prices increase they will be hurt significantly. 

      The market, as I said, is governed by the laws of supply and demand, and the upper class simply as a higher demand than the lower classes. They have a higher cost threshold and are able to more easily adjust to price increases. David Neuremark, a University of California Irvine professor argues, according to journalist Damien Paletta from the Wall Street Journal, that "A lot of the benefits of minimum wage leak out to families way above the poverty line." 

       I want to apologize if I have ruined your dreams for a higher national minimum wage, but hopefully you now see that it would not actually be beneficial for all of us to be making as much as we might like. Ultimately, raising wages across the board would result in unemployment for the young and unskilled, higher market prices for us to deal with, and an even greater economic divide between two already bitterly separated classes.  According to a survey of my class, 40% of them believed that raising the minimum wage would have an overall beneficial effect on the economy, but hopefully you now realize that this is not necessarily the case. 

       So, the question then is: How do we keep these problems from arising? The minimum wage should be a state issue and so it is to our state leaders that would should turn to to deal with this topic. Contact your governor, you senators, and your state representatives  and let them know that the young people of America do not approve of our jobs being lost, our prices being raised, or our economy being split. Tell them to vote against and bills supporting a minimum wage increase and fight sending our economy back into a downward spiral. 

      Thank you.  

The Love, Relationships, and Controvery Series Part II: The Brotherhood

In part III I will get to non romantic relationships between men and women, but in this portion of my series I am going to talk about male friendships. If I wanted to cover all of the bases, I would write a post about female friendships, but since I am not a female I feel like that would be rather presumptuous. Instead, I am going to be doing all of my writing from a male standpoint, and this post is going to be dedicated to looking at love and friendships between men and how our society has destroyed and contorted their image.

I am most certainly a "straight" guy, but I will not hesitate for a minute to admit that I dearly love my close male friends. Doppelganger Otter, The Near Sighted One, Captain Corgi, and Colonel Raymond in particular are some of my closest and most reliable allies. I trust them, I can depend on them, I care about them and their well being, and I often turn to them for advice and support. The Doppelganger Otter is named thus because we joke that we personalities split from the same person. These men, along with many others I am proud to call my friends, are people I would die for and who I know I could count on to stand up for me if I needed them to. I know that they would do so for me because we love each other.

Our society hasn't completely disregarded the idea that two men can be close without being homosexual, but people still seem far too hasty in classifying two men as being gay simply because they are close. I may be wrong here, but it certainly seems like close, emotionally intimate friendships between women are regarded as perfectly normal while friendships of a similar kinds between guys are often viewed with skepticism or stereotyping. If you actually look at the kinds of conversations I have with the guys I mentioned above (especially The Near Sighted One), girls and our relationships with them is probably our number one topic of discussion.

Even though it is typically true that men are significantly less touchy feely than the average woman, we still do have feelings, thoughts, and opinions and about emotional subjects, and it is helpful to talk about those things with other guys a lot of the time. Guys are typically looked down upon for now being manly, however, if they open up and share their feelings at all, and if they go to another guy for more personal/emotional conversations then the chances seem pretty high that the community at large is going to make assumptions about them that are not necessarily true at all.

 Unfortunately, I see the fear of being labeled as being gay serving as an obstacle that prevents guys from comfortably establishing close friendships with their male companions. Guys that are not homosexual seem to feel the need to prove their masculinity by being aggressive, competitive, and dominating. Friendships between men under that kind of a scenario are not likely to be anything beyond shallow acquaintances, and if men can't learn how to open up and interact with each other then learning how to do so with women is just going to be all the more challenging.

The modern view of masculinity turns men into solitary, unfeeling robots of pent up emotion. Men are typically viewed as insensitive, oblivious, and inconsiderate, but how can you expect them to ever learn how to treat other people decently if they are unable to open up to their male peers for fear of being labeled as something they are not?

Strong, open, and loving friendships allow us to think beyond ourselves and develop more care and compassion for other people, and that can most certainly start between individuals of the same gender, especially during the early teenage years when our personalities are undergoing massive development and we're typically terrified of anyone in the opposite sex. Strong male friendships can actually train guys to be more sensitive and considerate of women simply because they teach us how to think about other people, their thoughts, their feelings, and their opinions.

On top of that, it typically isn't particularly easy for a guy to go to a girl when he's messed up something or made a mistake and needs consolation. It certainly impossible or unheard of, but in my experience, it feels pretty humiliating to have your female friends know about your errors a lot more than it does to 'fess up to another guy. If a guy doesn't have a close friend he can vent with and work through things with, he is going to pent it all up inside and it is going to eat away at him.

Really, young men need other young men as close friends, because it actually makes them stronger, better people and doesn't at all deteriorate their masculinity. Doppelganger Otter, Near Sighted One, Captain Corgi, Colonel Raymond and my other masculine friends help me to a better man, and do a lot to help teach me how to be a better man for my female friends as well. As cheesy as it sounds, we do belong to a brotherhood of guys that can trust, depend, and build on each other. It is a brotherhood founded on love, respect, compassion, and personal knowledge of each other.

I have never been in the military, but it certainly seems like men who have been understand this whole concept a lot better than the rest of our society. Removed from their homes, their family, and their loved ones, men in the military must depend on each other, their brothers in arms, not only for combat support but for all of their emotional and mental support as well. I've watched  a few documentaries about submarine crews, and those men develop a firm love and trust among each other based on the fact that without each other they'd go insane.

We may not be trapped in a metal capsule under the ocean, but if we, as men, are not able to open ourselves up our brothers and hide from the friendships and companionship we desperately need, we are isolating ourselves in our own internal, emotionless capsules, we will drive ourselves mad. We become the same insensitive, inconsiderate, and often violent men that seem to dominate so much of the male population in my generation.

I love my male friends, and I'm not afraid or ashamed to admit it. When my future wife and I get married, I will have no lack of potential groomsmen to choose from.

The Love, Relationships, and Controvery Series Part I: Languages of Love

I see a lot of blog posts about relationships and love float around the walls of my Facebook friends and get shared about, and they are usually pretty good. I also find that they are typically fairly short(ish) and sweet. They get to the point and are fairly organized/direct in their approach. Unfortunately, I  don't know how to write that way. If you have read any of my other blog posts you probably know this already, but I tend to take a pretty rambling, roundabout approach before I actually  make the point that I want to.

Something else, however, that I've noticed about most of the relationship blog posts that get shared among my friends is that they all focus on marriage and "romantic" relationships. Discussing Dating/Courtship, pointing out the importance of selflessness in marriage, and debunking the idea of souldmates are all perfectly valid topics for discussion, and far be it from me to pick on either the writers of those posts or the people that eagerly re-post them.

What I think is missing from these posts full of Relationship Advice and Insight (often written by young couples a year or two into their marriages or the parents of young married couples) is that they never explore or address the fact that there are a lot of very significant relationships that exist outside of the realm of marriage. It makes sense that you would dedicate a single post to a single concept, but I feel like there needs to be some discussion over how love and relationships exist outside of the context of the whole marriage/dating/courtship realm. As a result, the first three out of four posts in this series are going to be dedicated to talking about our relationships with family and friends, and you'll have to wait until the end of the month to see my thoughts and opinions about the "Dating Game" and soulmates.

In this first installment of the series I want to take a look primarily at how we interact with other people, express our love and feelings, and develop relationships with everyone around us (including the people we may not like or know that much). This post is more of an exploratory one than one aimed at making a particular point, and I am happy to hear the input and thoughts of y'all in the comments.

If you think about it, we are actually participating in some kind of a relationship with everyone we know and come into contact with. We have a relationship with our parents, our siblings, our children, our friends, our coworkers, our employers, our classmates, our professors, our arch enemies, and so on and so forth. Relationships are not confined to a romantic setting; they're not even confined to amiable ones. However, even if our relationships with other people aren't the kind that fill our stomachs with butterflies and our heads with infatuation, we still express our feelings toward each other through some form or another of the five love languages.

There is a website titled "The 5 Love Languages" (http://www.5lovelanguages.com/) that, oddly enough, talks about five different means through which we communicate our love and feelings between ourselves and our acquaintances.Typically people have one or two Love Languages that they are more sensitive to, meaning they express and receive more potent emotion through those one or two languages than through the other three. On the website there is a test you can take that will supposedly inform you what your distribution between the five languages is.

The five languages, according to the website, are A) Words of Affirmation B) Acts of Service C) Receiving/Giving Gifts D) Quality Times  and E) Physical Touch.

If you primarily express/receive emotion through Words of Affirmation, then you are pretty sensitive to what other people say, and you put a lot of weight and significance on the value of your owns words. You probably don't make a lot of flippant comments, and you don't take comments from other people very flippantly. If someone compliments you it means a lot, but if someone makes  a jibe at you, it is going to really hurt.  The long name for this language may be Words of Affirmation but I think you can pretty easily simplify it down to just Words.

However, if your primary love language is Acts of Service , then you put more weight in walking the walk instead of talking the talk. You hold the door open for people you respect and care about, you help them with the groceries, you run their errands, you drop everything to go out and pick them up after their car breaks down, and it means a lot to you when others do the same for you. Acts of Service, or just Acts, is the process of actually doing something for someone else. The thought is nice, but the actual action of performing a helpful act for someone is all the more meaningful.

The interesting thing about both Words and Acts is that regardless of your primary love language, we should really treat everyone around use respectfully through these two particular love languages. We should be willing to be courteous and respectful through our words and actions toward our closest friends, complete strangers, and everyone in between. Words & Acts can be used in more personal and intimate ways, but they are the love languages that I think are most applicable to all relationships we have with anyone.

The third languages, simplified down to Gifts is more personal than Words & Acts. If you primarily show love and affection towards others through the giving of gifts, chances are you become pretty popular around Christmas and Birthdays. Having Gifts as your primary method of showing affection means simply that you like to give people things, and it probably also means that you like to receive things from others as well. Presents and gifts are going to be rather precious and meaningful to you. One of the differences between Gifts  and Words & Acts is that giving gifts to people is a much more personal way of showing kindness and love. Unlike Words & Acts, we typically do not go around giving anyone and everyone we meet presents. Usually, presents are reserved only for our friends and family, even if Gifts is not one of our primary modes of amiable communication, and honestly, most strangers would find it pretty weird if we went around handing them gifts.

Even more personal than gift giving however, are the last two love languages, and the two that I think are most directly correlated and connected to our most personal and intimate relationships.

Communicating through Quality Time means communicating beyond small talk and idle chit chat. It can mean sharing a deep conversation about complicated or difficult topics, or it can mean going off on some kind of adventure together (think hunting or camping),but it essentially means that you are developing your relationship through means that go beyond that of a simple acquaintance. It means getting to know each others thoughts, feelings, personalities, personal quirks and hobbies, by doing things together or talking about things that open you up to a deeper, more meaningful friendship.

Quality Time takes both Words of Affirmation and Acts of Service and goes another several steps further.

Lastly, you have Physical Touch, which I believe is the single most personal and intimate of all the love languages (feel free to disagree with me on this). There really aren't many ways to break down Touch, because it is really quite straightforward. It covers hugs, hand holding, arms across the shoulders, pats on the back, kisses, and every other physical interaction that you can think of. It is not a love languages strictly limited to romantic relationships, but is the love language most often associated with them, and I think that is because it is such an intimate one. Actually physically touching someone is a pretty significant act most of the time, and conveys a lot of meaning.

If you think about it, neglect and verbal abuse are both terrible things, but is physical abuse that is most likely to get someone sent to jail. Especially to those of whose most prominent love languages is physical touch, physically abusing a person ranks as one of the most terrible things you can possibly do. Even when you shake hands with someone, that often goes beyond a typical greeting where you merely share a "hello" or "nice to meet you." The people you stop to actually shake hands with are the people with whom you have a slightly more substantial relationship.

So, while it is almost certainly true that everyone has their own primary love language, and that we will all express our feelings and emotions differently on a case by case basis, but I think that you can apply a fairly general overview of the five languages to the development of relationships in general.

In the most basic level of relationships that we have, we interact primarily through Words & Acts. We treat new acquaintances and strangers  that we like, or at least have no reason to dislike, with courteous words and friendly acts of service. If we think they do well or have succeed at something we compliment them, and may be willing to lend a helping hand. If, however, we disagree with someone,  and don't know them well, we tend to fall back on verbal arguments and we will be less inclined to provide any kind of serviceable act for them. At their worst, hostile strangers are reduced to wild mockery and petty insults (coughYouTubecoughcommentscough). In all relationships at all stages, we use words and acts of service to express our emotions toward someone, but in the case of undeveloped relationships, that is usually where our communication ends.

As relationships progress, however, I think that the other love languages come into play a lot more. The more we get to know and like someone, the more inclined we will to spend quality time with them, to give them gifts, and the less awkward physical interaction with them becomes. In order to really develop a relationship and help it grow though, I think you actually have to spend some quality time together, because relationships of any kind can only grow as a result of two people getting to one another better. Quality time ends up being a cycle where you start getting to know someone better, and if you like them, you start spending more quality time with them and if you like them even more after that, you spend more quality time with them and so on and so forth. If, however, you spend quality time with them and you develop an aversion to them as a result of getting to know them better, you start to avoid spending any further quality time around them.

In many ways, I think that Quality Time serves as the gap between the kinds of relationships that communicate primarily through Words of Affirmation and Acts of Service and those that make more use of Gift Giving and Physical Touch. Once you have spent enough quality time with someone and have gotten to know them well enough, you are more inclined to express your affection and friendliness toward them through the giving of gifts, through physical touch, and through additional quality time.

The one point that I definitely want to draw from all of this though, and the one that is going to come into play a lot more in the next two installments in this series, is that none of the love languages are limited to romantic interactions. It is perfectly possible to express your love and affection for someone through any one of the five without having a relationship with that someone of a romantic boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse relationship.

All five means of affection communication stem naturally from the development of friendships built upon quality time spent together.

I feel like that is a pretty abrupt place to end a post, and I'm not really satisfied with how this one turned out, but I don't want to start spilling over into the subject matter of my next post. Just think of this one as laying the groundwork for the next three, and as an exploratory piece where you have the chance to share your input on the development of friendships and ways of expression love and affection before I start getting highly opinionated.

Stay tuned for the following installment "Part II: The Brotherhood" coming next week in which I will look at the development of loving male comradery/brotherhood and how it has been distorted by modern world culture.

Pax

Introducing the November Love, Relationships, and Controversy Series

Because I like to think and write about impossibly big issues and ideas, I have been wanting to write a blog post on Love and Relationships since I started this blog, but every time I sat down to try and write something I became overwhelmed with the massiveness of the issues, the number of points to be addressed, and controversy I could stir up. In order to try and bypass those first two obstacles I decided that I would make the project a month long one. Instead of trying to cram all of my thoughts on Love, Relationships, Marriage, Dating, etc. etc. into a single post, I decided to divide the topic up into a series of posts over the course of November with each post dedicated to focusing on a different topic within the realm of Love and Relationships.

As for the controversy part, this is a blog titled "The Opinion Section" after all.

Seriously though, I am pretty sure that what I'm going to say in these posts is not going to sound entirely agreeable to all of you. In fact, I'm pretty sure I am going to say some things that have a high likelihood of being highly objectionable to you. Many of the people I know read my blog (Hi Grandma) will, I hope, actually be in agreement with me on most, if not all, of this, but there are a lot of people I can see getting rather upset with me and my opinions on this particular topic. Because of that, I wanted to make a few points in this here introductory post.

1) I Am Not Specifically Attacking Anyone: I may be highly opinionated and firmly set in what I believe, but that doesn't mean I am trying to attack everyone who holds a different view point. I truly believe that there is a very real difference between right and wrong and in a very real distinction between right and wrong, and I will defend and forward what I believe to be right and true, but that doesn't mean that I am setting out to bash, insult, mock, ridicule, or belittle anyone that stands by what I believe to be wrong or untrue. I disagree with you, that is true, but my goal is to express the truth and uphold what I believe is good, not to attack anyone.

And that leads me to my next point...

2) Just Because I Don't Agree With You Doesn't Mean I Hate You: Being the opinionated person that I am, there is a very good chance that we are going to disagree about something. Even my closest friends do not agree with me 100% about everything. A dispute or disagreement between us does not necessarily mean that I hate you and your guts. Again, I will defend what I believe is right and true, but just because you do not believe what I believe does not mean I want your head upon a stake. As another human being (and likely a friend if you are reading this), I respect you and your stance on any given topic even if I think it is wrong. Depending on the significance of the issue, I may try to persuade you otherwise, and I will never condone that that goes against my beliefs, but I don't hate you.

About my beliefs and opinions...

3) The Bible Is God's Word: I'm not going to even say "I Believe..." for this point, because the truth of the matter is that my personal belief doesn't have anything to do with it. The Bible is the infallible Word of God, and the teaching of the actually confessional and liturgical Lutheran Church are the foundation for night everything I believe in and hold to be true. You aren't going to persuade me to believe something else through Blog comments, and those beliefs are going to come out in this series of posts and pretty much every other post I write (if you haven't noticed already). If you have an issue with the Lutheran Confessions, or Christianity in general, than I am very sorry and I will respect that, but you aren't going to agree with me and it is going to be fruitless to try and refute my arguments by attacking my faith. I will entertain the possibility that my personal opinions about Love and Relationships are invalid or flawed, but attacking my underlying beliefs and faith isn't going to get you anywhere.

I write on this blog for a few specific reasons. A) It helps me to think about things and obtain a better grasp on what it is I really think and believe about complicated issues, B) Some of my friends/family asked that I have a blog, C) Some of my friends/family seem to enjoy reading what I write for some reason, and D) Because I believe that real good can come from us making our stances and beliefs known. I do not write here because I believe I am going to change the world, because I have a vendetta against anyone, or because "haters gonna hate."

I may be Mr. Opinionated, but I'm not a jerk.

Anyway, back to the November Love, Relationships, and Controversy Series... At this point I am thinking that there will be four installments with one post coming each week and the first one completed and posted by Friday.

Pax