Relationships: Today vs The Past
By Kirsten Holmes and Patience McCoy
Relationships. Today we see a drought in long lasting relationships. Now we ask ourselves are relationships today truly relationships and do they last? In the past divorce was unacceptable but in today’s world it has become so normal and accepted. Why has it become acceptable and why wasn’t it before?
Past generations have had stronger and long lasting relationships.To explain further, in the past relationships were made from the roots of the ancient courtships, the medieval chivalry, and the victorian formality. On the site genealogy.about.com you can find out more about these past traditions that have made stronger and long lasting relationships stated in the writing ‘Romance through the ages’. Ancient courtships had many different factors involved when it came to marriage and relationships for example family’s arranged marriages between their children for the benefit of the family, also when a woman was married off it was more like a business transaction because they were considered property rather than a human being. Tribes used to make a peace transaction by marrying off the chief’s daughters to another chief’s sons for the greater good of the tribes. Medieval chivalry was when men were taught to open doors, give a woman their jacket to stay warm, pull out chairs, carry them over puddles, and have a gentleman’s manners. Still in this time more often than not there were arranged marriages for money also known as dowries rather than marrying for love. Finally victorian formality was a time when people began marrying for love, men would court a woman, the courting was done in the women’s home with their parents present, as well as men and women always need a chaperone to speak with each other or to go on dates with one another, and proposals were written instead of done in person and when proposed to by the man a women would write back her answer. Now that you understand the three different styles of relationship that were created in the past relationships you can see how family was everything and how men and women needed one another to survive. In these times the men were the head of the household and the women took care of the house, cooking, cleaning and the children while the men were away working to provide for their family. Family’s believed strongly in family traditions,religions beliefs,the upkeep of the household and the structure of the family. These values that they learned from their childhood reinforced the need to keep a family together . If women went against the tradition of keeping a family together they were exiled from their family but men were treated differently in that kind of situation. In the past divorce was unacceptable but as more and more people started to get divorced it became something that had to be accepted by society.
Today relationships are more based on a physical attraction rather than personality. These days relationships are you + me = lust not love. The site Psychology Today has an article called ‘Lust vs Love: Do You Know the Difference?’ and in this article it states, “Pure lust is based solely on physical attraction and fantasy — it often dissipates when the “real person” surfaces…. However, real love, not based on idealization or projection, requires time to get to know each other.” This is a great explanation on how modern or today’s relationship are made from more lust than love then in the past. Society today tends to not take relationships seriously which leads to a broken household and an unbalanced marriage. The 21st century of adults have an entitled attitude which creates a selfish outlook toward relationships and makes it so that people care only about their needs in the relationship and not also about the other person’s needs in the relationship. This is a contributor to how people chose to stay distant in relationships because they don’t want to get hurt but if one never takes a risk one will never know what one missed out on. Women have low self esteem because society tells them they must look a certain way and act a certain way in order to be loved by men and because of this women let men treat them however they want with the outlook that it’s ok to treat them this way cause their not good enough for society. Men rely on their fathers to teach them how to treat women but because more and more fathers have become absent in their sons lives they have not been taught how they should treat women with love and respect but instead they think it’s ok to disrespect women and treat them however they want.This plays a huge role in why today’s relationships do not work out. Men weren’t taught the right way to treat women in their youth but instead they learned from the media that it’s ok to treat women without any respect toward women. That led to women allowing themselves to be put into a position to be disrespected and be content with it. Due to the points previously stated the divorce rate has risen drastically. Creating an acknowledgment that divorce has become a typical, everyday situation unlike in the past.
In Conclusion relationships in the past and relationships today have many similarities but also many differences. Over time the culture of relationships have changed from a respecting, loving and long lasting relationship into a short lived physical lust for one another. Family values back then were a strong foundation for a relationship and the upkeep of a household vs today’s relationships are based on a sexual lust and attraction to one another. As a result of the media uprise men and women have lost the acceptance of themselves today and feel they must be live up to society’s expectations unlike in the past when people had a monogamous relationship which gave them self respect as well as the ability to respect each other. As a consequence of not taking relationships more seriously in our civilization we have more broken households, toxic relationships, weak self esteem and a loss of respect towards those involved in the relationship and with that this is the result of the compliancy to divorce. Its our job to decrease the divorce rate and bring back loving, faithful, and meaningful relationships by honoring the relationship itself it can create a renewed base for healthy relationships.
