Sexual Intimacy and Family Love

We spoke in class about sexual intimacy and family love. We learned about the four stages to the human sexual response system. It entails first excitement, second plateau third orgasmic, and forth the resolution. Men and women both can experience all of the stages except for the forth stage. The forth stage only applies to men.

We also shared opinions about contraception and abortion. Students for the most part shared the same views and beliefs on abortion. They did not agree with it. Contraception, and when to have children was a topic that had many different attitudes and beliefs.

Relationships and marriage transitions.

We learned about four types  of ways that couples or people react to a diminished relationship. The first type is called Exit. This is where the relationship is reverting backwards, or regressing to the start. An example of this is when a relationship is going to fast and the couple decides that they need to slow down . This type is destructive and active.

The second type is Voice. This when a partner in the relationships addresses the issue and talks about it head on. They are trying to change somethings. This is both constructive and active.

The third type is loyalty. One of the partners or both is enduring the strained relationship because of the time put into the relationship or because staying the relationship has more benefits. This is constructive and passive.

The fourth type is neglect. One or both are not being honest about the severity of the issue and try to act as though it is not happening. They suddenly become busier and avoid their partner. This is destructive and passive.

The last thing we talked about is adjusting to marriage. Three main things talked about were power and control, distribution and labor(work, house work) and the last was allocation of resources(time and money). Who is in charge of finances. Figuring out the spending of joining two people together.

Preparing For Marriage

I forgot about this until 9 pm on a Sunday night. I hope that's okay!

We learned about the law of attraction.  There are four things that ... in the law of attraction. The first is physical attraction.  We learned about the two theories social and biological.  the Second component to the law of attraction is proximity, which is explained as the closer you live to somebody the higher percentage of starting a relationship.  The third component is familiarities. There were two examples given the first is usually you are drawn to somebody by recognizing them from somewhere. The second is is based being introduced or set up by a close friend or acquaintance that knows of someone. The last one is similarities.  You are drawn to somebody by how you can connect to the similarities you share with each other.

We learned that self disclosure is an important part of building intimacy. Four things associated with self disclosure are one sharing of emotions, two sharing of needs, three sharing thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and fantacies, and four is sharing of self awareness.

Three leves of communication include one superficial( group of people not super familiar), two personal(friendship), and three intimate (intimate relationship)

Conversation about same-sex attraction.  It really helped me to gain a different perspective on the reasons that can occur. Before I think I kind of did not understand a lot about it and was quick to judge. We heard some personal stories of kids in our class had brothers or sisters who had this problem.  I learned to look at people and not judge or say why they are gay or lesbian.  It also helped me to gain a perspective of those in our church who deal with this.  Many of them do not want to live the lifestyle, which presents many problems for them.

We also learned about the factors that play a role in your sexual orientation.  There is too many to say that one thing causes us to go different ways. Things like: family, environment, natural born attributes, confusion, bullying and labeling, and many other things.  We learned about a thing called neurotic to exotic, meaning, that a person may have natural born attributes that are like the other sex.  These are not a bad thing but in fact can be a good thing; however, others look at them and label them as homosexual and so the person starts to believe it and act on it.

Next time somebody is being teased about how they act, think about what  you are doing.