Question One

To me a family is two or more people who live together, and at best have love and trust for each other. Some families don't have support and love for each other, but they may still appear to be a family by the basic definition. I don't believe that families have to have certain members or maternal and paternal roles such as a mother, father, or child to be considered a family. I also don't believe that they have to be in a heterosexual relationship to be a family. If someone told me that they lived with their grandmother and had no other siblings I would still consider the two of them to be a family. Family members give and take from each other in many different ways. At times they may provide emotional support, financial support, and at worst they hurt each other physically and mentally with words and violence. Even though my mother never hit us growing up, the siblings in our family did hit each other from time to time, and we would never do that now that we are grown up. No family is perfect, and some may seem to be stronger and more loving than others, but they all have their flaws in one way or another. All of the relationships in the chapter fit my definition of family except for devitalized marriage and conflict-habituated marriage because those are just like living together as roommates, or as two people who dislike one another living under the same roof. I wouldn't consider roommates who don't care for each other to be a family, and once a person feels apathy toward their relationship, they are no longer emotionally active in that relationship. So in those cases, the family part of the equation seems to be missing.

Question 1

This question had me thinking a great deal about the hypocrisy that lies in the fact that we get so shocked by online deception, but forget that the Jerry Springer style drama does exist to a certain degree in face-to-face relationships. People have secret affairs, and some even tell people they "love" them just to get physical and/or financial benefits. Yes, some people lie online because they find it easy to do so, but people have been deceiving in face-to-face interactions and relationships long before the Internet made online deception possible. The difference lies in the fact that there are some types of deception that a person can't pull off as easily in face-to-face contact as they can in online interaction. Sex and physical appearance are both something we can identify easier in face-to-face contact for obvious reasons. Character, convictions, mental issues, etc. are all things that we can lie about in both face-to-face or online interaction. Ethically, it can be argued that it is wrong to deceive someone in any fashion, but I don't think that online deception is any worse than face-to-face deception. If anything people should be less shocked by online deception because people are hidden behind their computers and may feel more comfortable deceiving someone. There was a study done recently that showed an increase of rude behavior by those who were wearing sunglasses as opposed to not, so I don't see it as any surprise that a person behind a computer may feel more comfortable lying about themselves.

Environmental Spoiling

I found the concept of "environmental spoiling" which Wood (2010) describes as "situations in which proximity breeds ill will" to be an interesting part of the chapter. Although this concept was not a large part of the chapter, I was able to identify with it because I have experienced this with people. We have all been in proximity with people who we are not attracted to or dislike, and sometimes people never seem to "grow on us" as others say they might. My mother used to tell me that I would eventually like my sisters boyfriend once I realized that he meant well even in situations when I thought he was just being plain rude to people. Well I was never able to find any personality excuses for his rudeness, and up until the day that they broke up he had never grown on me. I found it really awkward to be in close proximity to him which created environmental spoiling in my life. The more I was around him, the more ill will I felt. When my sister broke up with him she said her main loss of attraction was his arrogance and rudeness to others. She said that he was constantly trying to prove himself as right in any argument with someone and that he never listened to other peoples point of view.

Question 2

I have been in a relationship where there was an absence of love, but there was a commitment. Wood (2010) describes commitment as "the intention to remain involved with a relationship". The commitment in my past relationship lied in the fact that we were committed to dating only each other, and we continued to meet and hang out when we said we would. Our relationship also reached an intimate level based on our physical attraction to each other, but I never felt an emotional connection. I am now able to put a name to the type of love that I thought would eventually grow out of this relationship and that is "storge", which is one of the primary styles of love that compatibility can lead to for people. However, this love never happened and is probably why we were able to end the relationship and also the reason I never felt sadness or regret over the break up. I can conclude that commitment doesn't always lead to love, and that love can be present for some people even when the other person may not be committed to the one who actually feels love. Some people may be committed to a relationship and not have felt love yet, and others may only be committed because they feel that they love the person they are with, and they find this love leads to a desire to stay committed.

Question 1

The main areas in the Advice Forum are Friendship Advice with the subcategories of Problems, Making and Keeping Friends, Friend needing support, and and discussion ideas. There is also a More than Friends advice section that includes the areas of More than Friends? which offers Sexuality advice and Relationship advice. I think that these areas reflect the challenges to friendships well. There seems to be a common knowledge that is shown in the chapter and in the advice forum that friendship can encounter problems just as romantic relationships or any relationship with another person. Sometimes friendships are looking to cross over into a romantic relationships which can also cause problems. Challenges to friendship such as distance as a physical barrier that can cause problems for those who can't make the time to talk on the phone, email, etc. Friendships that might have been strong while two people lived in the same area code, may become weak when one person moves away due to the challenge of staying connected. In the advice forum many people are disclosing their experiences with these challenges, and there is a particular focus on those who have romantic feelings for their friend. One interesting part about this that I noticed is that it seems that some romantic feelings that evolved out of friendship seem to have even stronger emotional connections to the person because of the level of intimacy they have with that person. Examples are knowing someones deepest darkest secrets from the trust and acceptance that we have in our friendship with them. I was sad to see  thread titles such as the one "I have no friends". That might be something the person felt comfortable disclosing on a web page, but it might be harder to do so in real life. We don't usually walk up to people in a coffee shop or at work and say "Hello, I'm Jane and I have no friends. Would you like to be my friend?". Many people on the site are also looking for a pen pal which shows that they are challenging the idea that you have to live close to maintain a friendship with someone.

An Interesting Concept

I found the concept of socioeconomic class and friendship to be an interesting part of the chapter. When I applied this to my personal life I realized that the friendships that I relate to the most are with those that are of the same class as me. This makes sense because we are usually able to directly relate to the others experience. An example of this is a friend of mine who is as broke as I am these days. When we talk we don't judge each other based on our wealth status, but she once disclosed to me that one of her coworkers who is well off financially asked her out of the blue if she was "One of those people who likes being poor?". I thought this was a really rude question, but it goes to show that some people do judge others by their financial status. Whether or not this should be of importance in a friendship, I was able to make a connection based on what we read about how these factors do exist. Social categories such as class, gender and race do have a role in friendships and relationships with others. In my personal experience the people I know tend to form more friendships with the same gender (I am aware that many people form cross-sex friendships). And there are those that form stronger connections when they are able to relate directly with another person based on culture, class or race.

Question 2

My relationship with my best friend Elizabeth who I call "Beast" immediately came to mind for answering this question. In Wood (2010) we read that investments are "what we put into relationships....and investments cannot be recovered." With this friendship also comes a solid commitment, trust and acceptance, and closeness of which all make up the dimensions of our friendship. The commitment lies in the fact that we talk to each other at least once a day even though we live in different cites. These investments we have made into our friendship have lead to a trust that we are both investing equally so we don't have a fear that we will ever lose these investments. Having such a fear would only cause stress for the friendship because our trust would be questioned each time we did something nice for the other. We trust each other which creates the "psychological safeness" that is described in the book. We share a closeness in dialogue by our desire to chat with each other about everything that is going on in our lives. I place a lot of value on being able to talk to her each day about my life, and I usually feel much healthier mentally on the days where we can talk longer. The acceptance is crucial in our friendship because we do expect one another to accept each other as a whole rather than just particular parts of ourselves. Some friendships are based on only partial acceptance because of the fear of self-disclosure that relationships without trust suffer from. If I were to tell Elizabeth about something I see as a flaw of myself, she would accept me just the same, and she usually finds comforting words to make me feel better. All of these aspects of our friendship are what make it able to survive and grow through the years.