Blog #4

September 23, 2009 maxwae01

My sophomore year of college I took Communications 212, “Interpersonal Relationships.” In the class we had a discussion of men and women relationships, and from this discussion a group of us wrote a paper about it. I just recently reread it, and it was interesting how this class has changed my views in the paper. I am going to share with you a few parts of the paper and my response to the sections now. Myself and few other students wrote the paper “Men and Women Can it Just Be A Friendship?” I have changed the names, other then mine, to secure the identification of the other students.

Written by myself, “Remember when you were little, and the same aged girl next to you and the same aged boy next to you, out on the playground were your friends.  Both of them were equal in how you viewed them as a friend. It did not matter that one was a boy and other was a girl. You may have not had common interest because the girl played with dolls and the boy played with trucks, but still they were just friends to you. Not until a certain age did that begin to change. You started to view that boy friend as a “boy” or that girl friend as a “girl.” You may have become attracted to that opposite sex or you went through a stage when you stopped hanging out with the opposite sex.  I, Alex Maxwell, know that when I was in elementary school there was a shift about how I felt about boys. In about third grade, “boys” became a whole new idea to friends and myself. All of my girl friends and I would stand around watching the boys play sports, deciding which ones we thought were cuter.” I find it very interesting now, that I only thought about the attraction on a heterosexual level.  Not until this class did I really think about, or understand the relationships other then heterosexual.  After the recent chapter and also the chapter about transgender, I now understand that at early age there can be different attractions, and even feelings of being the wrong gender.

Now I would like to share from the paper and class some other topics about men and women relationships that were brought up. I think these are interesting to read and apply to our recent readings in chapter four.  Tyler “The way we view men and woman relationships is simply how we were brought up.   Starting out as a child we have learned a great deal with relationships, their roles, and ways of dealing with them.  This is part of our family script, a key identity script.  Our family script defines our roles and how we play them, or our first known influences (Interpersonal Communication, 2007). “ This idea was also brought up in the women studies book, but I find it interesting that instead of explaining as a whole society, there are scripts that individuals learn to follow, he explains family scripts. Truthfully it does begin in the home, but usually that home is shaped by society.

Jenny writes, “I believe that human beings are commonly sexually attracted to one another but the problem comes when you act on that desire to soon and give the other person the wrong perception of who you are. In some cases the goal is to come off, as a very sexual person and again, I personally don’t have a problem with that. It is that person’s choice to go along with or shy away from.  When it comes down to it the emotional closeness you build with the opposite sex is going to determine if it stays a friendship or romance.” Ironically this also was discussed in Chapter four, the difference between erotic attraction and the true concept of “love.”

The last thing I would like to share with you from the paper was the ending quote I found for the conclusion, “The belief that men and women can’t be friends comes from another era in which women were at home and men were in the workplace, and the only way they could get together was for romance,” explains Linda Sapadin, Ph.D., a psychologist in private practice in Valley Stream, New York. “Now they work together and have sports interests together and socialize together.” (Can men and women just be friends, 2001)  This quote and this class signify times are changing between men and women, and this even affects their romantic relationships, relationships in general. This class really has helped further my understandings from this original paper.

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