In my sociology class we have been learning a lot about social structure and how in some cultures India for example its custom for someone to marry and work always inside their caste and in America yes there is a choice to love whomever you want  but is it an invisible law in the states where although there is social mobility is there as much as perceived or is that countries who marry within their social class come out with the better relationships between couples.

In the here book The power of the past: Understanding Cross Class Marriages she delves into how the different classes are raised and leading into adulthood but also how those differences can clash within their relationship.
"Madison didn’t have an easy childhood. As a kid, her house was always in disrepair. Her parents couldn’t consistently afford electricity or indoor plumbing, never mind fancy appliances and wall hangings. Madison’s classmates made fun of her shabby surroundings. Some refused to play with her. Even after graduating from college, marrying and settling into a middle-class life, Madison couldn’t shake her insecurity about her home. She read design magazines and blogs obsessively, poring over the latest trends in closet organization and wall colors. She redecorated frequently and was rarely confident in her choices. When she redid her kitchen, she considered more than 200 faucets.Her husband, Evan, hated how much Madison (their names, like all names in this piece, have been changed as a condition for my interviews) spent on furniture and gadgets they didn’t need. He couldn’t understand her fixation. Why would he? Evan grew up with middle-class parents, in the kind of house Madison was so desperate to re-create."
This piece in Streibs book showed a struggle that I didn't consider in s relationship. I have obviously never been seriously involved with someone and to be honest, I don't know how I would be in a relationship with a serious difference in social class. I have always been with guys who were the same as me, middle class, though I wonder if I had been with someone who was of a higher social class how that would have made me feel. Just recently I was at a camp and my friend Khadem who lives in Lake Oswego which is a stereotypical rich area of Oregon I assume at least in my community of friends for how rich they are. Through this entire camp I was making fun of him all out of love. I called him Richie Rich, and made comments about the mansion he lives in and the butler who is always there for him to light a match because he's too afraid. With this kind of comments in mind if I had been saying them out of envy and not love then how would it feel in a relationship? From reading Streibs work it seems that marrying inside your class is best in not causing conflict but honestly, love is its own thing anyways and just because you marry inside of your class doesn't mean it will be better so why not just go for it!

Language of Love

 On Mothers Day my cousin Mojir showed me this  TED talk of Poet Ali a motivational speaker whose focus is on the human spirit. Talking about language and how it brings people together but also divides. Poet who is fluent in three languages does exercises with the audience and also talks about the universal language of love as well as others including being a minority, laughter, pain.

       As I delve deeper into love being universal I found a quote by American born poet Aberjhani that reflects something important for the individual community but also the world wide community, that being earth “Individual cultures and ideologies have their appropriate uses but none of them erase or replace the universal experiences, like love and weeping and laughter,  common to all human beings.” Where there is also something humbling about being able to connect with anyone on this topic that they have seen in family, relationships, religion, objects, hobbies, passions. A relationship counselor named Gary Chapman wrote a book about how love itself has five languages that of words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time and physical touch.  In his book Chapman says that everyone has a primary and secondary love language. The language does;t usually change but develops over time. I was definitely considering not putting his work in my blog post about the language of love because its his own ideas with a lack of science behind them. Watching a segment on John Olivers program a bit about science and how there is such a large amount of false information that is taken as fact to the lack of replication studies around them because there is "no reward for fact checking". Essentially these 5 Languages of Love by Gary Chapman may very well be complete bull#$it but no one has done any type of study to see if they make any sense either....so heed with caution. To me receiving gifts is not important  at all but that may be that that's because receiving gifts is not my primary or secondary love language. The most important to me of these 5 is words of affirmation that feeling appreciated is something I crave so much and something that I have never really received from my parents,  is a huge part in finding someone to be with. 

To watch the Ted Talk of Poet Ali 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=488ZBeaGo6s

Chapman, Gary. "Understanding the Five Love Languages." Focus on the Family. Gary Chapman, 2012. Web. 14 May 2016.

     

Can strangers fall in love?

     When I ask this question I don't mean like love as soon you see them but this question came to me as I was scrolling through asap science youtube videos and a video came up titled 36 Questions That Make Strangers Fall in Love. Thinking that hey my blog is all about love I watched and to my surprise the questions were quite deep a lot of it that would take a lot of time for a couple to get to that level. Doing research on this video and how these questions came about there were written by psychologist Arthur Aron a professor in New York he is best known for his work on intimacy with the help of his wife Elaine there was little research on the mysteries of what attraction is so they took it upon themselves to find out. “Given that I was studying social psychology, just for fun I looked for the research on love, but there was almost none.” (Aron) In a later blog post, I will surely delve more into Arthur Arons research and how he and Elaine went about studying something so abstract. 

Watching the video the vulnerability of individual rises as the questions are made to get harder and harder as the experiment progresses. While I was watching it I don't know why but I expected it to be bust I didn't know anything about the research when I first saw it so for some reason I assumed that the two strangers at the end would say something along the lines of "This experiment was cool but I don't want to see him again" or "no I don't think we would work out" because it seemed like a relationship is being sped up ten-fold and stuff that would take months to years for a couple to get to were all said in about 45 minutes. After watching it though it's not artificial at all yes it is speeding up the process of vulnerability forcing to know someone on a much deeper level. I've recently become involved with someone and these questions seem like a great way to get to know someone and also take the pressure off talking about them individually.

When I was with my friend Sarvin we were talking about this topic and she said something that I felt was worth adding to this post when I asked her if she thought that strangers could fall in love? 

"sure why because you dont know everyone and everyone is a stranger at the beginning dummy.It could i'm not saying its gonna happen but theres a possibility. and I only like them if there a trapper and their hot."

Here is a link to the video if you'd like to watch it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvne48F0Eqw

Anwar F, Yasmin. "Creating Love in the Lab: The 36 Questions That Spark Intimacy." Berkeley News. N.p., 12 Feb. 2015. Web. 07 May 2016.

Why do I want the fantasy?

Movies obviously pull on human heartstrings a lot of the time and a huge amount of the time it plays out in a sequence of events: Boy meets girl, boy, and girl fight, try to fall in love but all the obstacles or one of them gets an offer of a lifetime usually out of the city okay there's the conflict anyway but somehow almost always they get back together and live what seems to the viewer as a happily ever after. I say almost because I have seen television and movies where it doesn't work out in the end for example Blue Valentine two high school sweetheart whose marriage falls apart or Master of None as Aziz Ansari falls in love and then out of it. Though I've grown up on cliche romantic movies The Notebook so many girls would love to have that makeout scene to happen in the rain and Ryan Gosling comes in to save the day. Have I been conditioned to want something like that? Or is it just my teenage brain that thinks that love is this magical place that two people go too that I have also never seen for myself. Love to me is a fantasy, something that hasn't been tainted by a bad breakup or ex or "reality" if that's even the right word to use in this case or this blog, it's this thing that to me that  seems amazingly beautiful by how I've perceived it movies. So then does that mean that yes I want the fantasy but maybe if I had it I wouldn't like it.

Intro

        Originally my blog topic would have been on death but I thought that was too morbid and sad. After two blogs I probably would have been so depressed about having to write about death I would have stopped altogether. So I picked love instead, which is certainly a more pleasant topic well maybe not if you have had a really bad breakup or something but I don't know that much about love and I've never been it so I thought it would be interesting to explore why humans love? Has it existed since humanity started? Do animals have the same emotional complexity that we do when it comes to love? The obvious love question how do you know you've found the one? The Ancient Greeks divided love into 7 sections storge, eros pragma, philautia philia agape, ludus. philia seems to be the most important aspect out of the 7 meaning deep friendship. I would think that when you're looking for someone to love it has to start with a deep friendship before it could develop into a mutually romantic relationship.