Love and desire in the penny press 1830-1870

I'm really glad newspapers are completely different now than they were in the 1800s. I would not have survived in such a vicious literary environment. I was captivated by this presentation because it's still relevant, just to a lesser degree. Newspapers and other forms of news still enforce social standards and norms and play on the emotions of viewers but in a less invasive manner.

The newspaper had a way of altering people’s behavior by publishing embarrassing personal information about peoples’ love lives, true or not. This reinforced social standards in gender roles because those who chose to ignore the standards were the subject of gossip throughout the community.

The fact that divorce and elopement were found in the headlines of newspapers so much more than murder and crime seems a tad past invasive. I can understand that it was against social norms at the time but clearly people were more wrapped up in other peoples’ lives than they had interests in the latest murder story. I feel bad for a generation of people who had nothing better to do than to gossip about who got divorced. I know it’s popular to list engagements and weddings in the newspapers even today but you shouldn’t be required to display your personal trials and tribulations all over the town newspaper for everyone to pick apart.

By publishing about the weddings, newspapers put pressure on women to get married, thus enforcing the social norm. There’s a piece of me that almost wishes that newspapers still made a big deal out of weddings but only for the people who put their information in. because of the marriage rate has been decreasing, I think that reinforcing that tradition is kind of key to enticing people to get married and thus keeping society in position to grow in a healthy way.

I guess the biggest takeaway (to me it was big at least) was that while the whole world has changed since the 1870s, human nature has not changed. We still get divorced, married, and eloped and we still gossip about it. We still fall in love and we still think we’re the only person to who has ever existed who ever felt that way. It’s nice to see that we have progressed socially in a way that, as a woman, makes life better today, but it’s amazing how inhumanely women were treated with respect to abandonment and those unfortunate woman who couldn’t get married.

Ancient Love and Desire: Dr. Freund

I thought it was interesting that childbearing was so important to the continuation of the society that men and women were nearly forced to procreate and felt it was so important that they carried around relicts for good luck that they kept in the back of their minds all day. It would be naïve to ask if love existed in the early history of man. Of course it did. But I think love was less of a concern than survival and that’s very unfortunate. In fact, I think people centuries ago, people couldn’t differentiate between rape and love. Rape seemed to mean love to them and what we would call love is what they would call procreation. People didn’t make children out of love for their partner. It was out of necessity. Rape was sometimes out of love and other times out of necessity. But the way it was talked about during this presentation made me think rape was common and overlooked as normal. 

He talked a lot about symbols and I think that’s important because I don’t think any society has ever existed that didn’t have a meaningful symbol. Symbols must exist as a unifying image specific to a small population or the world and the reason I personally think they must be a part of culture is that it represents something unique about those people that they can stand behind and feel something for and identify with. It must be a symbol and not a person because a symbol never dies, never deceives you and never changes its mind about its meaning. It’s really hard to look back into history and try to uncover the meaning of a symbol when there are no written records and I thought Dr. Freund did an excellent job of deciphering the meanings behind the symbols of ancient Greece and presenting them in a lively, picturesque and thorough way. 

As a side note, Dr. Freund began his presentation with a stone box. I think it’s interesting how the femur has some relation to love and desire through this box. Coincidentally, the Eiffel Tower was also inspired by the femur bone structure. What do our thigh bones have to do with love?

Dating After Divorce

This was the lecture I was most looking forward to this semester because divorce is complicated in itself but when you add in the element of dating after divorce, everything gets sticky and sticky is interesting.

One of the problems with dating mentioned was that people don’t really have much to talk about other than their divorce and their ex considering their life was their ex before now. Forward thinking, I’ve made it a point to never make a partner my life. I understand that it’s easier when you’re younger because you have your future to talk about but when you’re dating after divorce, there’s no reason why you should only have your ex to talk about. If you’re in your 50’s when you start dating again, you have 50 years of experiences to talk about. So you were married for 20 years? What about the other 30? Didn’t you take a crazy trip someplace, break a few bones, win a ton of money gambling? I just have trouble accepting that a person can feel so defined by their past relationship because I feel like that’s a really strong sign that you’re not over it yet. You have to be a separate entity from your significant other, even if you’re still with them. I’d never want to live in the shadow of what I used to be involved with or even what I am still involved with. I define myself, not my significant other.

I thought it was kind of predictable that divorced people marry other divorced people. Why wouldn’t you? It’s easier for a person to understand the hardship of divorce if they’ve already been through it or are going through it themselves. I would imagine that a single, recently divorced mother would have difficulty dating someone who first of all has never been married, let alone divorced. I’m sure a divorce alters your perception of the other gender and how two people are able to live with one another and grow together and share a vision of what life should be like. A single person who has never been married or had children might not have the experience to step in as a new spouse or parent. Especially when it comes to raising kids, it’s like switching horses mid race. 

I think it’s so so sad when people get divorced and then lose all of their friends when everyone chooses sides or backs out completely so not to get involved. That’s the time when you need friends most. I guess that’s why I’d say it’s so important to have friends external of your spouses friends. People to have around whose first alliance is to you, not your spouse, in the event that sides really did need to be chosen. 

There are some really good things about online dating, if you overlook all the negatives. We are risk-averse people by nature. We do everything possible to hedge our bets to reduce uncertainty and increase chances of positive outcomes. Women disclose a lot of information on their online dating profiles because it’s a way to hedge your bets against getting hurt when you start dating, let it out that you’re divorced and have to face a new problem. If someone knows that about you up front, it becomes far less risky than before because you can leave it up to the other person to decide if you have too much “baggage.” Men seem to be reluctant to hedge that bet. They seem to think that they can win with their personality, looks and career and the fact they are divorced or have kids is just one of those things they throw in at the end because maybe they don’t have custody and don’t recognize how much that can affect a new relationship. Women seem to be dating in a way that says “here’s what you’re going to have to deal with, do you still want me?” while men say “do you want me? Oh…. And here’s what you’ll have to deal with if you take me.” Also, men who are divorced might still date like they’re single. They name out their accomplishments hoping that will win over a woman while women may consider their kids to actually be their highest accomplishments and neglect to mention the accomplishments in their careers or personal lives. 

The concept of getting your baggage out early bothers me a lot. I feel like people who do that haven’t really realized that everyone has baggage, it’s not like you’re the only one with skeletons in the closet. My attitude when it comes to baggage is that you will find out about it when it comes up. Sure, I have my fair share of baggage, but there are pieces of it that no boyfriend has ever heard, even after a year. That piece of information is reserved for people who need to know it, not the third or fourth date. You don’t have to dump your past on someone at the beginning. Wait for them to like you and want to be around you and then give it to them in small doses so one by one that person will decide for themselves, is this person worth their baggage? But if you give it all up at once, your date gets overwhelmed with all the bad news and might not get the chance to see your best attributes: the ones you have to see, not hear about. 

Expectations are really important in all relationships. And I don’t mean “I expect to get laid by the end of the month.” Not all that long ago, my dad handed me this book written by Steve Harvey that talks about what women need to know to have successful relationships with men by understanding how men think and what they want. My dad emphasized that he wanted me to read it because having expectations about how someone will treat you is the first step in protecting yourself. In terms of expectations, I’m not sure that divorced people have the expectations that they should, or maybe they have too many. As the parent with custody of a child after a divorce, expectations for a dating partner should be much higher (in my opinion) which may make it difficult to find an appropriate partner. If I was a single mother, I’d expect my date to show up on time and be respectful of when I need to be home or times I may turn down going out to stay home with my child. I’d expect them to respect my child and later in dating, treat my child like they would treat their own. Even if I didn’t have a child, I’d expect my date or new boyfriend to respect my privacy when it comes to dealing with my ex unless I ask for help. 

Until this lecture, I never really thought about how difficult it is to be divorced and back in the dating scene. I’ve known plenty of people who have had to do it but I didn’t think about the little things that make dating difficult. And after thinking about that, it makes me want to get married less to avoid the worst of the breakup that my generation may be thinking is inevitable. So much for happily ever after I guess.

Reflection after Dr. Borck's Lecture

To start, I enjoyed Dr. Borck’s presentation on love and friendship in politics. I consider a lecture successful if I leave still thinking about it and trying to come up with my own ideas surrounding the topic. These are the main things that kept me thinking about the politics discussion long after class had ended:

What is a friend? You could say that seeking friendship is human nature. It’s common to seek unity over loneliness. But if you look at all your past and current “friendships,” they are often much like “political friendships” or allies. For the duration of your friendship, they are someone to whom you may seek advice (political or social. Example: United Nations), or a companionship along some duration of your personal journey, or they may just be living their lives and poking their head in on yours once in a while. Regardless, this must be someone you would defend (politically or socially) when necessary, trust more than most people around (but never tell everything to) and with whom you have other common friends (other allies). But most importantly, friends are the people you have something in common with like career ambitions, music, or a hatred for the same country. So when it comes down to it, I’d define politics as a series of alliances or friendships. It’s just the teaming up of individuals that share a common friendship, common values and a common goal. Friendship is a uniting force that creates a body of people (a state) and the states form friendships that form a nation. Without friendship, there can be no love of country and no alliances because you must love your country and friends enough to go to war to defend them and potentially die for them. That’s a tall order unless there is love and friendship as a motivator. Without alliances or friendships or love, we’d all be lonely creatures with no ties to anyone, not even our families. We’d wander aimlessly and have little contact with other “nations.” Maybe you could argue that love and friendship are the reasons we go to war in the first place. We love our way of life and the people in our country to go to war to protect them and we sometimes follow our allies into battles that were not our own to wage because our friends needed backup. Perhaps friendship and love cannot exist without war and war wouldn’t exist without friendship and love. But then you could say that friends and enemies can end up being the same people or nations. What once may have been a strong ally can turn and become an enemy when there is a turn of power (sometimes caused by the reformations of friendships based around a new common and unifying goal) such as Russia, a former ally of the United States that became an enemy in World War II. Now think about all the friendships you’ve ever had that didn’t end quite the way you would have liked them to. Do you talk to them anymore? Do you smile or say hello anymore? Your friend became your enemy. You are no longer civil. There is hostility and while you may have common friends now, you might not always. A friend and enemy can be the same person, just not at the same time. And that’s what makes politics so interesting.