Report 1
Disjunctive vs.
Conjunctive
Discourse and
Behavior in Couples
By: Jamie Gomes
Instructions of this
report are at:
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy26/409b-g26-report1.htm
G26 Lecture Notes on the
Unity Model of Marriage:
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy26/409b-g26-lecture-notes.htm
Section A: Categorizing
Interactions Using the Ennead Chart
|
Zone 7-Sensorimotor Unity |
Zone 8-Cognitive Unity |
Zone 9-Affective Unity |
|
Zone 4-Sensorimotor Equity |
Zone 5-Cognitive Equity |
Zone 6-Affective Equity |
|
Zone 1-Sensorimotor Dominance |
Zone 2-Cognitive Dominance |
Zone 3-Affective Dominance |
Prime (2005)
Raphael, played by Uma Thurman, is a 37 year old driven professional and
recent divorcee who is seeking the advice of her therapist, played by Meryl Streep. Dave, played by Bryan Greenberg, who is a 23
year old young painter falls for Rafi and tries many
things to woo her. As they begin dating,
Rafi goes into detail to her therapist about the
exciting sexual escapades that she and Dave have been getting into, and also
lying about his age. As they continue
dating, they soon realize their age difference and maturity eventually do
become a problem. All the while, her
therapist finds that the Dave that her client speaks of is actually her own
son.
Zone 1-Sensorimotor Dominance
1) In this scene Dave hides his friend, Morris
in the closet from Rafi when she gets home. Morris comes out of the closet after the cat
gets to him.
Rafi: What is wrong with you? I can’t believe I have to
come home to this. People hiding in the closet, your
lying. You’re a goddamn preschooler Dave!
Dave: You’ve had me on
lock down since the minute I moved in here.
**Arguing continues and
Morris excuses himself out of the apt**
Dave angry: I can’t do
this anymore. You should get a dog if you wanna give
orders…cause I really don’t give a SHIT anymore!
2) Another example of Sensorimotor
Dominance is when Dave is playing his video game late at night.
Rafi: Are you planning to come to bed?
Dave: Yah, right after
this game.
**Rafi
nods and rolls her eyes walking towards the room annoyed.**
He chooses the video game
over going to bed with her, possibly even passing up sex with her because she
is now annoyed.
3) Dave has sex with another girl, a model that Rafi works with, right after breaking up with each other. Rafi and Dave got
back together right after, and he didn’t tell her about the model. It eventually got back to Rafi
at work, and she was hurt and betrayed that he hadn’t mentioned it, walking off
and crying.
Zone 2-Cognitive Dominance
1) Rafi and Dave are
at an art show when she bumps into a friend with a baby. She holds the baby and says how sweet she is,
expressing how she wants a baby. Dave
responds with an uncomfortable look and walks away.
2) Another example is when Dave makes jokes
about Rafi’s concern that her therapist is his mother. He uses his own justifications about his
Mom’s tendency to care for her client’s well-being and high involvement with
them to defend her.
3) There is also the fact that Dave is Jewish
and that Lisa, Rafi’s therapist and Dave’s Mom, want
him to marry a Jew. Rafi
is not a Jew. She is not looking to
convert herself to Judaism either.
Zone 3-Affective Dominance
1) Dave’s friend makes a comment that Rafi keeps him tied up and that he barely sees him
anymore. Dave makes a preference of
spending time with Morris pulling their pranks than doing something mature and
responsible such as job searching when he has no money.
2) Dave’s retaliation against Rafi when she tells him that it’s best for them to see
other people. He decides to sleep with
the model that she works with.
Zone 4-Sensorimotor Equity
1) Dave tried very hard to woo Rafi and please her, physically and emotionally. Knowing that she had wanted a baby, he was
willing to give it to her (by having unprotected sex) because he loved her so
much.
Passionate love making
scene.
Rafi: Why now?
Dave: Cause you want this
more than anything in the world. And I wanna give it
to you. I wanna make a baby with you.
Rafi: I can’t.
Dave: Why?
Rafi: Because I love you and I can’t do this to you.
Dave: I don’t understand
what are you doing to me? I wanna give it to you.
Rafi: I know you do. And it’s the sweetest gift
anyone’s ever given me. But it’s not
right for you. You’ll regret it. You know this. The fact that you’re still willing..just shows how deep your
love goes. That’s the gift I’m taking
from you.
Zone 5-Cognitive Equity
1) Dave allows himself to actually think of
himself as an artist and to take himself seriously when Rafi
convinces him of how great his artwork actually is. He decides to listen to her and to pursue his
dream even if his family doesn’t think it’s worthwhile.
50 First Dates (2004)
Henry Roth, played by Adam
Sandler, works at Sea Life Park and is known to
manipulate the tourists of
Zone 1-Sensorimotor Dominance and Zone
2-Cognitive Dominance
1) Henry makes a bet with Nick, the diner cook,
that he can get Lucy to have breakfast with him again for $20, after finding
out about her situation. He attempts to
use his prior knowledge of what she’s told him the other day, that which she
can’t remember, to win her over again.
Instead she gets annoyed and pretends not to speak English.
He continues to try to
manipulate her to win the bet, but this time with the use of fake
emotions. Henry tries crying pretending
to not be able to read. She asks him
over to her table eventually, falling to his manipulation.
2) Every time that Henry uses his knowledge of
her to manipulate Lucy into reacting how he wants her to react, this is
Cognitive Dominance. He’s using the
information that she’s given him at a prior time to his benefit at this point
in time.
Zone 6-Affective Equity
Both Henry and Lucy try to
stay together as long as they can when she is able to remember him.
Scene: Henry and Lucy in
bed together for the first time, after a great day spent together. She’s trying to stay up as long as she can to
stay with him and not forget who he is, and he wants to stay with her as long
as he can.
Henry: You can’t fall
asleep.
Lucy: I’m not sleeping.
I’m just closing my eyes.
Henry: Well, I’m gonna go downstairs then.
Lucy smiling: No, no. I’m
just resting.
Henry: Lucy?
Lucy: Yah?
Henry: Will you marry me?
-Pause. She looks up and
smiles at him.
Lucy: Of course.
Henry: Don’t forget about
me.
Lucy: Never.
Zone 6-Cognitive Equity
Lucy keeps forgetting who
Henry is because of her condition, so because she is falling for him, and
obviously trusting him she wants to give him a little advice.
Lucy: Hey, Thank you for being so nice to me
today. I don’t want you to…strike out
tomorrow (knowing that he has to win her heart over again tomorrow). So maybe you could talk to me about lilies.
Henry: Lilies?
Lucy: I’m a sucker for lilies.
Henry: Thanks for the tip. (smiles)
Zone 8-Cognitive Unity
Henry tries his best to
keep her aware every morning of what’s been going on,
and what has taken place thus far instead of hiding the accident from her. He made a videotape in the beginning so that
she could be aware of her condition and how it happened instead of her father
and brother going through the trouble of keeping it from her to protect her. He made yet another tape at the end to show
her their wedding vows, and telling her to keep warm by putting on a jacket and
when she’s ready to come outside and have breakfast with him ending with an “I
love you.”
Zone 9-Affective Unity
1) Dad:
We figured it out. She only sings
on the days she meets you.
Scene—Lucy painting the
workshop singing, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could wake up…”
Doug (bro): It’s Mom and Dad’s song.
Dad asks Henry: Let me ask you, what’s in it for you? What do you get out of this?
Henry: I don’t know…. (Looks to Lucy in workshop singing)
But wouldn’t you want to spend an
hour a day with that?
**She remembers Henry
because she only sings on days she meets him even with her condition of not
being able to retain anything after falling asleep.
2) Lucy takes Henry into her art studio after
telling him that she doesn’t know who he is.
Lucy: I don’t know who you are, Henry…but I dream
about you almost every night.
(Henry finds that many of
her paintings are all of him)
Henry: What would you say
if I told you that the notebook you read everyday…used to have a lot of stuff
about me in it?
Lucy: I would say that
that makes a lot of sense.
Henry: You erased me from
your memories…because you thought you were holding me back from having a full
and happy life. But you made a mistake.
Being with you is the only way I could have a full and happy life. You’re the
girl of my dreams…and apparently I’m the man of yours.
Contrasting Prime and 50 First Dates
The biggest difference in
the two is obviously that in Prime the couple mainly fell into the Dominance
phase and touched a bit on the Equity, very much disjunctive. In 50 First Dates however, that couple mostly
fell into the Unity phase barely touching anywhere else except for what
occurred before the couple was together.
The couple in Prime
struggled in Dominance for the majority of the movie mostly because of the
differences they had between each other.
Cognitively, they weren’t even at an equal level where they had the same
ideals and wanted the same things. I
think that because of their age difference, it had the older woman wanting a
committed relationship with babies and for someone to be as responsible as she
was. The younger boy, even if he loved
her and was infatuated with her, still wanted to “find himself”, play around
doing silly things that 23 year olds do (i.e. pranks), and eventually wanted to
marry a Jew. I think because of their being
stuck and not getting past this Cognitive level, they cannot progress any
further to the higher zones.
The couple in 50 First
Dates quickly escalated to the Unity phase, even if there wasn’t too much talk
of a spiritual afterlife together. They
started off with the problem that she couldn’t live a normal life with the loss
of her short-term memory even if she fell for him. He on the other hand, kept coming back to try
to get her to fall in love with him all over again, every single day. I think that’s how they’re relationship
quickly escalated because there wasn’t really any time in between for them to
have a dominant relationship where he was controlling or to attempt to be equal
because she wouldn’t fall in love with him.
Eventually he could abuse the power and knowledge that he has over her,
but he seems very endearing towards her.
He makes sure that she’s always cared for and that she’s happy because
that’s the only way he’s happy.
Movies Influence on Young People and the Population
in Terms of Relationships
These Dominance types of
movies as we have seen in Prime,
are very commonplace for the whole family to watch. Because of the fact that there are so many
movies like this with dysfunctional couples masked as a love story, the younger
generation and even adults accept this to be normal. They believe that this type of fighting and
obstacles between the couple should be looked at as nothing more than what it
is, and that all couples should expect this within their relationship and not
to expect anything more. In marriage,
many couples expect to hit roadblocks and even maybe lose their spark for each
other one day. They don’t think they can
have passionate love with each other into their elder years and even into
eternity.
On the flip side, the
great love movies that are made such as 50
First Dates is merely looked at as something unobtainable. The Dominance films are produced much more
for us to expect that as not deviating from the norm, making us cynical when we
watch Unity level movies. Then the
audience is to think, “Oh that form of love can only be found in the
movies.” What they don’t realize is that
it actually can happen with just a bit of effort on the couple’s part. I think it’s the lack of effort that most
couples do not put forth into engaging their relationship to move towards a
conjunctive state, instead of one that is stagnant and disjunctive.
Section B: Findings of a Prior
Generation
Prior Generation’s Feelings on “Effects of Gender
Portrayals on Younger Generation”
Katie Ide
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/409bf2006/ide/ide-409b-g25-report1.htm
After reading Katie Ide’s report I found that in this particular section, she
was trying to show that the kids now are growing up much quicker than we have,
considering that there’s only a 10-15 year gap between them and us. She speaks of the technological advances that
our society has made (i.e. ipods and cell phones) and
how kids and teenagers need to be apart of this new and innovative world to be
seen as more like an adult. She also mentions
how we watch movies now that display sex, betrayal, and dishonesty.
Katie puts out the fact
that the media progressively is maintaining this stereotyped image of how girls
and boys are supposed to look when they grow up. Girls need to maintain a low body weight, and
get enhancements to improve their boring, natural selves such as breast
implants or as they get older, Botox. Teenage boys fascinated with obtaining Porn
over the Internet with easy access deluding their minds as to what sex is all
about.
Katie states that media is
the main source of communication for today’s youth and that they rather look to
these imageries of men and women together than their own parents’ stories of
what they went through in “their time.”
She also expresses that AUV’s are everywhere
and that no one is really thinking about the effects that all of these negative
attitudes are having on their children.
My Reaction to Katie’s Findings
I found that everything
that Katie had to say was very much true as sad as it may seem. She analyzed our sexualized culture today to
find that the youth is being very much affected by our actions as adults of
what we put out there for them to see.
All of these negative portrayals
of women and men are all that the children and teens have to reference today’s
expectations of people. They tell us how
to think of the other gender, and what they should or shouldn’t have as a part of
their physical anatomy. This draws to
the tendency for them to expect these certain qualities and to maintain this
particular image. Girls are expected to
look like an everyday Barbie with D cup breasts and a waist to fill a size 2
pair of jeans, with the possibility of a J LO butt. They are expected to fulfill their man’s
every desires and needs, without ever questioning it. Boys are expected to look muscular and to
treat their women as property.
When the younger
generation hears rappers’ lyrics of how women are degraded and over-sexualized
by their male counterparts, they accept this as normal. Both girls and boys grow to think that this
is how men are to act when “with their boys” and that the way they show women
being treated in music videos are how women want
to be treated. Almost anything and
everything in the media nowadays reiterates this form of disjunction thinking
from music to movies and television shows, in magazines and advertisements
located just about everywhere.
Before my knowledge of the
anti-unity values, and other disjunction behaviors learned in this class, I
don’t think I fully recognized that there were so many derogatory
misconceptions of men and women out there, and even how a couple is to react
with one another. I realized that there
was in fact negativity, but not the excessiveness of it. Our culture says that this is a normal way
for us to think, and that because society accepts it, we hardly recognize that
this is even out there and how much!
Many of us take what we
learn on TV or in the movies to be true, and never really question whether it
is right or not because that is all that’s projected at us. We think it is normal to argue aggressively
with such hatred words with your partner, and then to quickly forgive. We also are forced to think that sex should
be more exciting if acted out like a porn flick with the costumes and erotic
type behavior. It is also thought that
“making love” on the contrary is lame and boring, much to what we attribute to
the older generations with a lack of excitement. Not to mention TV reality shows that uses
deception all to create a dramatic appearance of what they think viewers want
to see.
It is very much a reality
when we say that the media is all the role models the children have when
observing couples in their behavior.
With the increase in divorces each year, many children don’t have a
stable family environment to look to a solid example of a real-life happy couple
in which they can aspire to be like. Instead
they experience dramatizations of couples in TV series and on movie screens
depicting a fighting, jealous battle between the couple or an unrealistic
version of the two.
We also see that we aren’t
really allowed to censor the material out there due to Freedom of Speech. Our law states that they are allowed to
freely express their art as they please, even if some do not consider it
art. Unless the government makes a bold
decision to censor all of the violence and over-sexualization
in our culture, we are stuck with the job as citizens to screen what comes into
our home, and to do our best to take control of our decisions as parents,
guardians, and responsible adults.
My current position on
this issue is quite passionate about having the producers and movie companies actually
realizing what they are putting out there for the children and society to
learn. It is getting harder and harder
for the audience to discriminate what “entertainment” is, and try to
distinguish it from your own reality.
Most times, we try to make what we see on TV or in a movie is automatically assimilated into our own reality. We do want to aspire to be like our favorite
characters or actors and actresses, so we’re going to do what they do, act like
they act when dealing with relationships.
Relevance of Gender Portrayals to My Own
Interactions in Everyday Life
In my life, what’s stunned
me the most about the media is their effect it holds on children of all
ages. Younger and younger, they are
exposed to domestic violence and nudity on TV, the knowledge of porn and what
takes place in it, the explicit lyrics that are commonly played on the radio. When they are that young, they don’t know
what they’re singing or watching when it’s quite clear it’s inappropriate. Yet, they are fed over and over again these
same images and types of lyrics that make them think this is the norm, and that
a wholesome relationship such as that of the Unity model is too idealistic to
even attempt.
It bewilders me when I
hear my younger cousins singing Gwen Stefani’s
“Bananas” song with the word “shit” in it.
They don’t realize that this is wrong so they continue, but in reality
it’s just become another word in their vocabulary. Then they start to question about the sexual
lyrics in a song because of their curiosity as to what it means. Their parents are put at an awkward position
and are forced to explain what it is or lie to them. Children are learning much earlier what sex
is and what dramatic TV relationships are like (sometimes strictly for
entertainment purposes) they expect these in our generation because they may
not have other stable relationships to look to other than what’s displayed
before them.
The effects on me
personally growing up as a child in my parent’s home were lasting in the type
of marriage they had. My parents,
before they divorced, had a Dominance phase marriage, which barely dipped into
Equity. My father was the main bread-winner
which usually meant that the male carried most of the power, which was
definitely the case. My mother did the
child-rearing practically all by herself, cleaning the house, the cooking, and
even working. This made me wonder that
if their roles were so off-balanced, where was the time for their relationship
because he wasn’t willing to help at all?
This all came to an end when my mother realized that that Dominance
phase of relationship is not where she wanted to be and they decided to get a
divorce.
I saw this type of
marriage as something I did not want to have.
Both my sister and I really didn’t have a good idea of what a stable
relationship was like. We turned to
movies and TV shows to get a notion of what adult relationships should be like. It had me watching romantic comedies where I
grew up wanting that idealistic marriage or relationship that they displayed in
the movies. I think due to this, it
isn’t that hard for me to accept this Unity model and that it would be
something I would like to be apart of.
Relatable Psychology Literature
Young
Viewers’ Perceptions of TV:
This journal article was
based on the interviews of 122 Israeli preschoolers and kindergarteners. They wanted to gain a better understanding of
role that the early experiences children had of growing up in a heavy exposure
of media environment had on their developing perceptions of the making of
TV. The study confirmed that most
kindergarteners exhibit a low understanding of the nature of television
programs.
The article discusses the
popular research done on young children’s limited capacity to distinguish
between fantasy and reality on television.
Those studies indicate that children use two principal types of criteria
to make these distinctions between fantasy and reality. One is the child’s reliance on their
knowledge of the real world as a function of their individual life
experiences. The other is if child was
able to relate to the internal properties of the program, to perceiving the
reality of the television content.
Studies suggest that most
preschoolers are able to distinguish between real objects and televised images,
as well as “real” human actors and “unreal” cartoon characters. Kindergarteners recognize the factualness of news
but only as they age do they make correct judgments of fictional dimensions of
television entertainment as they mature throughout elementary.
Tidhar, Chava E. and Lemish,
Dafna.
“The Making of Television: Young Viewers’ Developing Perceptions.” Journal of Broadcasting
& Electronic Media. Sept
2003.
Adolescents’
contact with sexuality in the media:
In this article, research
was done to attempt to establish links between sexual content in the media and
adolescent sexuality. They examined
whether evaluations of information in the media have a lasting influence on the
relationships between adolescent sexual characteristics and sexual media
consumption. It talks about a Media
Practice Model which assumes that individuals are both affected by, and affect,
the media they encounter. From this,
their individual identities select and influence the media that teens use. This leads to interaction with the media
subject, evaluating and analyzing its content, which influences the ways teens
apply the media to their everyday lives like their attitudes and behaviors.
Hawk, Skyler T., Vanwesenbeeck, Ine, de Graaf, Hanneke, Bakker, Floor.
“Adolesecents’ Contact with Sexuality in
Mainstream Media: A Selection-Based Perspective.” Journal
of Sex Research. Nov 2006, Vol. 43 Issue 4.
Section C: Disjunctive vs. Conjunctive Verbal
Interactions
Unity 17a: Sexy vs. Unsexy
Conversational Styles
What is considered Unsexy or in other words, disjunctive, is when the husband
or boyfriend is in the Dominance phase, where he just doesn’t care if his wife
or girlfriend finds him sexy or not. He
is selfish in this mindset and only wants for her to be obedient to his needs
and wants. He does this in conversation
by interrupting her, acts uninterested in the conversation and wishes it was
over, changes to another topic, and is quickly annoyed by her attempts to
speak. The male’s mentality in this
state of mind is due to their feeling that their wives aren’t giving them
enough sex or acting sexual enough. In
essence, the women are not trying hard enough to please them, and therefore are
allowed to act this way reiterated by Dr. Laura.
What the women does want,
is a sexy style of conversation which is conjunctive. Dr. James states that it is easier for them
to find this style when speaking with their girlfriends or mothers, but they
really do long for their significant other to be able to speak this way also. The boyfriend or husband can do this by stop
interrupting her while she speaks, to always consider her feelings, stay
interested in the topic she speak of, make her feel that he wants to hear what
she has to say, and stay involved in the topic at hand by adding in comments
pertaining to the subject. He needs to
add emotion when his wife is telling a story or talking like when she is
feeling sad to sympathize or when excited, to feel the excitement with
her.
My Opinion
I think that these
definitions of Unsexy and Sexy conversational styles
definitely make sense to me. These are
thought of as basic communication rules to most women, but find it hard to be
understood with men. These definitions
put words to defining what most couples experience when they have a tough time
communicating with their significant other.
Particularly for me, this
has been an obstacle for my boyfriend and I most
recently. I always harp that we have bad
communication styles, and that we’re constantly misinterpreting each other, and
that I just don’t like the way he listens to me because it’s not very
affective. I feel like I’m the only one
that has a problem with this and he doesn’t feel the need to change anything
because he finds no problem with it. He doesn’t understand how much it really
does bother me and the toll it’s taking on our relationship. A good example of this is when I begin the
conversation by discussing an important event that is about to take place in my
life, he responds with a comment about the weather. He doesn’t understand that by his commenting
on the weather, I’m realizing that he’s not paying attention to me and is
thinking about something totally different.
This gets me to think that maybe my news wasn’t important as whatever it
was that he was thinking about currently.
Many of the examples that
Dr. James came up with for unsexy conversational
styles is what I experience constantly with my boyfriend. There is even interruption when I’m speaking
with the environment around him like when the TV is on while I’m trying to
speak and his focus is being directed to the TV instead of me. This annoys me because I feel like in order
to be heard, I need to turn of the television for my boyfriend to focus on
me. This shouldn’t be the case. Although he does make attempts to listening
to me, he seems more interested in activities rather than actual conversations
deemed important to others.
Snippets of Gender
Discourse
1) A married couple Marrianne
and Johan are having problems with communication. She attempts to confront the problems in
their marriage. (Pgs 145-146)
Marianne: (Searchingly) Has something happened, Johan?
Johan: Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I swear.
Marianne: We’re pretty
honest with each other, you and
Johan: I think so.
Marianne: It’s awful to go
around bottling things up. One must speak out, however painful it is. Don’t you
think?
Johan: (Irritably) Hell, yes. What time is it?
Marianne: One fifteen.
Johan: My watch is always
stopping. What were you saying? Oh yes, honesty. I suppose you mean over sex,
to put it bluntly.
Marianne: Sometimes I
think we..
Johan: People can’t always
live by cheek by jowl. It would be too tiring.
Marianne: Yes, that is the big question.
Johan: Anyway, I must go
now.
This dialog is very
disjunctive in the way that Marianne desperately wants to speak about what is
going on in their marriage and if she should be worrying. She feels the need to be eased and comforted
if there is nothing going on like an affair.
However, Johan is avoiding the subject and changes topic by bringing up
the time and his watch, like discussed earlier as an unsexy
conversational style.
2)
Tenth-grade
boys conversation (pgs 97-98):
Todd: What the hell we
supposed to talk about? I mean I know what’s bugging me.
Richard: What’s bugging
you?
Todd: (snicker) That we don’t talk.
Richard: Who don’t talk?
Silence.
Todd: We’re doing it
again.
Richard: What?
Todd: Not talking.
Richard: I know. Well, go.
Todd: We’re not even
making small talk any more. (laugh)
Richard: Right, okay. I
mean you know. What can I say? I mean, if you meant everything you said last
weekend, and I meant everything I said.
Todd: Well of course I
did.
But I mean I don’t know.
I guess we’re growing up. I mean-I don’t
know.
I guess I live in the past or something.
I really enjoyed those times when we used
to stay up all night long and just you know spend the nights over someone else’s
house just to talk all night.
Richard: mhm
Todd: They were kinda fun.
Richard: Yeah that was
fun.
Todd: But now we’re lucky
if we say anything to each other in the hall.
Richard: Oh, all right! (challenging intonation)
Todd: I’m serious.
I remember walking in the hall and I’d say
“Hi” to you and you’d say “Hi there” or sometimes you’ll push me in the locker,
if I’m lucky. (laugh)
Richard: We talk. (protesting)
Todd: Not the same way
anymore.
Richard: I never knew you
wanted to talk.
This dialog seems quite
conjunctive to me because you can see where both parties are active in the
conversation. You also begin to see
feelings of emotion rise in both boys. You can tell that there was once a
friendship there, and that somewhere along the lines the communication was
lost, but can be regained again.
Section D: Conclusion and Advice to Future
Generations
What I have learned so far:
I’ve learned in this
course about the threefold self which incorporates Sensorimotor,
Cognitive, and Affective and the phase that govern their interactions known as
Dominance, Equity, and Unity. I’ve
learned that under these concepts lie a great rule of thinking of behavior
towards another individual and not only your significant other. With this type of thinking, I believe you
would better yourself as a person in your attitudes towards others being more
caring and considering how others feel before yourself.
I understand that the
Dominance level is portrayed in many relationships in the past and
currently. I believe that now in this
generation, more couples are trying to achieve the Equity phase so that each
person feels like they have an equal share to everything, nothing on weighted
ground. I think society stresses Equity
because they feel it is a realistic level to work towards knowing that many are
stuck in the Dominance level. However,
like Dr. James stated there is a good chance of relapsing back into the
Dominance level because nothing is pushing them to move forward or to work at
in their relationship. It is quite easy
for anyone to fall into a comfortable state where all interactions want to be
focused on you and no one else. One would think, why would you think of someone
else’s needs before your own?
I think the problem with
Unity in society is that it may seem too idealistic for them and
unobtainable. It probably doesn’t make
sense to men that by giving in to their women who naturally has the desire to
conjoin with the man, they can get what they want as well as make their women
happy. For the women, they probably
assume that no man would ever go for such thinking. The women would like to believe that this
could happen, but that they wouldn’t want to hold their breath waiting for it,
so they instead settle for less.
The benefit of this course
to me has actually formulated words for my thoughts that I couldn’t put forth
before. I would think of these things in
my head, frustrated and angry, trying to deal with my relationship with my
boyfriend, but didn’t know exactly what it was I wanted to say to him or try to
explain to him. With all the readings
that we’ve done, I feel like I better understand myself, and that this Unity
Model is what I do want to strive for in the future.
The concepts spoken of
aren’t hard to understand or to accept, but I can see where a cynical person
would not be able to grasp these ideas.
Like I had said previously, this type of thinking should at least be known
to others to possibly use as a guide in their relationship. They could be stuck in a rut, not being able
to explain to their loved one what they’re getting frustrated about and
therefore keeping it to themselves by not
understanding it themselves.
Advice to Future Generations
The best advice I could
give to the semesters that follow is to START EARLY!! Do Not Procrastinate because it takes a while
to think and brainstorm everything you want in this report. 15 pages do not happen overnight. The more thought you put into writing your
paper, the better outcome it will have.
Another piece of advice is
to make sure you have all your instructions clear. Make sure that you’re doing
exactly what you’re supposed to be doing.
If you feel anything was vague, ask questions! Get explanations and help
as soon as you can.
The best benefit to doing
all the work this course requires is a thorough grasp on the material we’re
covering. You have a better
understanding of the Unity Model and hopefully it will be beneficial to you in
the future for your own relationships. I
think that no matter what, the Unity model is something to strive towards. Just
because we think it is unobtainable doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t strive for
it. That only means you need to work that much harder in order to obtain
it.
Section E: Links
My Home Page: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/409bs2007/gomes/gomes-home.htm
G26 Class Home Page: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy26/classhome-g26.htm