Friday, May 29, 2009

What Happened to Friendship?

I am starting to think it is “sooo 1990’s” to think that love=sex. It seems that the new trend for the 2000s is friendship=sex. Having the day off, I tuned into Dr. Phil and Oprah. Both shows were about same sex marriage, being gay, and being lesbian. The people in relationships often have great things to say about each other. They were attracted to the other people’s personality at first. But beyond that, physical intimacy was added. It seems that we, as a society, have lost sight of how to be good friends…just friends. We admire someone, we enjoy being with them, we talk, we make memories, we share secrets, we laugh…and now, we have sex? It is hard for boys and girls to be just friends, but now, girls and girls can’t be just friends, boys and boys can’t be just friends. We are confused in our relationships. We don’t trust people. We are paranoid about them. And yet, we desire intimacy, we desire to trust people and think being physical will fulfill that need.

I think our relationship confusion hinders our ability to form community. There is no trust and honesty when we don’t know how to be friends. Our friendships grow and die at rapid paces. With our growing dependence on cyber relationships, where people put their best foot forward, our friendships grow quickly. With the lack of cyber relationships in the past, few people know how to deal with failed cyber relationships. The dream, the best foot forward, idealist relationship dies with a confused bang. With our added physical acts, our relationships die with a bang, causing more mistrust. How can we have community in a large group when we can’t even have intimate, non-sexual relationships between two people?

While we have lost our bodily boundaries, we have not lost our desire for intimacy with each other. Thoughts?

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