Molly Puckett - Relationships



This past Tuesday, we talked about male relationships in class. We discussed cultural influences on these relationships and how our own personal biases affect how these relationships are perceived and even portrayed. This discussion came about through reading Van Nortwick’s book Somewhere I Have Never Travelled, which explores several different works of literature and how they portray the hero’s journey. Two examples in this book that explore male relationships are Gilgamesh and Endiku’s relationship in The Epic of Gilgamesh and Achilles and Patroclus’s relationship in The Iliad. Our culture affects how we view these relationships, and can influence us in such a way that we do not understand the platonic relationship between two men. Instead, we assume the male bonding is something sexual in nature. This assumption blurs the lines of the relationship and can lead to further, more unrealistic, assumptions about the two people involved. (I feel as though this is similar to the Halo-Effect in psychology, where we assume certain traits about a person based on our limited previous knowledge of that person.)With relationships and intimacy between people, these blurred relationships can cause us to overlook the existence of different kinds of intimacy, besides sex. Physical intimacy does not always include emotional intimacy, which is vital in creating a relationship and a friendship with others.

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