Friday, April 5, 2013

Chapter Nine/Jealousy


 
                In regards to the reading for this week I actually found both the Corey & Corey (2008) text and the Fleishmann et al (2005) article to be very interesting but for separate but very alike reasons. I want to start off by saying that the reason I found them interesting for like reasons is that I think both of them had an antagonistic viewpoint to my life currently. The thing is I felt that the book was only antagonistic towards men. It felt like it was attacking men while at the same time when women engaged in these same activities that it was okay to do. Like when the book talked about pleasing partners in bed. It made it seem like both parties are interested in this but that men are the ones that take it to this deep personal level of a challenge. I think that in reality both parties take pride or grievance in this aspect of sex but it’s just a stereotype that men care about this aspect more.

                However, one thing I really liked about the book was how it talked about where we as a society get out messages on sex from a young age all the way to adulthood and house it causes hesitance, confusion and misconceptions. This reminded me of a program I attended in College entitled “I Heart Female Orgasm.” Not only do I love it for the awesome shirt I have but because it was an awesome program that made me think that if I weren’t going to be school counselor I’d actually want to be a Sex Education Counselor akin to what they do. Just like in the book they talked about the only place people openly talk about and explore sex is usually in a collegiate setting. But the main thing that they talked about was how the average person is learning about sex through either school education or pornography either of which is an extreme on a continuum when where we need to be is in the middle. As I said in class earlier in the semester I think that open talks like this are very much necessary and I’m glad the book agrees.

                I liked that the article related to the text through the whole the way you act in these situations is based on considering others’ feelings as a result of your actions. But that was about it. For the most part it was incredibly hard to get into the article because as ridiculous as it sounds my wife and I haven’t gotten overtly jealous with one another if at all. In fact, it kind of pissed me off at the end when the article asserted that “if jealousy is never experienced “one must be either be very sure that losing a love one to another is simply impossible or must not care very much about their partner.” To that I say that maybe the person is actually mature in their relationship? I mean some of the things the article was getting across that people do were just ridiculous and I wrote in quotes several time that “this is a dick move” the only one of which I could see is trying to boost my self-esteem through evoking jealousy. I mean some of the measures they included were used because they were so common. Some of these were ridiculous things like “I send flowers to myself” or “I leave fake phone numbers lying around.” Really? Who has time for all that noise?! The only one I thought was half-decent was being told that somebody hit on the other person in the relationship which still isn’t jealousy-evoking to me.

Corey, G. & Corey, M.S. (2008). I never knew I had a choice: Exploration in personal growth (9th

                   Edition). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole

Fleishmann, A.A, Spitzberg, B.H., Andersen, P.A., & Roesch S.C. (2005). Tickling the monster: Jealousy
induction in relationships. The Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. 2005; 22; 49. DOI:
10.1177/0265407505049321

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