Seeking Love After Divorce: Changes in DAting and Love after Marriage

In one of the beginning lectures, Professor Aimee Miller-Ott from the School of Communications at the University of Hartford came to talk to the class about dating after marriage.  Having parents who are divorced, I have personally witnessed my mother getting back into the dating scene.  While I probably could tell many funny and interesting stories relating to this, it is more interesting to hear the reasons behind the specific challenges that divorcees face. 

Dating is complicated already to begin with.  But if you add in the extra baggage from already having been married and now being divorced, getting back into the dating scene can be a difficult task.  Anybody who has been divorced is a part of the new dating scene after marriage.  Therefore, there are no exact rules or restrictions on who dates after being married, as it can be any gender, race, ethnicity, religion, etc.  Examples of this are all throughout the television, newspapers, and other mediums.  For instance, there are dating for African American people, dating for Mormons, dating for Christians, etc. 

Dating after marriage has become more popular in recent years than it has in any other generations before now.  Some of the challenges that people used to face in the past are the stigmas of divorce.  In our grandparents’ generation, marriage was taken much more seriously than it is now.  If a couple were to divorce, then their community would not be as accepting of them, and the couple would personally have felt as if they had failed and let people down.  This would have especially been true for women more than men, and it would have been much harder for divorced women to date especially if they had children.

Nowadays, people have a more lax attitude towards marriage.  People tend to feel like if there marriage does not work, then oh well, they can just get divorced and it will not be that big of a deal.  This attitude change is what has made dating after divorce become so popular because people still want to be in a relationship even if their previous one did not work. 

Besides the changing attitude of people, social media in the new age has helped dating after divorce become much more popular and well-known more than it ever used to be.  Popular sites such as Facebook, and other dating sites have made it much easier and more accessible for people to put themselves out there again after divorce and meet many new people.  One thing that Professor Miller-Ott stated is that divorcees have used Facebook as a tool to find exes and have started up relationships with them again.  As a side note: I personally do not see the point in this.  If it did not work with your ex before, what makes you think it will work again? Social media and dating sites, as a whole though, make it so much more convenient for people to date after divorce.  Being divorce creates a lot of challenges, which I will go into further detail later, but online dating creates a comfortable barrier for people.  This way, people who are divorced can put themselves out there without actually having to put themselves out there. 

Dating after divorce presents quite a few challenges: personal, children, and ex-spouses/co-parents.  As one of the personal challenges, Professor Miller-Ott stated that many people feel as if they do not know how to date anymore because they have not done it in a while.  We see this in the example she used from the movie, Crazy, Stupid, Love.  The main character is separated from her husband, so she reads the book, Dating for Dummies, so that she can relearn how to date since she is not focused on her marriage anymore.  Dating when you are younger is much easier because there is not as much emotional baggage, but since the dating scene changes as people get older, some people feel afraid to jump back into it.  A major challenge with dating after marriage is if the person has children.  Miller-Ott stated that in a study if you were under twenty, had no kids, and were divorced; you would be more likely to get remarried.  However if you were an older woman with children, they would be less likely to get remarried.  Also another study stated that men do not desire divorced women with children as much, but women desire divorced men with children because they typically will be more responsible and will not be as likely to want to have more kids.  Therefore, it is much harder for divorced women with children to get married than it is for men.  Therefore dating after marriage for women is much harder and is a difficult task.  Another challenge is exes.  Very often the ex-spouse will be in the person’s life forever of they have children.  This can create challenges for someone dating again if the ex-spouse causes problems. 

Overall, dating after marriage presents so many challenges, but more and more people are willing to go through it anyways.  Dating is difficult to begin with, but it is becoming much more easy for people to do it after marriage because it is becoming more comfortable and easier to do.     

Ethics and Desire in Contemporary Levantine Literature

During the last lecture, Professor Kifah Hanna from Trinity College spoke to the class on literature in the Middle East.  I have always been very fascinated with Middle Eastern and Islamic culture, so I particularly enjoyed this lecture as well as the Tunisian film lecture.  Hanna focuses mostly on literature in the east Mediterranean area such as Syria and Lebanon- predominately Arabic countries.  The main topics that Hanna focuses on in Levantine literature are the victimization of homosexuality and women.

The first poet that Hanna discusses is Abu Nuwas.  Nuwas focuses mainly on the love of wine and the love of boys in his poems.  His poetry mostly has a hedonistic feel in them.  During the time that Abu Nuwas was writing, there was a major underground movement in his Arabic culture.  The underground movement consisted of men speaking more freely of their sexual desires for men and boys.  Because Islamic culture is very strict, and emphasizes that this is wrong and that men should be masculine and dominant, people could not discuss this in open forums-only amongst themselves.  Nuwas wrote very explicitly and graphically of his lustful fantasies, which ultimately were written for common people.  This is important because this shows sexual desires can be somewhat more freely expressed by the common folk because this allowed common people to gain information on such topics that they could not learn elsewhere like the rich.  While Nuwas openly expressed his homosexual desires, he still always maintained that the act was wrong.  Rather than supporting the underground movement, he more so explained it to be a brief occurrence happening among Arabic men that will stop eventually (even though it really doesn't).  Essentially Abu Nuwas was the catalyst for questioning sexuality and gender roles in the Arabic community.  This time period can be described as redefining morality and questioning ethics that are different from western Europeans.

The second author that Professor Hanna touched upon briefly is Layla Ba'Albaki.  Layla Ba'Albaki was a famous poet in Lebanon, and she is known for leading the sexual revolution for women.  Traditionally in Arabic culture women are victimized because they have to repress many types of freedoms especially their sexual freedoms.  For example, many Arabic women must wear a veil over their head, so that they are not seen as sexy or seductive.  Ba'Albaki wrote many books throughout the 1950's and 1960's; however, most of them were banned.  Ba’Albaki’s books were very progressive and feminist for strict Arabic culture.  She often wrote about her female characters not wanting to have children, and desiring a naked man’s body.  Both these things are very outlandish for Arabic women to traditionally talk about since they should be conservative.  Therefore, she was taken to court, and her books were banned for being deemed inappropriate.

The third author that Professor Hanna discussed is Huda Barakat.  Barakat is very reputable author in the Middle East and in her books, she often writes about male homosexuality.  Barakat is noted for not only giving recognition to male homosexuality, but also for remaining genderless when she writes to give an unbiased perspective.  One quote from Barakat is “We are both male and female and yet at the same time well beyond either.”  This quote is important for two reasons.  For one, it shows how Barakat is able to separate herself in her writing to write freely of male homosexuality, which made her writing more popular.  Also, this shows how the sexual revolution that was taking place in the Middle East was because more people were starting to understand that gender and sexuality are just restricted labels.  Peoples’ desires go far beyond just being male or female or heterosexual.  Barakat, among other authors during this time period, ultimately tried to deconstruct and then reconstruct the peoples’ definition of sexuality.

Just as a personal thought from the discussion in lecture- the topic of belly dancers peaked my interest.  Professor Hanna stated that belly dancers are looked down upon with a stigma in Arabic culture and most often times are not even Arabic women, but rather are foreigners.  Coming from a feminist and American point of view, as well as having watched the Tunisian film in a previous lecture, I still firmly believe that women have more sexual freedom because Arabic men are so easily swayed by sexuality from Arabic women.  Therefore, Arabic women ultimately have the power, which is why I feel like belly dancing should not be stigmatized in their culture.  But even if belly dancing is not the best profession to have, my other thought is: Why would Arabic people allow their culture and traditions to be practiced by foreigners.  Whether people like belly dancing or not, it is a major part of their culture and is a beautiful art form.  I personally think that they would want to preserve that amongst the Arabic culture and have only Arabic women belly dance as tradition.  Overall, I enjoyed this lecture, and it was very refreshing to discuss another very different culture from American culture!   

     

Animated Films

On Tuesday, Jodie Mack, a reputable filmmaker, came to the lecture to show us two of her animated films.  To start off the lecture, Mack expressed a few of the themes that inspired her films.  Love and desire are overall the general themes of her animated films, but she likes to divulge a little deeper than that.  The three main aspects of love and desire that she touches upon go as: the desire to be loved, which is debatably a natural instinct for every human being, the desire for eternal love, and how the media informs our view of love especially through music. 

The first animated film of Jodie Mack that I watched was “Unsubscribed 4”.  Unsubscribed 4 was heavily based on pop music to portray a sad love story.  The whole film stemmed off the initial phrase “Will you love me tomorrow?”  A young girl falls in love with a young man, and she is super happy and believes that it is great, but then the music turns into “ I got your boyfriend”.  From there, the film ends with the young girl being sad that she lost the person she loved.  Mack uses lots of different textiles and shapes throughout all of her film, but it was more pronounced in this short film because the music told the story more than the images as opposed to the film, “Yard work is Hard work” which I will discuss later.  In this short film, though, Mack used crazy shapes that would turn into hearts, but the images would move very quickly.  These fast images represent the craziness of when people first start dating.  In the previous lecture with Lucy Brown, she stated that the early stage causes people to become obsessed with the other person and constantly think about them.  Mack uses these quick images and quick lyrics to show realistically how that actually happens in a relationship.

The second animated film that Jodie Mack showed in the lecture was “Yard work is Hard work”.  Yard work is Hard work is a short film about a young man and a young woman.  It starts out with both of them talking to their friends saying they are not interested in dating or a relationship, but then they both met each other and they started to like each other.  As they spend more time with each other, they begin to fall in love.  From there, they decided to get married, and then they face the challenges that every newly wed couple faces.  They have to search for the right house, which they find, and then they have to move in and start paying bills and such.  Finally the mortgage and bills become too much, and they decided to enter a contest to win money by making their house “green” to save more money, but they do not win.  However, they still save some money and they work on their relationship. 

There are many aspects of love and desire in this film.  Especially since it is a story, we see the different stages of love and desire.  At the beginning of the film when the couple starts to fall in love with each other, they begin singing out how in love they are.  Even the music during this part is very joyful and innocent, and the couple mentions how it was “fate”.  This really represents peoples’ idealistic nature and their desire to be in love forever.  Everyone desires to meet the “one” and have it be magic, and especially in the beginning of meeting someone, this is how it can feel.  It’s like the couple is “high on love”, which in fact in Lucy Brown’s lecture is mentioned.  The beginning stage of love is very euphoric and is a natural high which can be addictive.  Also, when the couple searches for a different and unique house in a suburban area, they are trying to fulfill the “American Dream” by getting married, getting a house, and having a successful life.  This represents how the media changes our views because this is the type of traditional love that everyone imagines in America in order to be accepted by society.  Therefore in order to be truly happy and in love, it must be socially acceptable too.  Then at the very end, the couple constantly fights over every little thing because they do not know how to communicate towards each other when things become difficult and they do not have that much money.  This represents peoples’ desires for a “perfect love”.  So many people want to meet someone and be so blissfully and happily in love and everything will work out and they will live a trouble free and happy life.  This is not how love really is, though.  Therefore, Mack shows these fantasies people have of love that are not realistic to actual life.         

Fires Dare to Ignite

Garren Small, who is a very well known writer, spoke to our class on Tuesday about his poetry and how it relates to the theme: love and desire.  One of the initial questions Small's presented to the class is "Can love conquer hate?"  This is a universal question that people have been asking themselves for centuries.  Especially with the bombing at the Boston Marathon just recently, this question relates to whether hate will always prevail or not.  Through his poetry, Small ultimately answers the question by saying yes.  Yes, love can conquer hate.  While love conquering hate is a major theme in his poetry, he touches upon various other themes as well.  Small does write about love and desire, along with the concept of being alive, and committing to live your life the way you want to. 

One of the poems that Small read was "Brother and Sister".  In the poem, a brother and sister are having a conversation with each other because their mother just died.  Instead of a typical grieving conversation between the two, the sister rambles on about her sadness, whereas, the brother eschews the topic and changes the subject to other things like cars.  Through the poem, the reader gets the sense that the author (Garren Small) is more sympathetic towards the sister.  Because the sister feels helpless in the situation, Small views her as being the more loving and emotional one of the two siblings, and he views the brother as being indifferent, and he ignores his feelings.  Both of the siblings are having two separate conversations, which makes the reader question if they are really even talking to each other despite them both being in the same room because they are both very distant in their communication.  The separate conversations between the brother and sister shows how people do not communicate well with each other at all.  In order for people to truly communicate with each other, they need to listen to one another, which these siblings are not doing.  They are both caught up in what they are saying that they cannot see beyond that to have a deep conversation with each other that would allow them to truly connect.  Small describes this as being a "love loss" because they are missing out on a potential emotional connection because they refuse to listen to each other.  While the author is clearly more sympathetic towards the sister because she appears to be more loving, I do not agree with this.  I view the brother as being more loving the sister because he is unable to express his feelings.  I think that because he has been so damaged by the loss of his mother and the loss of love, that he has to separate from his emotions in order to carry on living.  I do not think that this makes him less loving, it makes him more.  When people invest more love into a relationship, it is harder for them to move on than it is for other people.  The sister is able to comfortably talk about the death, which I think makes her less sympathetic than the brother.  The brother is clearly very emotionally damaged by the death.

Another poem that Small read was "Along the Row".  The poem is about a couple, who are in love, but even though they are together and in love, they still feel alone in their relationship.  This brings up the whole question: "Are you better off being single than being in a relationship where you feel alone anyways?"  Just because two people are together does not mean they feel that way.  Love is very complex in the theme in this poem because it shows that sometimes love cannot take away the desire to feel a connection with another person.  The poem also shows that when it comes to people and relationships, there's always a little something more there that we will never get to.  This poem also touches upon desire and how it is very hard for people to express what they really want.  Therefore, this is why a lot of people stay in bad relationships because they are too afraid to say they want something else, and because communication is very hard for all people to do.  Very often, people are talking, but not actually saying anything.  This is seen with the businessmen in the poem.  They talk about superficial topics, but they are not communicating who they really are to each other.

Another poem that Small read was "One Day".  Small did not write this poem; in fact, it was read at President Obama's inauguration.  This poem is essentially a son thanking his parents for all the hard work that they have done for him.  This poem especially touches upon parental love.  The poet uses distinct imagery about his father's hands and how those hands dug trenches and picked sugarcane to provide a better life for his son.  He also writes about his mother ringing up groceries for twenty years for his son to even write this poem.  The poet forgives his parents for not being able to give him everything he wanted because he understands that his parents are only human. 

The poems that Garren Small read during the lecture all related to the theme of love and desire.  There are all different types of love: romantic, unrequited, parental, and many more.  There are also many types of desires that people want.  However, both love and desire cannot fully be expressed when people cannot effectively communicate them to others.