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!