Thoughts from Culhwch

So, I’m writing a paper on the response of the community to people who fail at romantic relationships. This is particularly strange, since I haven’t actually managed to figure out what a “successful” romantic relationship looks like -except that, since this is a paper on Dante, I’m really just trying to follow my impression of his lead. In Dante, it looks like romantic relationships begin and end in communal love. Hmm. Is it weird that I’m writing this essay? I mean I could have chosen pretty much anything in all of Paradiso and I choose Venus, mainly because I like this one 6 line simile. And then it turns out that I start writing about the one thing that I think I have absolutely no clue how to write about. Crazy.

And this whole paper just brings up how our society values being in romantic relationships, so much so that being single seems like the problem. Or maybe I’m just stuck in some 1950′s dream world. But this is really something which we need to address. How do adult singles get along in society, how does society support them? How does that happen in a way which doesn’t negatively impact singles?

Finally, how does the church, as the basis of communal love on earth, provide for those who are not in relationship without pressuring them into it? Sure I think relationships are great, but I detest the crazy amounts of social pressure to be in one. And luckily that pressure isn’t coming from my friends. Still it’s there, and maybe more so for those of us who grew up in more conservative parts of this country, where it seems like something is wrong if you’re not married by the time you leave high school, or college at the latest. Heck, I can’t visit my grandparents without being inundated with questions as to why I haven’t found a wife yet.

Of course all this is complicated again by the bifurcating social norms which put my own religious convictions into some sort of spotlight of scorn.

Oh well… no answers tonight.