love and family

love and family

The two topics notable from the course are love and family. Love is one of the terms that people often confuse. A researcher Robert Sternberg as shown in the course, explains that love involves intimacy, commitment, and passion. Love is more than just friendship because of its runs deeper, stakes higher, and comprise of more interpersonal difficulties that those involved must strive to overcome. Commitment is having some cognitive attachment to another person, which takes time to grow. It calls for people in love to remain faithful to one another regardless of the situation. On the other hand, intimacy implies openly sharing feelings and being available to provide physical, emotional, and psychological support to one another. While intimacy can be felt in the very first instance, it becomes stronger as closeness deepens. Lastly, passion is more of a physiological aspect of the body; the act of romance or engaging in some sexual or any element of erotic love and involves kissing, hugging, and others. Individuals can invest one, two, or all the three, which often comes involuntarily depending on the extent or relationship that the people involve enjoys. With Robert Sternberg’s theory of love, it becomes easy to differentiate the type of love we are in or talking about.

Family is defined in psychology as at least two individuals who are either related by blood, marriage, or adoption that enjoys some level of interconnection. Although over the past few years, the aspect of a family as changed quite a bit as evidenced by the rising number of single-parent families, gay and lesbian marriages, the definition still stands. These people always enjoy some extent of interconnection that keeps them attracted to one another. The course adds that a family is not only interconnected but also work together to achieve its objectives. It is this interconnection that made family therapists create a family system when they realized that working with one component of the family yielded a short term change. The course further indicates that a family that effectively works together to identify and strategize to achieve its goals is strong, and often acts as a model to other families with a similar mission.

COVID 19 pandemic has impacted almost every aspect of life. A family, as explained, is an interconnected human defined by its wholeness and independence of its parts. This implies that an impact on one of its parts will ultimately affect the whole family. The course describes that a family as a whole is more significant than the total of its components. When for instance, a father is infected with coronavirus, whether he will quarantine himself within the house or in the hospital, the whole family will feel the pinch. The family will not be able to share with the father like before; neither will they maintain the closeness that has lived within the family. Quarantine creates a gap in the family which leads to worry, as it breaks the wholeness of the family. It weakens the centripetal interaction that holds the family together and increases centrifugal interactions. This may ultimately lead to an unhealthy balance between connectedness and separateness, which worsens the crisis.

The three aspects of love reveal that separation created by COVI 19 when one member is infected will interfere with the love that has lived in a family. A mother infected with coronavirus will not interact with her family, thus creating some physical distancing and out of sight, which psychologically and emotionally impact intimacy. A family would want to support their infected mother during the crucial time emotionally but would not because she is in quarantine. A mother cannot comfortably be passionate about her husband because they cannot touch, kiss, hug, or have physical arousal due to social distancing. The only aspect of love that remains is a commitment, but again, the distress that comes with a family member having coronavirus will leave the whole family shaken and disturbed.

Families should know that COVI 19 pandemic, but manageable and infected persons can test negative of the virus and recover. The family members should increase the bond and centripetal interaction that have lived in the family amid COVID 19. It should strive to support one another (to take preventive measures and provide support) and maintain close communication with the infected family members and giving them excellent moral and emotional support through the safest and relevant means possible. Besides, the family should look at quarantine as some medications or preventive interventions to help the infected family member defeat the infection instead of punishment to the family. When members of the family look at COVID 19 from these angles, they will remain committed to one another, be intimate and passionate using any means available to them. Fear is worse and can destroy strong people; thus, positivity is crucial throughout, and ultimately the whole family will be victorious.

In my family, we loved hugging, shaking hands, kissing, and playing, which we hardly do presently. I am happy that no one close to me has been infected and prays that the infected individuals will recover as soon as possible. The remedy of this cruel virus will be invented to contain it so that everything can normalize.