My Topic / Content Goals

Ellie Soriano

HCOM214

Blog Entry

4/30/15

My Topic or Content Goals

Family, friendship and romantic relationships are all very different in their own ways but they have many things in common that keep the relationship together. Main topics that exist in all three relationships, family, friendship and romantic, are understanding, affection and time spent together. Understanding would be defined as how well you and whoever else involved are knowledgeable of each other and how well they know each other personally and each other’s history. Affection is self-explanatory and simply put, how well one person and others get along with each other and how much they actually like each other. Finally, time spent together is also self-explanatory, it is the amount of time you spend with others involved in either a friendship, family or romantic relationship. I think these three topics are very important and must be constant to have a functional and healthy relationship with family, friends and romantic partners. If these three topics are not present then disputes may arise within the given relationship.

In family, all three topics are equally important and if they are lacking in any particular subject, there might be arguments and family feuds as well as sore feelings that may or may not be healed with time. Understanding is the least important of the three topics with family because most family relationships are unconditional love in the sense where you may not like your family members but you still love them. If you do not understand each other though it may be difficult to connect if people are too different from each other. When there is absolutely no understanding in family there will be major disputes that will hurt all parties involved, often forming tensions between multiple people. Affection is another topic that is slightly more important than understanding for similar reasons, mainly you need to actually like your family members and be affectionate towards each other in order to get along. Time spent together is equally significant to affection in family relationships because families do not often all live together and the more time spent together, the more there is a connection between everyone because the more time there is spent together, the more they need to tolerate each other for a longer period of time.

For friendship relationships the most important topics are understanding and time together, without those there is no friendship, affection would mostly be an added bonus. In order to be friends with someone, most people would require shared traits such as interests and humor, which would represent understanding which is the basis of friendships. Time spent together is equally important to understanding because as friends, people need to spend time together in order to feel connected, this is different from family because family will still feel connected even without a lot of time together and that is something that does not happen in friendship relationships. Affection is the lesser of the two for friendships because people can show their appreciation for one another in other ways than always being affectionate and friendships also base off of similar traits not affection.

Romantic relationships need all three to be successful relationships, but mostly affection and understanding. Affection is obviously the most important in a romantic relationship because it’s based off of romantic feeling for another person and if that affection isn’t shown then it’s going to be difficult to keep that relationship a romantic one. Understanding is also important in a similar way that affection is, because when in a romantic relationship each person will want to get to know the other very well and if they are not able to truly understand each other then it will be difficult to be affectionate for specific reasons. Time spent together is also important because it gives time for the other two topics to occur but it’s not the most important because people in romantic relationships find ways to communicate with each other while not being able to physically see each other; which is why long distance relationships can work out when there’s a lot of affection and understanding between the two partners.

In conclusion, affection, understanding and time together are all very important in family, friendship and romantic relationships alike.