Familial Notions by AR

 Guys and Gals, What a week it has been. I have been thinking heavily on the subject of dating. I got a girlfriend. I have been working on that for a long time now. I will tell you how I went about it and how I could improve it next time. I will also explain my thoughts of the Relationship Attachment Model (RAM). I went on 12 dates in 14 weeks last semester. Not many of those were repeat dates though. This semester, however, I have been on 13 more dates and several of them were with a friend of mine that I have known since the beginning of last semester. Her and I had spent many many hours together prior to our first date. She asked me out first, which I kind of really like. Women who take initiative and responsibility are attractive to me. I have initiated every other date that her and I have been on though. However, her first date idea did not work out like she had planned and there was no back up plan on her part, so I ended up taking charge on that one too.  It may be quit...

 Hey Folks,           Did you like my gender neutral salutation? I am pretty good at those since I have a sister that identifies as not really a woman but not really a man. She is a fun person to be around, and I don't mean that sarcastically. I really do like to be around her.           I have been studying gender differences and similarities recently. There are many similarities, but these did not and do not pique my interest like the differences between genders do. Here's the thing, we can talk all day about what makes us equal, but I want to know what makes each gender special. A man's predisposition with protecting family, a woman's fascination with nurturing, or a child's absolute enamorment with learning. I love to learn of these things! I love the characteristics that set us apart from one another.  I love the things that make us ourselves.           Some studies were do...

  Hey Friends,                This week I have been thinking about culture. It seems to me that culture is created and tweaked throughout time by family units first and secondly by extended family and friends' families. Take for example Christmas Eve.      Christmas Eve can be exciting, boring, spiritual, sacred, or many other things. It all depends on how the parents of the family in question treat it as their children grow and develop a sense of what is normal and proper behavior on that day. My family, for example, reads the story of Jesus Christ's birth out of the Bible every Christmas Eve. This is a tradition that has been passed down from my grandparents to my parents, and now it is up to my future wife and I whether or not it will continue in my household or not.      That is a small example of how a single tradition is passed down. Now imagine tradition after tradition, including ones t...

 Hello all, I have been thinking this week about systems and the rules that govern them. We have the natural world, which is subject to the laws of physics(and some things we just don't understand yet). We have the spiritual world, which is subject to spiritual laws. At the intersection of those worlds, I find families. It is within the relationship of marriage that the spiritual world and the physical world are meant to meet in the process of child bearing and rearing.  Families have rules. I think we can all agree on that. Some rules are stated outright and some are not talked about at all. These are called implicit and explicit rules. I'll give some examples just to be sure we are all on the same page. At my dad's house, I was given a curfew. As I got older, my curfew got stretched to be later and later into the night. This was standardized and practiced with every child in the household. A rule that we had that was not stated was this: DO NOT spray the garden hose into ...

 Hello All You Peoples! I am writing to you today with thoughts about the power of talking openly with other human beings.  Thoughts of this came to my mind as I did a quiz this week that was set up as a conversation between myself and an imaginary cousin. The topic was fairly serious. It was the Supreme Court's decision on same sex marriage in Obergerfell v. Hodges.  A large portion of the ruling was based on the statement that there were no differences found between heterosexual and homosexual households. In the quiz, my imaginary cousin believed that statement from the get go. I however, read an article (Marks 2012) before hand that gave me insight into the issues with the research that was done to come to the conclusion of no differences.  As the quiz went along, understanding dawned and agreements were reached. I don't see many discussions or arguments go this way. It was really impressive to me how much patience and listening went on in that imaginary conversat...

 Hey Everyone!       I am Ammon R. and this is my first blog. It will contain my thoughts and insights on families and their functions in my life and ways that families can improve their member's experiences and relationships with each other.      A little bit about myself, my family, and my intentions with this blog: I am a child of multiple divorces. My personal family relations were fairly poor in quality growing up. We were a broken family and are now considered a blended family. Relationships are improving as we all move out and make our own way in the world. I want to explore what might be done differently when I start my own family so that relationships can be positive the during my entire tenure as a parent. I am really excited to learn and share with anyone who wants to learn with me!      I am going to university for Range Management. I find myself absolutely enraptured with the outdoors (See photo of me so happy to find a...