Conflict and Tension

One of the most prominent elements of the cases that we read about this week was the comparison of homosexual relationships to traditional marriages and courtship rituals in order to define the status of the two people involved. When two men or two women went on paseo together, held hands, slept in the same bed, supported each other financially, etc., they were considered to be in a monogamous kind of physical relationship. One of the most convincing characteristics, however, was the jealous fights that couples often got into, attracting the attention of neighbors and alerting them to the fact that these two people must be involved with each other. This is still one of the ways we define relationships today. When little boys chase little girls around the playground and annoy them, their parents usually say it's because the boys like them. Later in life, if two people get into passionate arguments, particularly ones based on jealousy or similar offenses, they must be together. People tend to assume that if you don't care about someone, you won't bother to argue with them, and it won't hurt your feelings for them to give someone else attention. And usually this is true. But it's interesting to realize that fights can be a characteristic of passionate relationships. It's certainly not something we would usually assume unless we stopped to think about it. Romantic comedies almost always portray a couple who are being tormented by outside circumstances and who are also frustrating each other because of their differences and what usually turns out to be suppressed sexual tension. In fact, if I hear of a couple that never has arguments, I am usually skeptical of how sincere their relationship can be. Surely it doesn't have any depth, or they would have run into divisive issues by now. So while jealous fights and arguments are not necessarily a desirable quality in relationships, they do seem to be a widely accepted and sometimes successful measure of how intimate and sincere a relationship between two people is.