I’ve never been in a relationship. Clarification: a romantic relationship. With this in mind, I figured it might be a good idea to attend a talk on healthy relationships as a form of risk management.
Did you know nearly half of the women killed are killed by romantic partners or that many unhealthy relationships start as completely innocent and happy ones? I certainly did not until I had dinner with house fellow Laura Weiss.
This casual conversation with several other peers revealed the dark truth about domestic violence and helped me understand the signs and side of effects of both healthy and unhealthy relationships. I enjoyed learning about other students’ relationships as well. I could relate to the desire to believe that a relationship is perfectly healthy when subtle signs imply the relationship is not. Although I have not been in any romantic relationships, I have been in other relationships with peers and friends.
It was eye-opening to analyze the influence that popular culture and certain films have on my perception on what a healthy relationship is. Oftentimes in films, men pursue women stubbornly; a man rarely gives up on pursuing a woman until she has agreed to go out with him. Many films portray this form of pursuing as romantic. However, in reality, if a man asks a woman out, and she declines it is respectable for the man to stop asking her to go out. If the man continues to pursue the woman, he is a stalker. While this concept may seem obvious, it was not clear to me that the opposite of this message is commonly portrayed by popular culture that I interact with every day. This conversation with Laura revealed this idea and helped me avoid being influenced by these backward messages.