Love and friendship - a personal reflection

 A blog without pictures is boring. Photo taken at Melbourne outskirts.

There was this blogger who wrote stuff that got me thinking a lot about my understanding with regards to relationship and romance. Allow me to paraphrase on the highlights of that blog post:

Males rely on female partner/spouse as their sole emotional support. Bonding between males are usually on a more superficial level that does not being honest about emotional problems. As a result, males need to have a female partner to share their emotional needs and vulnerabilities. On the other hand, females do no fear to share emotional problems. Friendship between females is heavily based on emotional support. Having someone to listen to all your problems and keep you company is equivalent to having a friend.

As a result, there is a disconnect between males and females when interpreting relationship as romance or friendship. Males generally think that only a romantic partner would share their emotion problems with them. However, to quote, "...females do it for their romantic partners and their friends and expect a male friend to do it for them the same a female friend would. This fools the male friend into thinking there must be something romantic there when there is not."

For me, I see that there are two parts to the author's argument:

1. males ought to be more emotionally open towards all their friends
2. male's concept of what friendship and romance mean is fundamentally flawed

Allow me to channel my thoughts about these two issues.

Of course, males could do good by having greater emotional support from friends, including male friends. That would help reduce stress and improve emotional well-being. However, on the other side of the coin, to be honest about emotional problems to other friends does not entirely mean that you will be receiving more emotional support. Instead, you will be at risk of more non-constructive criticisms and naysayers. Therefore, the outcome heavily relies on the male's analysis on the pros and cons of being open about emotional problems. Generally, given the choice, males would choose to be remain secretive. Again, as pointed out by many bloggers, this is a result from how males dictate masculinity. This may be true, but the correlation is not direct. I would like to give this matter the benefit of the doubt by stating that this is a personal choice for males to opt for secrecy and keep personal emotional problems to oneself.

Love is a verb. To love someone, friend or lover, means to do something for the interest or the happiness of that person, which usually coincides with one's self-interest. Being influenced by the works of Robert Sternberg, I see friendship and romance on being on the same linear spectrum, all of which shares the core values of passion, intimacy and commitment.  When it comes to openness about emotional problems, males are generally reluctant to share with most friends, but we may be more likely to do so with our romantic partners. I think, these are things that I would only share with the special ones in my life and no one else because I truly trust them to listen and give support. At least that's how I show my love to some, by showing that I trust them in ways that no one else does. Is this model of trust, openness, friendship and romance truly flawed? In relation to the triangular theory of love as well as the linear spectrum of friendship-romance, if I were to be more emotionally open to most of my friends, wouldn't that meant that I love my friends as much as my lover?

I never like preachers.