Blog # 50: Men and Masculinity

My sister and I had more structure and a stricter curfew than my brother who was the middle child. My brother was allowed to go to girls houses and he was able to have girls in his bedroom. My sister and I were not allowed to go to our boyfriend’s homes, but we were able to let them come over only if both of our parents were present so they could keep an eye on us. My sister, who was the oldest wasn’t allowed to date until her senior year. With myself being the youngest, I was privileged to date when I turned sixteen.
My brother ended up getting his sixteen year old girlfriend pregnant. My parents didn’t want that to happen to me so they immediately put me on birth control. I wouldn‘t want to change what my parents did by putting me on birth control after finding out my brother’s shocking news. I do think my brother should had the same strict rules as my sister and I did. It wasn’t fair for me to have to come home hours earlier than my brother or had a set dating age. Maybe if my brother had the same rules as my sister and I, he wouldn’t be a dad.;
I learned from my family rules that just because we are female don’t automatically mean we won’t get pregnant by eliminating our much deserved freedom. My sister and I were smart by the decisions we made. My brother on the other hand never thought about contraception with his girlfriend, which ended up in a very preventable pregnancy.
The most important thing that I learned during the discussion was when Matson was explaining that respect is more important than love. I never really thought about it that way until Matson went into depth on how during a relationship, if there is not any respect, then how could there possibly be true love? Another important thing that I learned during the discussion was that stress is a choice made by you. I never thought about stress being a choice until I made the decision for myself to live a stress-free life.

The reason why I think learning that respect is more important than love is because when I was a young sixteen year old girl, I was in my first long term relationship with an older guy for two years and our relationship was based on constant disrespect. Looking back at our relationship, I thought I was in love with him, but in reality I was fooling myself. He constantly disrespected me, but I would never leave him because I was too afraid of being alone. I was one of those girls who would rather be in a miserable relationship than be alone altogether. The reason why I think learning that stress is a choice is important, because I was constantly living my everyday life as stressed. I do believe it is impossible to live your life completely stress-free, but the way a person deals with stress has a huge impact on their life. I was so sick with living my life as stressful, so now I just take a deep breath before I become stressed. Making the choice of not living my life stressful was the best choice that I have ever made in my life. This class has been nothing but a learning experience and I completely recommend this class to everyone