First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage (Josefina, NA2)

Realistically speaking, marriage has changed greatly throughout its long existence. Nevertheless, the most important bond of a married couple is love.  Besides love, the commitment and desire to spend time and share experiences is the basis of a real marriage. However, nowadays it seems there are other aspects involved in the marriage institution.

According to recent statistics in Spain, people prefer to get married than to stay single. Perhaps, during these harsh economic times, it is easier to cope as a team than trying to face them alone. A part of this is the fact that in our current times, married couples have more advantages than those who are not married. Furthermore, the development of marriage and society have improved the balance between men and women.

Clearly the biggest change to former times is that people of the same sex have the possibility to marry. Spain is one of the few countries that allows this. Previously, the homosexual community could not publicly show affection to each other. Nowadays, they have the same rights as heterosexual couples. They can live their lives as they please.

To sum up, many things have changed and developed but the most important things is the fact that a marriage must have love, commitment, intimacy and passion to survive. This has not altered in the last 30 years and will never change.  

How dating has changed in the last thirty years (Tachy)

           We usually say that any time in the past was better, but is that true about dating?

         First of all, we have to remember how dating was thirty years ago. When you liked somebody, you had to look for the way to approach that person, and the male always used to be the one who took the initiative. Sometimes you collect information from the friends of the girl you liked in order to plan the strategy. Going out with the gang and hanging out with friends at clubs or festivals allowed you to interact with people.

          However, things have changed radically nowadays. If you want to meet someone you really need their whatsapp's account. If the person said that she did not have whatsapp or facebook, she would not probably want to know anything about you or just does not exist, because is there anybody in the world who does not have them?

         Undoubtedly, the Internet has given us the chance to access a greater number of people and faster than before, but we still have to say that you would miss the  physical contact and non-verbal communication.

          All in all, it is easy to conclude that taking into consideration the disadvantages and advantages of dating today, we should not proclaim that life is so much better today than 30 years ago, it is just different.  Tachy

Women: past, present and future (Norberto NA2)

Women: past, present and future

                The role of women has been changing for the better  in recent decades. Although a long way has been travelled, there are certain mountains that we need to climb.

In the early 1920s or 1930s women used to be dependent, without self conscious and with no power to make decisions, all these features respond to the pressure of a sexist society, where women were considered an inferior person. In fact, they had to hold up the yoke of this society for years. The years went by and women emerged from the deepest stratus and began to fight for their rights. Also, this time was a hard and terrible period where many changes were happening in the entire world and they had to be strong to rise up in their position.

            Fortunately, nowadays women have a better recognition despite certain people who insist in retrograde theories and still trying to suppress human evolution. As a matter of fact, I have read of recent cases of  women who still live in a marriage where man is the patriarch and the wife has no option to express her ideas and live like a slave. She can not go shopping, go for a long walk or any kind of activity without her husband, even talk with another man is a reason to start a discussion. This kind of woman lives in a deep, cold, dark cave and suffers diseases such as stress or anxiety.

            To sum up, we all need to struggle together against this mentality, and promote any changes in order to offer the same opportunities for men and women. With all these actions, maybe one day we can create a fair society. (Norberto NA2) 

A Date with a Computer (Yeray NA 2)

“Tonight I am having a date with my cyber girlfriend.”

 It was impossible to hear this thirty years ago. The way people date today has changed so much in these last years. Both young and old people use their computer for meeting new friends through the Internet. Many times, what begins as a friendship ends up in a love relationship. Let’s consider how this happens.

According to current research, most people find it easier to get to know people through the Internet, because they tend to confess their life and their problems to someone being sheltered behind the screen of the computer. In other words, the computer provides the sensation of confidence that is difficult to find in face to face human contact.

Furthermore, many of them affirm that they are likely to communicate their feelings using a computer and they do not feel embarrassed about expressing sadness or love when they talk either in chat rooms or in social networks.

Nevertheless, how real are these on-line conversations? Obviously, I have to consider the possibility that the person who I am chatting with might be lying. So, I could fall in love with someone who is not the person it assures to be.

On the one hand, many people prefer the classical face to face when they look for a new partner or friend. Therefore, they say that the Internet is only a manner to keep in touch with family and friends, so they do not lose the connection with their lives and do not care if someone unknown lets them down.

Finally, are on-line relationships the future method of getting to know people? Understandably, it seems to point toward this direction. But to a certain extent, we should take into account the difference between on-line and real life experience. Above all, we must be conscious that human contact is much more satisfactory that the cyber-world. 

by Yeray NA 2 

Equal Rights for Women and Men (by Susi NA 2)

The role of women and men has changed enormously over the last century. But are these roles equal yet?

It is true that the way in which women are seen today is very different from the way were seen two hundred years ago. Back then women were not allowed to speak as often as they would have liked. They were expected to have children and do household duties as cleaning and cooking for the family while men were always the ones who commanded or had the final word.

Firstly, in this century women have the ability to choose our own lives, speak our minds or balance a family and a career. It is common for both women and men to work outside the home and, of course, families are smaller.

I have two daughters and I wish them a more egalitarian, just and humane society as women. For instance, there is a simple test to assess the active presence of movies. A movie just has to pass this simple question: “If there are two or more women in the movie, do they talk to each other about something other than a man?”

It is quite extraordinary, actually, how many movies do not pass this test. For example, Slumdog millionaire, Shrek, Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Identity, Ocean’s twelve, Pirates Caribbean, Men in black and many more films.

This test does not gauge if it is a feminist or a good movie, just if there is a female presence in it and that they are engaging about things other than men.

Finally, do these changes mean that women today have more idyllic lives than our great-grandmothers? I personally believe that we do but still we need to tend to a much more humanizing culture with women, society needs a deep change in its mindset.