The Husband/wife Realationship

3 Pages 808 Words

In “ the husband-wife relationship: variation in love, intimacy, and sexual jealousy. The article describes cross-cultural differences in how married couple’s act towards one another. In American culture, love is seen as the most important aspect of marriage, while in many other places, love is seen as an aspect of marriage that is not of great importance. The article mentions that in a recent worldwide study 88% of the world shows the capacity to love, whether in songs or folklore. Love is discouraged from being a strong reason for marriage because in many societies in three distinct conditions. The first condition is that the extended family is more concerned with how the person who married into the family interacts with the extended family than how the married couple gets along. The second condition is that one of the spouses must do the majority of the crop growing and subsistence, their purpose for the marriage, as opposed to love. The third condition is that in some societies men have more sexual freedom than women, discouraging love in favor of sexual rights. The article mentions that foraging societies have more intimate couples than herding societies. As far as sexual jealousy goes, it appears that men are more likely to become violent, and are more concerned with men they see as rivals for their mates.
When reading this article we must remember to take into account cultural relativism. Not every culture is going to be like the one we live in, and this is evident when the article mentions that not every culture places a high value on love within marriages. A person who does not keep an open mind may assume that the people in cultures who do not marry for love are callous, uncaring people, without taking into account the huge part cultural relativism plays in understanding another culture. Also, we see how important the extended family is in determining how important love is within a marriage. These anthropo...