Sam's Family Relations Blog

 Today I want to talk about the world of dating and what dating really is compared to courting. Because I grew up Mormon, I had very strict rules about dating and having a boyfriend, but I never really listened to my parents and dated anyway. I had the idea that dating is solely for romantic intentions instead of getting to know a person. Now that I'm in college I realize that dates, especially the first one, should just be a fun activity. Obviously, a date implies some sort of interest in a person, but it should be a relaxed and casual environment to properly get to know someone. When I met my boyfriend, I thought he was really attractive, but I didn't have any romantic feelings toward him. He however fell head over heels for me. There was about a solid week of us getting to know each other before we actually started dating. Most of what we did was spend time talking to one another about our lives and how good of friends we had become. Once we started dating, we would go on wa...

This is another topic that hits really close to home for me. It also hurts me to see that this is even a discussion. I have a very strong opinion on this that is based on personal experience. When I was a teenager I came out to my parents and after that, the worst years of my life followed. I then did copious amounts of research on this issue trying to find some form of clarity or comfort, and what I found helped me understand myself more. My sophomore English class required us to do a semester-long research project as well as a term paper. I, unfortunately, don't have the paper with me anymore, otherwise, I would site my sources. However, what I found is more recent and relevant than other information that I have seen. The first point that I want to make is that homosexuality is not just a human behavior and in fact is found everywhere in nature. So the argument of homosexuality being "unnatural" is completely and utterly false. Over four hundred species of animals displ...

     This topic hits close to home for me. I am in an interracial relationship, I'm white and my boyfriend is Filipino. Because of this, there is a very obvious difference between the cultures we grew up in. Last thanksgiving he had the opportunity to come down to my parent's house and celebrate the holidays. He had never observed thanksgiving before, so it was a new and fun experience for him. We all had a wonderful time and he brought housewarming gifts for the family as a token of gratitude. Gifts are a necessity when you visit someone's house according to him. I had heard about this before but I never had the chance to be on the receiving end of it. He was also surprised about how relaxed the holiday was, the idea of having a day to give thanks and eat copious amounts of food was amazing to him. In the future, he's defiantly going to have to come over and celebrate other holidays with us, he was a wonderful addition to the family.       My dad use ...

     This week I'm going to talk about the roles we had and responsibilities that were given to us as we were growing up. Now I grew up as the oldest child in a very strict household, and often times I was deemed the "trouble maker" or the "burnout". I had a record of bad grades at school and a list of issues at home. Often times when report card season rolled around I always had my phone taken away from me, and very often I was grounded for bad grades. At the time that was probably the worst thing that they could have done to help me because I was already struggling with mental illness. Just after my sophomore year of high school, we decided that we needed to get me evaluated for learning disorders. I was officially diagnosed with ADHD and then a list of reading and comprehension disorders. Suddenly my parents changed their tune about how they went about grades, suddenly they weren't the most important thing in the world and they became a lot more understan...