Silvia and Roger have only recently met. However Silvia affirms "in a span of three days we were already an old couple".
This does happen: one quickly indulges in a very strong intimacy and bonding, without having had enough time to discover each other.
We have jumped over the long time of waiting, of searching, in which one dreams of the other, awaits his gaze.
Has the dream time passed? Is passion extinguished? Don't young people already have time to discover themselves? Even worse: there will be where something is still possible to discover, at a time when the sexes are getting closer and closer, when men become feminine and women masculine on the basis of a series of overwhelming moral and social developments!
A French woman is so daring as to affirm it. This is Elizabeth Badinter, who is a professor of philosophy in Paris. Once upon a time it has moved the public in this way through its famous work, "Maternal Love".
In it Madame Badinter traces the history of a feeling, from the seventeenth century until today, to prove unfailingly, how even a feeling so intimate and apparently natural in origin, is not born with the person, but depends on social conditions related to culture.
Touche in the heart: now it goes a step further. Irreverently, although scientifically based, Badinter is already looking at modern couples. And it is said that with this he has managed to give in the heart of the French. With his work "I am you" the new relations between man and woman or the androgynous revolution, the teacher without romanticism treats any of the romantic feelings, for centuries the cultural heritage of the French.
For example home nostalgia, dangerous affections, ecstasy and other life-giving sensations are demystified and stripped of their charm by the charming Frenchwoman and declared anachronistic, out of time.
Well, according to one of his most ardent theses after 1000 years of patriarchal authority, a change has taken place in the last 20 or 30 years in western countries that is rooted in the deepest.
The man and the woman are, thanks to him, pushed to leave the spaces and roles, dissociated (dissociating) and isolated (isolating) that were traditionally assigned to them. The old principle of complementarity, of the differentiation of the sexes is replaced, in an overwhelming process of civilization; by the principle of equality.
Opposites are diluted while similarities are enlarged; the other is no longer a “continent full of mysteries”, whose riddle only painfully conquered love is capable of solving.
From there comes the vertigo of passion. Well, according to Madame Badinter “it is she who excludes tests, obstacles and prohibitions. It cannot be separated from infractions of the moral and social law… ”
Even in the 1950s such laws were in force. For example, the films of that time reflect it. The boring process of love conquest made up of traps and resistance was the foundation.
The one who was young then, trembled in the audience and wondered if those two above liked each other or not. The last scene was certainly beautiful, when well accompanied by music, it resulted in the union of both bodies. The latter guaranteed the fusion of hearts into one.
Today, on the screen as in reality, things are faster. And it is known that not only in France. Parents of teenage children usually "don't dramatize" when their child is in an intimate relationship. On the contrary, one is happy when the children know what it is about.
Society with its increasingly harsh educational offerings, pressure from competition and lack of job prospects, shows itself anyway, through increasing coldness and anonymity.
It is here where the warmth and intimacy of the "relationship drawer", in which one slides quickly in the face of inclement, becomes important.
It does not matter that it is not eternal, who knows what will be tomorrow, in the workplace, in politics and in health…?
For the question, what is really normal ?, the generation of our parents in the 1950s would have had only one answer: of course, the family! With the father who brings the money home and the mother who cares for and provides for the house and the children, so that they, too, may have a decent life. They smiled compassionately and suspiciously at the "deviant ways of life" of the aunt who did not marry, the one who got none. One was sorry. The life of an unlawful couple led by Jean Paul Sartre and Simón de Beuvolr passed through pure provocation. Something like that forgave the eccentric intellectuals, never the daughter herself. A son out of wedlock was a disgrace, and some mothers could hardly bear to see their daughter separate after 10 years of union.
Meanwhile, normal cases are barely distinguishable from special ones. Those who live alone, no longer shadowy figures, still make up a third of all families; couples without "marriage faith" spend over a million for a long time, according to an assessment by the French Family Ministry. Parents raising their children alone grow in number.
Meanwhile, 1.3 million children live with the lonely father or mother, who is raising them. That a single woman consciously has a child, without the marriage documentation or apparent partner, is no longer a drama. The first parents (them) are also appearing alone who courageously defend their rights.
What became of the classic girl family? If one is led by the latest research by the Deutsche Ingendin stltuddnatl German tutor for young people, the total of families has fallen from $ 80 to $ 40, a change worthy of attention, but will it also be cause for concern? It has to do with the question What is happening to the family ?, which is precisely the title of a comprehensive study on the situation of the family today, recently presented by the German institute for youth in the city of Munich. However, already in the prologue of the joint work carried out by more than 50 renowned scientists, the concern is relativized: the complaint about a «family crisis» is practically as old, as the political interpretation and especially the scientific research of the same.
The editors warn several times that the death, illness or defeat of the couple and the family, will occur continuously as long as the old customs transmitted and accepted are questioned and stripped of the strength that they have known to have as proven positive…
Away with rigid life plans; welcome the free unfolding and revelation of the self. This is how, according to many scientists, the current evident trend towards individualism in our risky society is outlined: self-denial and renouncing the best style of our grandmothers? That doesn't seem to be in "vogue" anymore. "I do what I do, and you do what you do." I am not on this world to be at your service and vice versa. If we happen to meet, wonderful; and if not bad luck. Nothing can be done: "it is like death…" This is how a well-quoted poem by a famous therapist says.
Behind such a concept about life, won't loneliness lurk? The extreme lack of ties? Our Elizabeth Badinter has also meditated on this. Her finding: loneliness is no longer a shocking ghost for many young people, compared to the hell of a wrong life for two.
That this life for two should not necessarily fail, the best proof of this is the same teacher of girls in philosophy, mother of three teenagers and happy wife. Instead of false expectations, unfulfilled longings and all the deep feelings that cause suffering and little happiness, there would be, in her opinion, something new and good to try: tenderness, affection, brotherhood (camaraderie), trust.
If men and women bravely dare to escape from their old roles (get out of the drawer}, they can become “compagnons” (fellow partners), people who break their bread among themselves and reciprocally respect each other's freedom. more or nothing less.
