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Family Studies

The Love Affairs in the Life of Ross Gellar:
Emotional Affairs Stand Strongest
Though I have always had an interest in defining what kind of love affairs outside a
marriage or relationship was tolerable and which ones would be the end of the primary
marriage or relationship, I had yet to discover a single answer that could be universally
agreed upon. According to our studied textbook ("Families in Canada", 2005, p. 212),
there are three main types of extramarital relationship styles: strongly emotional without
any sexual intercourse, not emotional with sexual intercourse, or emotional with sexual
intercourse. As I followed along with the well-known television series of Friends, I saw
all three types of these extramarital affairs experienced in the unfortunate love life of the
character Ross Gellar (played by actor David Schwimmer). The question is, however,
which one of these affairs would be intolerable and unforgivable (giving no leeway to
future chance of patching things up with the initial partner), and which ones could still be "
fixed" with the spouse or partner, given time.
For years before having read such a textbook as Families in Canada or having taken
a family studies course, my personal hypothesis on extramarital affairs had always been
that men were more likely to cheat sexually, and women were more likely to cheat
emotionally. Given my nature of being a female I felt luckier because I would rather
have my future spouse cheat on me sexually rather than emotionally. My hypothesis
proved to be correct according to our textbook, where it states "Women were more likely
than men to have emotional affairs, whereas men were much more likely to have affairs
that were only sexual." ("Families in Canada", 2005, p.212) I personally believe that purely
sexual affairs would be much easier to let go of in time than any affairs that contain
emotional attachments. This can be proved in an average type of guy's life,...