Are we living in a time where the importance of relationships is degraded?

Let's contemplate..

Based upon a discussion I had yesterday with a friend about the great spanish painter Joaquin Sorolla; I find my self this morning contemplating this question: Are we living in a time where the importance of relationships is degraded?

Why do we as people recently started to degrade or disregard the importance of having a solid love partners relationship? how come one of the most important form of relationships in earth is regarded with cynicism, dislike, or some subtle form of lack of importance?

How come do we gaslight ourselves this way?

I say gaslight because it is an inherent need. It is in our psyche whether we like it or not, whether we admit it or not!! It is the way we are created.

And denying a solid fact is a form of gaslighting.  

Me and my friend, were discussing about the cinema, and how they portray artists in certain ways in order to sell more….etc, a normal discussion I believe we can all have in our daily lives. Moving from William Turner and then reaching Joaquin Sorolla. Where the triggers have hit me hard!

Sorolla is a painter that is well known about his portraits of the normal life of the sea in Spain. He painted his wife and kids and also other people but the way he portrayed his family is just heart warming.

I said: I love how Sorolla was just a normal guy. Normal man.

My friend: Well, it could be an image they sold us. Some historian questioned his loyalty to his wife, you know, he travelled a lot, was away for many months from his wife and had a lot of parties and friends.

Why did this comment trigger me? well, different points.

Frist: I travelled a lot. I am living alone. I love parties and I have lots of friends. And many of us do and surely don’t indulge in sexual encounters because of that!! So let’s clear that out of the way.

Second: Why does infidelity has to be a part of the success of the man? like why???.

This is for me is very alarming. I don’t want my children to learn that. I think this comes from different social conditioning constructs. The hyper sexuality of men. Women needing to accept this as part of men nature. Ha, this leads to what?

Patriarchy and inferiority of women? Mmm, and if it is part of the success of the man, and many successful men run different organisations, and infidelity implies other women (in the case of Sorolla), and because he was successful many women would involve with him to have opportunities??

Taking this for granted just justifies all what the Me Too movement have showed us. Are you seeing what could this implies, allows and permits!!

Third: Why is it so strangely viewed (by the historian) that Sorolla wrote everyday a letter to his wife? Why is it not acceptable that a man (living in a time where the communication way was by letters) writes a letter to his wife and the mother of his children? Would not this also be the same debate of men DONT communicate and NOT communicating is part of manhood? Is it the same crisis between men and women today in 2024. Sorolla was a COMMUNICATIVE man!

Fourth: I felt it also as an underestimation to the value this man had for his wife and family.

Infidelity is expected to be part of the artist journey? Well NO. I believe the opposite, infidelity is lack of integrity. I don’t like accepting lack of integrity as a normal behaviour, and real success depends on real integrity, it depends on real values of life. Sometimes I feel like we are pushed to believe that if we want to succeed we need somehow to under-evaluate ethics and good values.

The results of these is the community that we see now, the wars that we see now, the injustices and inequalities we see now.

With no ethics with no values how can we even live a good life??

Fifth: This somehow underestimate the role of his wife in his life. This somehow underestimates the value of love relationships in our lives. And it made me realise something that is quite scary to me which is that success is viewed in an individual manner, depending on the person alone who have it.

Isn’t love a basic human need? isn’t having a great solid love relationship is actually a supporter and driver for success? isn’t having a loving partner something important? And do we actually underestimate the value of love? the value of relationships?

Well, my friend in the end told me, we can’t know, what is important now to us is his art.

Well, for me I care about the human behind the art. But, no matter what I truly believe that he had the right to live as he wanted. And indeed he left us great art.

But let us contemplate about the patriarchy even when we have discussions with friends and most importantly when we do research, and we are in a position to impact a lot of people with what we say.

We should have clear vision and be able to at least try to see with clarity.