Sunday Swoons!

by Skylar

If you don't know what Sunday Swoons is, it's a weekly feature where Skylar @ Life of a Random and I (and anyone who links up) chat about all things swoon worthy every spectacular Sunday!

Rules:
1. You're welcome to use the button Skylar designed as long as you cite her as the source/give her all the loving credit she deserves!

2. You can post in whatever style you would like: list, discussion, etc. as long as what you are talking about goes with the topic for the week.

3. You either must follow the topic given OR you can do a post on the opposite of the topic we give. (Example: Our topic-- Top 5 Favorite Couples, Your topic-- Top 5 Least Favorite Couples.)

4. Your posts don't have to have anything to do with books you are reading right now. If you reference specific books, they can be past or older reads. (It's nice if you put in the Goodreads link to the book, or another site that will take readers to the book's synopsis, cover, and other information.)

5. Please remember to link back to us in your post, giving us credit for the feature! Also, you can add your link to the link-up tool at either of our posts ( it may only work on mine the first time because we are still working that part out.).

This week's topic is: Diversity in Relationships

I got really excited when Skylar came up with the idea to talk about race in relationships, and then it sparked a different idea for me. What about religion in relationships? (We decided on just Diversity so that people could come at it from any angle they'd like.) That's always been something I hear a lot about because I am a Roman Catholic Christian and grow up in a family that is (almost all) super religious. and same with my community. A big "rule" or part of that is that you are supposed marry and date people of the same religion as you.

I understand why. There are lots of good reasons. It makes it so that you can support each other on a faith and spiritual basis, you don't have as many religion or spiritual belief conflicts, if you have kids together you won't have arguments about their religious upbringing, ect. However, I have never ever "discounted" a guy because of his religion. (sorry family) By that I mean that I don't really care what a guys religion is. It's nice if we share the same religion, but as long as he respects my beliefs and we can calmly work out any religion based differences I don't mind him not sharing all my religious beliefs.

So now that we have talked about me, let's connect this to literature. I don't read super religious literature most of the time, but still, religion never really comes up. I'm ok with this, but I think it is interesting that when that message is pushed so hard in reality that it never seems to come up in our most popular novels.

Also, I've never read a book where the culture or race of the two people in the couple has played a significant role, clashed, or even been brought up. That's not a bad thing per say, but I feel like we need more diversity in our modern and popular literature. It is a real and prominent issue in life today and it doesn't get very much recognition in books today (at least the ones I read).

What do you guys think about mixing religions, races and cultures in real life relationships? What diverse relationships have you read and what have you thought about them? Do you feel like we need to address differences in literary relationships and have our characters work out intense and deep differences/disagreements?

Next week's topic is based on: Couples we've Created