Close relationships

Affinity • Attachment • Bonding • Boyfriend • Casual • Cohabitation • Compersion • Concubinage • Courtship • Divorce • Domestic partnership • Dower, dowry, and bride price • Family • Friendship • Girlfriend • Husband • Infatuation • Intimacy • Jealousy • Limerence • Love • Marriage • Monogamy • Nonmonogamy • Passion • Pederasty • Platonic love • Polyamory • Polyfidelity • Polygamy • Psychology of monogamy • Relationship abuse • Romance • Separation • Sexuality • Serial monogamy • Sexual orientation • Significant other • Wedding • Widowhood • Wife  This box: view • talk • edit

A widow is a woman whose spouse has died. An interpersonal relationship is a relatively long-term association between two or more people Affinity in terms of Sociology, refers to " Kinship of Spirit " interest and other interpersonal commonalities. Attachment in adults deals with the theory of attachment in adult romantic relationships Human bonding refers to the development of a close Interpersonal relationship between family members or friends NOTICE*************** Casual relationship is a term used to describe the physical and emotional relationship between two people who may have a Sexual relationship or a near-sexual relationship without Cohabitation is when people live together in an emotionally- and/or physically- Intimate relationship. Compersion is a term used by practitioners of Polyamory or Swingers to describe the experience of taking pleasure that one's partner is with another person Concubinage is the state of a woman or youth in an ongoing quasi-matrimonial relationship with a man of higher social status Courtship is the traditional dating period before engagement and marriage Divorce or dissolution of marriage is the termination of a Marriage. A domestic partnership is a legal or Personal relationship between two individuals who live together and share a common domestic life but are neither joined by a traditional Not to be confused with Dowry, or with Dour. Dower or morning gift ( Latin doarium, or Latinized A dowry (also known as trousseau or tocher) is the money goods or estate that a woman brings to her soon to be husband in marriage Bride price also known as bride wealth is an amount of Money or Property or Wealth paid by the groom or his family to the Parents of Family denotes a group of People affiliated by consanguinity affinity or co-residence Friendship is a term used to denote co-operative and supportive behavior between two or more beings Girlfriend is a term that can refer to either a Female partner in a non- marital romantic relationship or a female non-intimate Friend A husband is a Male spouse (participant in a Marriage, Civil union or Civil partnership. Infatuation is the state of being completely carried away by unreasoned passion or Love; addictive love The meaning of intimacy varies from relationship to relationship and within a given relationship Limerence, as posited by psychologist Dorothy Tennov, is an involuntary Cognitive and emotional state in which a person feels an intense romantic Love is any of a number of Emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong Affection. NOTICE TO WOULD-BE ROMEOS ************** Monogamy is the custom or condition of having only one mate in a Relationship, thus forming a Couple. Nonmonogamy is a Blanket term covering several different types of Interpersonal relationship in which some or all participants have multiple marital, Passion (from the Latin patior, meaning to suffer or to endure is an emotion of feeling very strongly about a person Pederasty or paederasty refers to an erotic relationship sexually expressed or not between an adolescent boy and an adult male outside his immediate family Amor Platonicus The term amor platonicus was coined as early as the 15th century by the Florentine scholar Marsilio Ficino Polyamory (from Greek el πολυ meaning many or several and Latin la amor “love” is the desire practice or acceptance of having more than one Polyfidelity is a form of polyamorous Group marriage wherein all members consider each other to be primary partners and agree to be sexual only with other members The term polygamy (a Greek word meaning "the practice of multiple marriage" is used in related ways in Social anthropology, Sociobiology, and The psychology of monogamy deals with the thoughts feelings and behaviors that commonly occur in monogamous relationships Abuse refers to the use or treatment of something (a person item substance concept or vocabulary that is harmful NOTICE TO WOULD-BE-ROMEOS*************** Legal separation (sometimes "separate maintenance" " divorce a mensa et thoro," or "divorce from bed-and-board" is a possible step towards Human sexual behavior or different human sexual practices encompass a wide range of activities such as strategies to find or attract partners ( Mating and display Serial monogamy is characterized by a series of long- or short-term exclusive Sexual relationships entered into consecutively over the lifespan Sexual orientation is believed to refer to "an enduring pattern of emotional romantic and/or sexual attractions to men women or both sexes NOTICE TO WOULD-BE-ROMEOS*************** A wedding is the Ceremony in which two people are united in Marriage. A wife is a Female spouse or participant in a Marriage, or Civil union or Civil partnership. A man whose spouse has died is a widower. The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed widowhood or (occasionally) viduity. The gender neutral term is widowed.

"Valentine of Milan Mourning her Husband, the Duke of Orléans" by Fleury-François Richard.

The social status of widows has been an important social issue, particularly in the past. In families in which the husband was the sole provider, widowhood could plunge the family into poverty, and many charities had as a goal the aid of widows and orphans (often, not children without parents, but children without a contributing father). Poverty (also called penury) is deprivation of common necessities that determine the quality of life including food clothing shelter and safe Drinking water, and The definition of charitable organization, and of charity varies according to the country and in some instances the region of the country in which the charitable organization operates An orphan (from the Greek ὀρφανός) is a child whose natural parents are absent or dead and who are not there to bring him up This was aggravated by women's longer life spans, and that men generally marry women younger than themselves, and by the greater ease with which men remarried.

However, in some patriarchal societies, widows were among the most independent women. Patriarchy is the structuring of Society on the basis of Family units where fathers have primary responsibility for the welfare of hence authority over A widow sometimes carried on her late husband's business and consequently accorded certain rights, such as the right to enter guilds. A guild is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade The earliest guilds were formed as confraternities of workers More recently, widows of elected officials have been among the first women elected to office in many countries (e. g. Corazon Aquino). María Corazón Cojuangco-Aquino (born María Corazón Sumulong Cojuangco on January 25, 1933) widely known as Cory Aquino, was the 11th

There were implications for sexual freedom as well; although some wills contained dum casta provisions (requiring widows to remain unmarried in order to receive inheritance), in societies preventing divorce, widowhood permitted women to remarry and have a greater range of sexual experiences. In Common law, a will or testament is a document by which a person (the Testator) regulates the rights of others over his or her Property Divorce or dissolution of marriage is the termination of a Marriage. The Wife of Bath in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales refers to having been widowed five times, permitting her greater sexual experience. " The Wife of Bath's Tale " and its Prologue are among the best-known of Geoffrey Chaucer 's Canterbury Tales. Geoffrey Chaucer (c 1343 – 25 October 1400? was an English author poet Philosopher, bureaucrat, courtier and Diplomat. The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century (two of them in Prose, the rest in verse)

Statue of a mother at the Yasukuni shrine, dedicated to war widows who raised their children alone.

In some other cultures, widows are treated differently. Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate" generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic For instance, in India there is often an elaborate ceremony during the funeral of a widow's husband, including smashing the bangles, removing the bindi as well as any colorful attire, and requiring the woman to wear white clothes, the colour of mourning. India, officially the Republic of India (भारत गणराज्य inc-Latn Bhārat Gaṇarājya; see also other Indian languages) is a country A funeral is a Ceremony marking a person's Death. Funerary customs comprise the complex of Beliefs and practices used by a Culture to remember "Red Dot" redirects here For other uses see Red Dot (disambiguation "Bindee" redirects here Earlier it was compulsory to wear all white after the husband was dead, and even Widow burning (sati or suttee) was practiced sometimes. Satī ( Devanagari: सती, the feminine of sat "true" (also suttee) is a Funeral practice among some However in modern day culture this has gradually given way to wearing colored clothing. Sati practice has been banned in India for more than a century. The ban began under British rule of India owing to the persistence of social reformer RajaRam Mohan Roy.

In other cultures, widows are required to remarry within the family of their late husband; see widow inheritance. Widow inheritance, also known as bride inheritance, is a type of marriage in which a Widow marries a kinsman of her late husband often his brother This started as a custom to ensure that no widow could be kicked out of her home and face a life without financial provision, but it can also be used to keep money within the family. In addition, it is an important factor in the transmission of HIV within certain communities, e. Human immunodeficiency virus ( HIV) is a Lentivirus (a member of the Retrovirus family that can lead to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome g. the Luo, and is being challenged on human rights grounds. The Luo (also spelled Lwo) are a family of ethnolinguistically affiliated groups who live in an area that stretches from Southern Sudan, through northern Uganda Human rights refers to the "basic Rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled

Cultural references to widows

• Water (2005 film) a film directed and written by Deepa Mehta, explores the lives of widows at an ashram in Varanasi, India. Water (वाटर 2005, is a Canadian film directed and written by Deepa Mehta. Deepa Mehta (दीपा मेहता (born 1 January 1950 in Amritsar, Punjab, India) is an Indian-born Canadian film An Ashram in ancient India was a Hindu hermitage where sages lived in Peace and tranquility amidst Nature. Varanasi ( Sanskrit: वाराणसी Vārāṇasī, pronunciation) also commonly known as Benares ( or Banaras (बनारस

See also

• Marriage
• Bereavement
• Black Widow
• Orphan
• Estate Planning

External links

• "Nothing to Go Back To - The Fate of the Widows of Vrindavan, India" WNN - Women News Network Nov 5, 2007
• Grief's Journey (focuses on spousal loss)
• GriefAngels - Activities for Widows
• [1] Shunned from society, widows flock to city to die