Rashmi Parab
In the life of academics, love is rarely discussed as a subject that merits scientific evidence and profound understanding. This is true even in western countries, as lamented by some of the popular talk of the town’s of psychology, for example Harry Harlow and Claude Steiner.
In their context, “Love is a wondrous state, deep, tender, and rewarding. Because of it’s intimate and personal nature, it is regarded by some as an improper topic for experimental research. But, whatever our personal feelings may be, our assigned mission as psychologists is to analyse all facets of human and animal behaviour into their component variables. So far as love or affection is concerned, psychologists have failed in this mission.”
– said Harry Harlow as he addressed his audience at the sixty sixth Annual Convention of the American Psychological association, Washington.
“…among psychological research projects love is not the subject of the intense inquiry as often as it deserves to be…. Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence has twenty index entries related to anger, and only three index entries on love in Chapter One, and none in the rest of the book. A search of the complete Annual Review of Psychology in 1996 found no reference to love.”
– Claude Steiner spoke at the Keynote Lecture at the 3rd Adolescence Health Conference at the Royal College of Physicians in London.
The above mentioned references talks about the culture shyness to speak about love in general. Hence romantic intimacy is unspeakable of, and yet is an important development milestone for young adults and has been identified as the single most factor who deprivation has been linked to crime and violence in adolescence.
From the perspective of Indians overview on this study, it provides an interesting content. A comprehensive, realistic, liberal and detached view of human sexuality and love as well as individual freedom can be obtained from a study of Indian mythology (eg. Mahabharata), Sanskrit literature such as Puranas, Vatsayana’s Kamasutra and Bhartiruahri’s Shringar Shatak. However, it is usually believed that Indian Cultural does not support romantic relationships, in fact, it is seen as some kind of a social taboo. A distraction. Though, despite of all restraints, an increasing number of young adults show an inclination for premarital courtships. Hence, the few researchers that have premarital relationships in their titles focus on reproductive and sexual health aspects of these relationships rather than interpersonal experiences.
Let’s talk about the study on love and romance in detail,
Romantic love is mostly conceptualized as a development phenomenon, hard-wired in the human species and influenced by contextual factors such as beliefs and attitudes pertaining to romantic love and related phenomenon like sexual intimacy, commitments, marriage, expectations in parent-child relationships, and gender roles to name a few. Ultimate bliss and beauty is associated with it; moreover, it is viewed as a phenomenon which goes beyond the self as well as the society. Also, it is not bound to any particular age in humans. Intimacy is defined as maintaining complete transparency and attaching whole-hearted physical, emotional and mental involvement of both persons engaged in a romantic relationship. However, with increasing complexity in relationships behaviour and experiences, such terms seem to be outdated.
Adults involved in a romantic relationships showed preference for partners who were simply rather than boastful, aspired to find a life-partner in their romantic partner, and also made a positive influence on many aspects of their partnership life including studies, career goals and ambitions. Partners involved in such type of relationships are content of their decisions and have no reason to come out of the agreement. A relationship has different effects on different people. The support of their parents and the community, their attitudes towards their relationship, availability of support and personal space, the personal cultural perspective determine the impact on the person’s personality.
Focusing on the positive side of the relationship, many have reported of being content and at peace while they’re with their partners and also included how it has helped them grow and learn about themselves and adapt to the changes which cannot be neglected or stopped, a natural outcome.
Parents reported democratic modes of decision making regarding the emerging adult’s choice of romantic of future spouse. Young adults could be naive in the name of love according to the society or atmosphere they’re surrounded by or they let themselves surrounded by. While parents demonstrated a desire to understand their children, emerging adults too showed empathy in their responses towards parental concern for them, even when they felt that their parents were “over protective” at times.
Popular romantic adult movies can be also one of the factors impacting young adults and their choices and decisions in the matters of relationships. For example, the infamous Shah Rukh Khan (SRK), the actor, is known as The King of Romance and has a huge fan following in India. He is adored by every age group including the new youths, especially for his unique romantic style.
It was found out that memes such as, “Love brings pain and sufferings for self and family”, “Day dreaming about love”, “Love can happen to anyone and anytime”, “Love is a gradual process, no one falls in love suddenly” and various others were the dominant love memes merging from the narrative analysis of his romantic movies.
This indicates the way in which the film story takes turn in the end and questions the stereotypes showed in the beginning, downplaying the negative aspects of film. The audience tend to take away the positive messages.
Overall, the field of understanding romantic love is very fertile in terms of offering a range of aspects from understanding love, relationship transgressions, breakups, forgiveness and also to designing modules to enhance interpersonal capacities. Studies related to the impact of social media and dating applications on romantic relationships are also ongoing in the department.
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this is great content .. keep posting! 🙂
Thank you ji
Lovely topic which really needs to be discussed. Thank you… Nice content
Thank you so much ☺
This is a very beautifully written article, it touches upon important aspect. it was so engaging, i wanted to read more. While you touched upon the Indian context, i would have loved you diving deeper into it.
Omg, thank you so much
This article is relatable to quite a large audience. It is very well put and is written beautifully!
Thank you
Well Written
Keep Writing
Thank you riya☺
this article really touches a lot of valid, relevant issues, it was really great; the impact of media on our culture is another important point which I loved that you mentioned! I couldn’t help but feel slightly off put by the fact that there wasn’t really anything about the difficulties LGBTQ+ youth faced when it came to romance in our society, how they face different issues from straight people and they have to go through double the stigma. It could have been slightly more inclusive, but other than it, it was super good!
I really like how it began but I feel somewhere a lot of things got mixed up. But it somehow reminds how mixed our own views are regarding romance. Appraising Ramayana, an epic love story and various romantic movies as the greatest of all time but at the same time causing all sorts of trouble for the youth when it comes to their romantic lives. We really need more awareness and understanding for such as the damage is often too much when it comes to the likes of it.
well written.