Romantic love
| 17, Jan, 19
The first thing we all tend to answer when asked about love has to do with intimate, personal feelings, intangible and indescribable experiences, sometimes it is even explained as something magical. Love in essence is a simple phenomenon to which we have attributed meaning according to our sociocultural, historical and geographical context.
So if it is such a particular and intimate phenomenon, why do we tend to give the same answers?
Love as we know it now, is a sociological phenomenon originated in the 18th century (the Age of Enlightenment) where several enlightened figures gathered to define and coin what this feeling is and how it was experienced by each person according to their gender.
Men were attributed characteristics such as: strength, vitality, character, courage, roughness, etc; and women were attributed: sweetness, kindness, dedication, commitment and other soft characteristics. With this, the idea was established that men and women come from nature with certain characteristics and that we need to relate to each other to be complete.
According to Vigarous (1807) "man and woman are the same entity divided into two separate halves; one is accompanied by strength and roughness, and the other by weakness and sweetness: these isolated qualities are nothing by themselves, but reunited they support and temper each other".
This idea leads to the exaltation of virtuous heterosexual relationships, in which there is no longer a hierarchical difference but "complementarity" between genders and this union must be legitimized by a marriage contract.
Thus, this legal contract ceases to be a merely financial agreement to maintain family assets and also becomes the testimony that the beloved, desired, correct person has been found to reproduce and also to be complementary. According to Jankowiak (1994) these are the four common elements in romantic love relationships: idealization, eroticization of the other, desire for intimacy and expectation of the future.
Romantic love is defined by institutions, society and power. What we consider intimate has more to do with a series of imposed and internalized values and perceptions than with an individual experience of the feeling. This phenomenon is strengthened by religion, education and communication media such as songs, books, audiovisual productions, etc.
It responds to a social restructuring and a domestication of sexuality that rests on misogynistic discourse, in which men are valued for their political and economic achievements, and women are valued based on marriage and motherhood. As Lagarde criticizes: "For women, love is not just a possible experience, it is an experience that defines us."
This conception of love, besides being completely wrong, has the aggravating factor that it is based on a patriarchal normative in which the role of women, even with the theory of complements - which is also wrong: we are all complete beings - places us in a position of complete subordination to men.
"Love has been the opium of women. While men dedicate themselves to governing, we dedicate ourselves to loving" Millett (1975)
Being "in love" acts as a defense mechanism against the truth of subordination, offering women the deception that they are both givers and receivers (Langford, 1999). A relationship based on the differences of its members carries a latent danger and it is here that the feminist challenge to romantic love becomes evident, because if we do not question our macho and sexist beliefs, we will perpetuate a social structure based on the devaluation of the feminine, thus favoring the perpetuation of violence.
"The day a woman can love not with her weakness but with her strength, not escape from herself but find herself, not humble herself but affirm herself, that day love will be for her, as for man, a source of life and not a mortal danger" Simone de Beauvoir
Everything indicates then that what we must do is not learn to love but unlearn to love romantically. Here are some tips to start breaking romantic love, transcend the definition of a simple feeling and take the step towards free love:
From romantic love to free love:
- Question the meaning attributed to love
- Recognize independent and complete beings
- Prioritize freedom, autonomy and personal fulfillment
- Strengthen our sense of life
- Bring us closer to who we are
- Accept that a healthy relationship is chosen and built
- Understand that "love cannot do everything"
- Perceive equality of conditions
- Enjoy camaraderie and solidarity
REAL LIFE PODCAST:
https://ladivorcee.com/2019/01/20/vida-real-episodio-4-amor-romantico/