Romantic love, in a personal sense, is an intense and uncontrollable emotion that not only defined as a sense of happiness but it is also defined as pain, fear and every other emotion but intensified. Romantic love is also defined by the experiences and feelings people may gain from one another. The term romantic love holds such a heavyweight for some people, while with others it’s pushed to the back of their mind. If love holds such an overall power, why is it that each person can define it as something different. Many people may look at romantic love in a superficial or materialistic way while others see it in a more simplified sense. The world tends to create an overall view of love as rainbows and happiness but love also includes all the pain, anger and heartbreak that someone can bring you. I think that if more people realized that love isn’t only euphoric but everything in between the approach and context that people see love it would change drastically. It is more likely that people will start to see it in a more realistic way instead of the social produced version of romantic love.
I tend to see love like a coin. One side is everything great, the happy memories, the passion and the sense of comfort. The other side is the side of pain, fear, and anger but it is still holding the same amount of passion as the ‘happy side’. To truly define love, you have to acknowledge that in the worst of moments the passion that love brings is still there just in a different state. Not many people bring up the fact that love is screaming at one another until your lungs hurt or crying to your friends about how much you hate that you love the person that hurts you the most. If you didn’t love the person then why does it hurt so bad when they leave or when you fight, if you didn’t love the person then why do you get so angry by their action. Love can bring any emotion to the surface of your mindset and intensify it.
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Love is one of those ideas that people always connect with a happy point in their life or a point they want to get to. People tend to fantasize about what love can bring them, in the article ‘Regulation of Romantic Love’, Sandra J. E. Langeslag and Jan W. van Strien speak on how “Romantic love has positive effects on individuals and society as a whole. For example, love is associated with positive emotions such as euphoria and romantic relationships enhance happiness and life satisfaction” (Langeslag & Strien). They speak on how because love has these positive connotations people strive for the emotion to feel better within their lives. Langeslag and Strien also support the idea that love tends to come with negative points too such as stress, jealousy and sometimes shame and that those emotions are just as intense. Langeslag and Strien further speak to the fact that many people think that love is uncontrollable and that you can’t change the way you feel while in this state of emotion. Within the article, they decided to test how people saw love and see if people’s point that love is uncontrollable supported their actions. After having multiple participants fill out a questionnaire the questions pertaining to controllability came back that the participant didn’t feel in control when it came to love or infatuation but did feel in control when it came to attachment. From reading this it just solidifies the thought that love is uncontrollable and that even though you can make yourself become less attached the emotion of love is still there and is still intense.
Love is something that is so sought after in society that people forget the big picture of it all. While researching what people labeled as love many saw it as something different than what I thought many would say. I saw that people tend the label love as very materialistic, superficial or action based. Many people had described someone buying them roses or jewelry and said that’s what love is or they would describe someone constantly giving them affection and say that's what love is. People also stated how when people just ‘look good together’ than they must be in love. In the article ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ Mario Mikulincer and Phillip R. Shaver brought to light a point that was made by two other Psychologist Zhou and Gao that money is a part of love and that “money can make a person more attractive to others, increasing access to potential romantic partners, and increase the likelihood of social approval and respect”. Zhou and Gao saw love in the manner that I described earlier and was bringing up that nowadays people are finding their version of love through a physical and material attraction. Although in my opinion people may obtain a strong sense of lust, I don’t believe love is material. I think that this view came with the new social norms of people wanting to have something to post and prove to not only themselves but also others that their partner is the best and that their love is overwhelming.
Although this view is very popular its known to many that love can’t be bought. Money can make a more favorable environment for love but you can’t achieve an overwhelming passion for money. In the article ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ by Mario Mikulincer and Phillip R. Shaver they have the view that money may replace love or buy love temporarily but isn’t something to rely on: “We suspect that, although money may substitute for or purchase love in some circumstances, long run it may not fully replace the primary need for love, support, and comfort from other people”. Mikulincer and Shaver argue the point made by two other Psychologists Zhou and Gao that money can replace social support and deviate the stress and pain that comes with natural emotions like love. The point that Mikulince and Shaver are trying to convey is that “the fragility of avoidant defenses and indirectly imply that strategies aimed at replacing love and support may collapse under circumstances. It is under these circumstances that the availability, sensitivity, and responsiveness of loving others become critical for soothing oneself and maintaining or restoring emotional equanimity”.
While the world is trying to achieve this sense of perfect true love and relationships, they lose the fact that true romantic love should have pain and struggle to it. Love isn’t simple so why make the view of it seem so simple. Why force the idea that love should be confined to one side of the emotional spectrum. Love is supposed to make a person grow, it’s supposed to challenge a person to nearly a defeat a point where they feel their lowest, love is what makes a person human. The pain that comes with love is undeniable and inevitable so why do people so often not associate pain with love. True romantic love is intended to be hard and it’s meant to make you sacrifice and make you do things you typically would never do.
All things considered, romantic love is something that is so uncontrollable and cannot be confined to one set of emotions. Romantic love is something that may be obtained by people and can be seen as either happiness or pain but will still hold passion no matter which it is seen as. Love is a challenge that needs someone to step in as a challenger who is ready for the intensity of it. The world cannot label love as simply euphoric and anymore it needs to be defined as a mix over overwhelming hurt that brings comfort and is able to heal and destroy a person at the same time. Love is defined by every range of emotion.
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