The Sociocultural Construction of Romantic Love, by Coral Herrera Gómez

Herrera Gómez, Coral: «The Sociocultural Construction of Romantic Love», Editorial Fundamentos, Madrid, 2011.

Always understood as a biological reproductive phenomenon and overlooked by scientific discourse, very few scholars have given romantic passion the attention it deserves. This title, the result of doctoral research, analyzes the phenomenon of love in all its complexity, with a particular focus on its sociocultural construction from a queer perspective.

The central thesis of this work is that emotions are constructed in society through culture, and therefore we learn to feel through narratives and myths. The emotional patterns we learn in childhood and adolescence through movies, stories, novels, and songs have not been subject, until recently, to rigorous academic investigation, yet they determine our identity, our daily life, and our forms of social and economic organization.

Through a process of criticism and deconstruction, the author unveils the mythification of patriarchal romanticism, highlighting the emotional utopias of postmodernity, and deconstructing binary thinking and concepts of the «normal» or «natural,» which vary according to cultures and historical periods, just as the culture of love varies in every corner of the planet. The book focuses on the analysis of Western romantic love, and offers a critique of the social and cultural conditioning that impoverishes and limits our sexuality and networks of affection.

Coral Herrera Gómez (Madrid, 1977) holds a PhD in Humanities and Audiovisual Communication. She is an educator, researcher, gender and communication consultant, blogger, and writer. Her doctoral thesis explored the topic of romantic love from a multidisciplinary perspective that incorporates feminism and masculinity studies. Since then, her professional trajectory has been linked to reflection on the construction of reality through media and cultural industries. She has also delved into the legitimizing relationship between our emotional and cultural structures and our sociopolitical and economic organization. On her blog, she deconstructs the myths of monogamous heterosexuality that perpetuate inequalities and mutual dependence, always using a language of humor and activism. Her ultimate proposal is to expand love to communities in order to dismantle patriarchy, individualism, hierarchies, and inequalities.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

INTRODUCTION

I. THE SOCIOCULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF LOVE

1.1. HOW DO WE CONSTRUCT REALITY?

1.1.1. WHAT IS REALITY?
OTHER REALITIES
IDEOLOGIES

1.1.2. THE SOCIOCULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY AND GENDER
GENDERED IDENTITY
MASCULINITY
FEMININITY

1.2. WHAT IS LOVE?

1.2.1. INFATUATION AND FALLING OUT OF LOVE.
INFATUATION
FALLING OUT OF LOVE
LOVE SICKNESS: THE PATHOLOGIES OF LOVE

1.2.2 BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF LOVE
REASON VERSUS EMOTION.

1.2.3. THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DIMENSION OF LOVE

1.2.4. THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF GENDER RELATIONS

MARRIAGE
DIVORCE

1.3. HUMAN SEXUALITY.

1.3.1. FEMALE SEXUALITY

1.3.2. THE ECONOMIC DIMENSION OF SEXUALITY

1.3.3. THE MYTH OF MONOGAMY

1.3.4. THE MYTH OF HETEROSEXUALITY

HETERO, HOMO, BISEXUALITY, AND QUEER
THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION AND THE CRISIS OF PATRIARCHY

1.3.5. ALTERNATIVE SEXUAL AND AMOROUS IDEOLOGIES
SEXUAL FREEDOM AND LICENTIOUSNESS
FREE LOVE
THE SWINGER MOVEMENT
BDSM

1.4. LOVE AND POWER BETWEEN GENDERS.

1.4.1. DO MEN AND WOMEN LOVE EQUALLY?

1.4.2. PATRIARCHAL POWER IN LOVE
MALE POWER
FEMALE POWER
PATRIARCHAL ROMANTICISM

II. THE CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF LOVE

2.1. THE CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY AND LOVE

2.1.1. THE SYMBOLIC CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY
2.1.2. THE SYMBOLIC CONSTRUCTION OF LOVE
2.1.3. AMOROUS IDEOLOGIES
HEGEMONIC LOVE AND ALTERNATIVE LOVES
THE LEGITIMATING THEORIES OF HEGEMONIC LOVE IN THE WEST
2.1.4. THE RELIGIOUS DIMENSION OF LOVE.
2.1.5. THE MYTHIC AND RITUAL DIMENSION OF LOVE
AMOROUS MYTHS
AMOROUS RITUALS
THE WEDDING RITUAL

2.2. PASSIONATE LOVE IN HUMAN NARRATIVES

PASSIONATE LOVE IN ANCIENT GREECE
COURTLY LOVE
PASSIONATE LOVE OF THE 18TH CENTURY
ROMANTIC LOVE
FEMININE ROMANTICISM

III. LOVE AS THE EMOTIONAL UTOPIA OF POSTMODERNITY

3.1. THE POSTMODERN MASS CULTURE

3.2. POSTMODERN IDENTITY
THE CRISES OF MASCULINITY
THE POSTMODERN WOMAN

3.3. LOVE RELATIONSHIPS IN POSTMODERNITY: LOVE AS EMOTIONAL                  UTOPIA
MYTHIFIED LOVE
THE EMOTIONAL UTOPIA OF POSTMODERNITY
UTOPIAN LOVE ADAPTED TO SOCIAL REALITY

3.4. PROPOSALS FOR THE SOCIOCULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF LOVE IN

THE 21ST CENTURY

Maybe it’s not romantic love, but just boredom.

Maybe it's not romantic love, but just boredom.

Maybe it's not that we're in love with love, but that we need strong emotions.

Maybe we're not falling in love with men, but with how they enjoy life.

Why do we get bored?

Because all our basic needs are met. If we had to spend the day searching for food, clean water, shelter, warm clothing, then we wouldn't have time to get bored, nor would we be invaded by existential emptiness.

We get bored because our day-to-day consists of producing, reproducing, and consuming: it's a cycle of routines where it's hard for us to find meaning in life.

We get bored because our lives are monotonous and with very little change, which is why we enjoy watching the crazy lives of celebrities through screens: parties, dinners, dances, travels, romances, weddings, baptisms, divorces, inheritances, family feuds...

We love novels and movies where characters are constantly facing death, risking their lives, passionately loving, living on the edge, and transforming throughout the journey.

We're hungry for emotions and change: we feel like robots and dream of an intense life because we're numbed, hibernating on the couch, living everything through a screen, especially during this year of pandemic: our family, social, sexual, and romantic relationships have been minimized. So have our horizons: being within four walls leads us to yearn for something magical to happen that completely changes our lives.

Women who feel bored

Boredom is political: patriarchy wants all of us bored, entertained with beauty, and obsessed with romantic love.

The more bored we are, the emptier our lives become, and the more dependent we are.

The more dependent, the more vulnerable we are to romantic addiction, and therefore, the more submissive we are and the more obedient to patriarchy's mandates.

To understand why women get so bored, take a look at the toys girls play with. Everything is pink: they've taken away all the other colors of the rainbow, our world is small and monochromatic, revolving around money and beauty, romantic love, and motherhood.

Girls as young as six already know that boys are the geniuses,

and within a couple more years, they realize that their greatest passion should be the love of one of them.

Women fall in love with men who are in love with life and know how to enjoy it.

It's possible that we might not even fall in love with them truly, but with their freedom, their energy, their ability to savor life, to have fun, to learn, to meet new people, to carry out their projects, and pursue their dreams.

Perhaps we don't need a man to escape boredom: maybe what we need is to find pleasure in things other than romantic partnerships and the ideal family.

Men's Passions

Men cultivate their passions and find pleasure in countless areas of life: music, art, sports, knowledge and science, technology, spirituality and religion, magic, culture, politics, and economics...

The great geniuses of Human History are men who were obsessed with what fascinated them, men who forgot about the world while composing music, painting pictures, sculpting, writing novels, searching for fossils, climbing mountains, diving into the depths of the sea, flying in contraptions, researching exciting topics, advocating for human and animal rights, forming unions or political parties, exploring the boundaries of nature, discovering new stars and planets...

Meanwhile, we have few examples of passionate women. The only women we see in movies and novels are women obsessed with a man, and who are miserable if the man mistreats them or ignores them. They are always alone and bored, have no emotional bonds with other women, and if they do interact with others, it's to make them suffer.

 

Women Who Suffer for Love

They don't let us enjoy life because they tell us that we were born to suffer, to give ourselves up, to sacrifice, to endure, and to give up everything for the love of a man.

Most girls are educated to dedicate their time and energy to looking beautiful with the ultimate goal of being chosen by a man as a wife.

Girls who don't fit into this role quickly realize that their passions are not "girly things": patriarchy makes us believe that "normal" women enjoy shopping, reading fashion magazines, and spending afternoons at the beauty salon.

This is the feminine model they offer us: egocentric and narcissistic women who spend all day looking at themselves and taking care of their beauty, their only treasure. Their only goal is to be loved.

That's how the Disney princesses we idolize in childhood are portrayed. They live alone and waiting, locked up and bored, sighing and combing their golden hair a thousand times until the most important moment of their lives arrives: when the prince comes to rescue them.

How are we educated for boredom and suffering?

Firstly, we are taught that pleasure is for men: for us, it is considered sinful.

Secondly, we are made to believe that one must sacrifice to find happiness, and that one must give up oneself to enter the realm of romantic paradise.

Thirdly, we are taught that happiness is individual, when in reality it is collective: we cannot be happy if those around us suffer, and if we do not all have the same rights.

How are our passions extinguished? They inject us from a young age with the Great Passion of Romantic Love, which flourishes and grows inside us, becoming the center of our lives and overpowering all other passions.

They make us addicted to romantic love, which is why when asked, we do not know what gives us pleasure, and we do not know what makes us happy. For some women, it takes years of therapy to discover what they truly need to live well.

We are educated to worry and occupy ourselves only with our physical appearance, promising us that love will come to us through beauty.

This is how they manage to focus women on themselves and their great romantic passion, and not worry about the rest of the world.

They make us believe:

  • that we have come into this world to be beautiful, to love, and to care for others.
  • that love always comes first.
  • that it's normal for us to give up our affections, our projects, and our hobbies when we enter into a partnership.
  • that nothing we do matters.
  • that we must dedicate our time to superficial things that are of no importance to society.
  • that women who pursue what truly interests them must pay a high price: they end up alone.
  • that women who have succeeded in doing "men's things" are unfeminine, lonely women, odd women that no man desires as a wife.
  • that if you deviate from the norm, you will end up alone, and no one will want you - this is a constant threat.
  • that men do not want women engrossed in their own dreams, but rather engrossed in them.
  • that men want women who are good wives and good mothers.

 

What models of femininity are offered to us?

We barely know about the women activists who fight for human rights, nor do we have role models of women who care about their community and their planet.

Women who struggle to survive each day amidst the exploitation, poverty, and violence of patriarchy, and women who are building a better world, remain invisible.

What do the famous women in our culture do? Generally, they sing, dance, act, pose, fall in love, get married, have children, and get divorced. They are role models for the girls who idolize them.

Dreaming Women

When we are asked what we desire, what gives us pleasure, many times we don't know if these are our own desires or ones we have learned.

When we see women who haven't made romantic love the center of their lives, that's when we realize that maybe our dreams aren't really ours. They've been manufactured to make us believe that happiness lies in the love of a man and in motherly love.

We invest tons of time, energy, and resources into these dreams, shaping our lives around them.

Our dreams enslave us because in them, the most important thing is a man. Without them, we cannot be happy. Our emotions depend on a single man, and they change according to his behavior.

Not just our emotions, but also our self-esteem and life projects depend on relationships with men.

What happens when we are without a partner, or when we don't find a partner?

Our life loses its meaning, and we are terrified of the emptiness. We don't know why we're alive or what to do with our existence. We feel incomplete because we've been told a thousand times that we are halves, and without the other half, we are nothing, we are nobody.

Rebellious Women

Feminism advocates for the right of all women to pleasure, enjoyment, and living a good life.

That's why we want to educate girls to be autonomous, to not become addicted to romantic love, to learn to enjoy life just like boys, to feel equally free as them, to unite with each other, and to find the meaning of life in their dreams, passions, and networks of affection, rather than in a single person.

Feminist women are working within ourselves to better understand who we are, to connect with ourselves, to discover our own passions, and to find spaces and time for our own pleasure.

And we know it's important because patriarchy wants us to be sufferers, embittered, and frustrated.

We also know that life is more than just work, caregiving, and consumption: we have the right to have fun, to immerse ourselves in other worlds, to share our passions with other women, and to celebrate that we are alive.

That's why we are working to demystify the ideal of the couple and the happy family, to remove men from the center of our lives, and to place ourselves there instead.

We have so much love within us, and we don't have to waste it on just one person. We have an enormous capacity to love many people at once, to enjoy life, and to bring joy to others as well.

So if they want us to be bored or in love,

they will find us passionate, joyful, and in rebellion,

because life is too short!

Coral Herrera Gómez

 

Artículo original: Igual no es amor, es aburrimiento

Love Revolution

First came the Sexual Revolution.

Our mothers and grandmothers fought at the end of the 20th century against guilt and sin, and also fought for their right to pleasure. Contraceptive and protective methods helped separate sex from reproduction, disease, and death.

In the 1970s, women claimed their sexual freedom, their right to choose motherhood freely, their right to enjoy and live a life free of violence. That's why they fought for our right to abortion, and against trafficking and prostitution, female genital mutilation, street harassment, public transportation harassment, harassment in educational and workplace settings.

They also exposed the sexual assaults suffered by women at the hands of our fathers, stepfathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, cousins, husbands, and "trusted" family friends. Years later, they dared to denounce bosses, managers, priests, film directors, producers, teachers, and powerful men by name in the successive waves of the #MeToo movement.

We have come a long way in these years, although many people still raise their daughters to center their sexuality around men's needs, to strive to please and appease them, to feel guilty for the sexual violence they endure and to keep silent about it, to always live on their knees in front of men (in brothels, in the Church, or at home), and to teach boys to treat them as mere sexual objects to use and discard.

Today, our culture remains deeply patriarchal and misogynistic, just as it was 40 years ago, but women are not staying silent. We point out all the men who continue to promote the objectification of girls and women, and all the people who continue to defend the idea that poor women are free to rent and sell their bodies and babies, and to allow men to profit from them.

The Love Revolution now joins the Sexual Revolution:

We women are fed up with suffering for love: we have dethroned romantic love as the sole way to attain happiness. We want to free love from sexism and transform it from top to bottom, so that love doesn't hurt us, nor subjugates us. We want to rescue all the women who still believe that love is enduring pain, we want to put an end to the femicides that claim the lives of 137 women daily on this planet, women who are claimed to be loved.

Love can no longer be a path to oppression, suffering, and death; instead, it should be a joyful experience that allows us to weave networks of love where a partner is just one element, never the sole one.

As we have been conditioned to be emotionally dependent and addicted to love, we are unlearning all we were taught in order to be free. Because the more emotionally dependent we are, the more violence and abuse we tolerate from men. In the laws of some countries, women appear as free beings, full subjects of rights, but the reality is that millions of women are enslaved by romantic love, living on their knees, in service to a male.

How does romantic love enslave "free" women? Take a look at the statistics on how leisure time is used: working women have two shifts a day, one inside the house and another outside, and those with children bear the weight of three shifts, with no leisure time at all. Meanwhile, men have only one work shift and plenty of time to invest in their careers, to engage in physical exercise, to pursue their passions, to spend time with loved ones, to rest, to enjoy life, and to have as many lovers as they wish.

No woman is obligated to care for a man for a lifetime, but there are millions who live in service to their husbands. They have made us believe that unpaid labor is love, that we were all born to suffer and sacrifice, that only men have the right to be happy, that our function is to ensure they live like kings, and that at the end of our lives, there will be a reward for all our sacrifices.

Now that we have rebelled against this immense injustice, it is clear to us that if care is not mutual, it is exploitation.

What does the Love Revolution entail?

It is a fight by feminist women who are fed up with suffering and wasting our time and energy on romantic love. Since the beginning of the 21st century, we have been writing, reading, debating, and analyzing the romantic myth. We now know it's a scam that has subjugated millions of women, and we are working on our personal and collective liberation.

These are the keys of the Love Revolution:

Relationships not based on mutual care and reciprocity are relationships of exploitation and abuse.

Women have the right to enjoy life, which requires energy and free time for rest, pursuing our passions, and spending time with our loved ones.

We can no longer prioritize men's well-being and happiness: our needs, desires, and appetites are more important. Women's self-care is a top political issue.

We don't need kings to serve, what we want are companions. We can't live in unequal relationships: living subservient to a man is detrimental to our physical, mental, and emotional health.

We know it's better to be without a partner than in a bad relationship, and we will never be alone if we have a good support network.

It's not the same to relate out of freedom as out of necessity: we must cultivate economic and emotional autonomy to not depend on men and to prevent them from depending on us.

Autonomy requires us to continue fighting for all women to have decent jobs and incomes, as poverty and female emotional dependence are not personal issues but political problems.

We are clear that Cupid doesn't have total power over us, nor do any men, and we are the Women who no longer suffer for love.

Women are the owners of our love and our lives: we are responsible for our well-being and mental health, and we are free to make choices, decisions, and take control of our lives.

Women in love are capable of anything: we've proven we can fall out of love whenever we want and don't have to be prisoners of romantic love.

We are working to spare ourselves tons of unnecessary suffering because we increasingly value our time and energy, and we want to live better.

We have learned that other ways of loving, relating, and organizing are possible, and that by transforming our relationships, we can change the whole world.

Our personal problems are political: millions of women struggle with low self-esteem and suffer at the hands of men who treat them like trash. It's a structural issue: we're taught to tolerate abuse and believe violence is romantic. No more.

Women are engaging in loving self-critique to free ourselves from guilt, fear, jealousy, envy, anger, frustration, emotional dependence, and all the patriarchal influences within us. We want to be better people and contribute to building a better world through our transformation.

Women are learning emotional self-defense and using our power to prevent exploitation, abuse, and violence from men.

We are aware that romantic love is a drug, and we can seek help to break free from the childhood addiction that was imposed on us, and we can detox and liberate ourselves.

We no longer participate in the silence pact that protects men; we expose the violence we endure on social media, share information among ourselves, and support one another.

We know who benefits from our romantic suffering, and it's crystal clear: we're no longer deceived or manipulated.

We know that love can't fix everything, that we can't change men, and men won't change on their own because they have no need to: they're doing just fine. The only transformation possible is the one we make within ourselves.

We're clear that we weren't born to be watchdogs, policemen, or jailers, and we can only relate to honest men.

We also know they are scarce and we can't wait for men to become aware of the importance of working on their honesty.

We've learned that verbal violence is violence, and that verbal, emotional, and psychological violence is as serious as physical violence.

We know that men who benefit from our suffering are abusers, and we won't fall into the trap set by stories and movies: our love doesn't change any man, and enduring abuse has no reward or compensation.

We're freeing ourselves from the tyranny of "what will people say" and the roles and stereotypes that dictate how we should be, because we want to love freely and always be ourselves.

We've discovered that we don't need a man to be happy; we need a network of people who truly care about us.

We know that Man is not the center of the Universe, and we're learning to take care of ourselves and love ourselves independently of them: more and more women are loving themselves, and we're feeling increasingly free to enjoy each other.

We now know it's impossible to enjoy love with a man who doesn't know how to take care of himself, his spaces, or the people he loves.

We're becoming more disobedient and realistic: we no longer buy into the monogamy story, and we're removing the blindfold from each other's eyes.

We no longer tolerate the male privilege of leading a double life and having as many lovers as they want while we give up sex and love, confined at home.

We're convinced that we have the right to enjoy without giving up or sacrificing, and without enduring. We know that love isn't suffering, and if we're in a relationship, it's to enjoy, not to suffer.

We now understand that we shouldn't settle for men who don't meet the standards of being good partners because they haven't put in the necessary work on themselves.

We've learned that with most men, the best approach is to keep them as lovers, or with the masterful formula: you in your house, and me in mine.
We know that we can't do it alone: we need each other, and with good company, processes of personal and collective liberation are easier and more enjoyable.

We're fully aware that ceasing to suffer for love is revolutionary, as the main battle of feminism lies within our hearts and sexuality, in our beds and homes: we won't kneel before anyone.

We're crafting the tools we need for feminism to make us freer and to put theory into practice, and we're starting to reap the fruits of the seeds we've been planting so that all of us can live a Good Life.

Now that we know how to use our power, our lives are no longer centered around yielding and pleasing. We know what we want and what we don't want; we can say it out loud, we've learned to say no, and we can set boundaries.

Now that we're training in the art of assertiveness, we can establish a loving contract with our partners to set the conditions for loving each other well and building an equal relationship based on mutual care and companionship.

Women know we have the right to live a good life, free from suffering, and this right is universal and inalienable.

We dream of new love utopias where women and men can love each other well, in freedom and equality, in relationships based on care, solidarity, honesty, teamwork, and good treatment: companionate loves.

The Love Revolution is unstoppable, and there's no turning back: more and more women are enjoying these processes of personal and collective liberation. As we transform our relationships, we change the society we live in, because the romantic is political, and other ways of loving are possible.

Men can either continue to resist our liberations and end up alone, or they can start their own.

We have already come a long way and won't sit around waiting for them to catch up: we're already reaping the rewards of the seeds we've sown, achieving victories, and even though many may fear this revolution, we're growing in number.

Loving is caring, loving is enjoying!

And Love Revolution has already begin!

Coral Herrera Gómez

Fuente: La Revolución Amorosa