Facing Valentine’s Day, the sociologist, researcher and writer Eleanor Faure reflected that the bonds of couples are today “much more fragile”, but they continue to be crossed by the ideal of romantic love that not only “has not expired, but has become more demanding” and now also demands “not to give up the individual projects of each one”, along with “sustaining love, passion and communication between two people”.
The doctor in Social Sciences, author of books such as “Child care in the XXI century” (Siglo XXI, 2014); and co-author with Alexander Grimson of “Mythology of the sexes” (Siglo XXI, 2016) spoke with Télam about the changes in the ways in which people relate to each other sexually and affectively and the validity of the myth of romantic love, which holds beliefs such as that “true love is for life”, “if he is jealous of you, he loves you”, “you can only feel for one person at a time”, “if there is infidelity there is no love”, among others.
Interview
-Télam: How is Valentine’s Day related to the myth of romantic love?
Eleanor Faur: Somehow, the celebration of Valentine’s Day places the theme of the couple and romanticism in its moment of exaltation. The date, and the paraphernalia that accompanies it in the celebration market, replaces the old formats of romantic love: a strongly idealized notion of love, built on the basis of strong mandates of how women and men should be in a sexual relationship. -affective. A format that, as such, is a fiction, which, of course, does not mean that love is.
This myth is being increasingly problematized, in light of movements such as Ni una menos and feminisms. Does it really wobble?
–What is questioned from feminism is that the myth of romantic love placed women in a place of passivity, of expectation, of seeking to be “chosen”. He built models of heterosexual bonds in which gender inequality was carved from a strong imprint of sexual division of desire – who has the right to desire, who should accompany that initiative -, to situations in which gender violence was even justified. .
The question is how much was this model modified? I think that here we find a strong transformation to the extent that women take much more ownership of our lives and desires. But the ideal did not expire, it even became more demanding.
What would you say is the hard core of myth?
–What is difficult to pierce, at the moment, is the dream of a perfect couple. I think that the theme of idealization is the deepest trap of romantic love: it seems that loving is idealizing the other, oneself in the relationship, the relationship itself. Clearly, that is not sustainable. And in fact, the couples that manage to sustain and love each other over time are the ones that go through crises and find a way to reorganize themselves on an honest basis.
-Why does society continue to appeal to nature to support its beliefs regarding sexual desire, love, the vocation of forming a family, the activity of motherhood when in other aspects of life we accept that the reality that surrounds us is built with social conventions?
–Nature, the biological, is always a very effective metaphor to delimit debate and reflexivity. I think that in the field of gender relations the new ways of arguing that differences are “natural” seek to rely on neuroscience, but in reality, there is a very important body of research that indicates that even our brain has such a plasticity that The ways we use it have much more to do with culture than with brain structure itself.
I think that the biologization of the discussion is not so present in the formation of couples or families, but that it continues to weigh quite heavily when talking about maternity.
–While the myth of romantic love is breaking down and practices such as a life of constant casual sexual contacts or polyamory are valued, the need for affective responsibility is also being talked about and ghosting is being questioned. Are other forms of social control over sexual bonds redefined outside of romantic love?
–I think that, in general, love contracts are much more fragile than in the past and are crisscrossed by a tension in the field of ideas. On the one hand, the ideal of romantic love, which not only has not expired but has become even more demanding because it added requirements to the couple’s “should be”. Today this ideal means sustaining love, passion and communication between two people, but also building a couple and a family and sharing economies without giving up the individual projects of each one.
In the field of casual encounters, the codes seem infinite, but who defines them and why? This is an ideal that is too difficult to achieve, let alone sustain.
“What is questioned from feminism is that the myth of romantic love placed women in a place of passivity, of expectation, of seeking to be “chosen””.Eleanor Faure
Contrastingly, the individuation processes added expectations of total freedom and detachment from the couple, and an enormous facility for the multiplicity of sporadic ties.
The “liquidity” of relationships -as Zygmunt Bauman described them- opposes the romantic ideal but coexists with it and filters contemporary subjectivities. We move between the mandate of romantic love and autonomy without concessions.
-That is to say that the mandates are now two, opposed but not necessarily incompatible…
–Perhaps in this tension lies the greatest core when it comes to rebuilding and diversifying couple models, not necessarily to find “the middle path”, but to free oneself from both mandates (in terms of “should be”) and carve ways of relationships that are closer to the needs, desires and sensitivities of each person.
In this sense, I believe that just as families changed thanks to the transformation of couple agreements, and to a large extent, this movement reflects higher levels of autonomy (especially female), the deepening of these changes can only occur from of new subjective configurations of men and women. It is necessary to unlearn, banish old and new models, based on countless myths and prejudices, and dare to explore more creative ways of building relationships.
“Marriage, as an institution, changed drastically”
Resignified marriages as the finishing touch of a coexistence of decades and no longer as “a vote for the future” together with the “loss of popularity” of these formalizations and the incorporation of couples of sexual diversity are some of the “drastic” ways in which this institution changed in line with the reformulation of “love contracts”.
This is how the doctor in Social Sciences, researcher, teacher and writer Eleonora Faur reflected for Télam.
–doWhat characteristics would you say the “marriage market” has today in Argentina?
–First, I would stop talking about the market and marriage. The second, because marriage is very much in decline as a form of union for couples and, furthermore, it has acquired formats that are very different from those traditionally assigned to it.
In my close circle, for example, a friend is getting married to her partner, with whom she has two young children. And in January some friends who have been together for 41 years got married. They have children and grandchildren. He is 86 years old, she is 66. As my friend used to say: in general, getting married was a vow for the future, ours is the confirmation of a story of love and heartbreak that we could always carry forward. Marriage, as an institution, changed drastically.
The question of the market, for its part, has the antipathy of legitimizing a notion of supply and demand that, once again, returns to the sexual division of desire. Beyond the fact that dating apps have that format more typical of any market, I prefer not to think of relationships in that pattern.
In general, it is evident that love contracts were modified, and with it, couples. Divorces and consensual unions increased; the marriage lost popularity at an accelerated rate; couples and families of sexual diversity were legalized. All this meant a significant revolution.
-How much do you think survival depends on situations of sexual-affective unhappiness -such as those involved in living trapped in bonds that make us visibly unhappy or in a permanent unsatisfied search for an ideal partner or in a gender identity or sexual orientation that does not match the inner feeling-, of the persistence of myths about love and sexuality, such as those described in your book Mythomanias of the sexes?
–There can be many different reasons for having an unsatisfactory relationship. For example, economic reasons -it is not easy to support two households-, there may be violence in the bond, so threats such as “if you leave me, I will kill you” will obviously paralyze many women to act. There may also be fear of ending a relationship and not knowing how emotional life continues, or fear of being left without a partner.
There is still a very thick topic there: why do we continue to maintain the idea that being in a relationship is better than not being in a relationship?
