Youth and Love Effect of Social Context on Conceptualization of Love Relationships

This article studies the social context effect on conceptualization of love relationships among the youth. Questions addressed here include the effect of concept of love on youths’ views، understanding love-related behaviors، examining pathological outcomes arising from love experiences and strategies used by the youth. This research has been based on qualitative methods، grounded theory and semi-structured interview technique. A goal-oriented sampling method was used to interview young people between 19-30 years of age، who live in Tehran، and who have experienced love. Data coding yielded useful categories. The analysis of these categories furnished an understanding on a phenomenon which governs modern romance relationships of young people in Iran. This phenomenon is named ‘purposive risk’. More specifically، despite social changes، which have، among other things، increased the age of marriage، the society keeps emphasizing that an enhancement of girls’ social validity is obtained almost solely through marriage. This idealistic background of love relationships rooted in social environment puts social restrictions on opposite-sex relationships، causing boys and girls to have less cognitional understanding of each other through socialization، and thus their perception tilts towards idealistic imaginations of love. Moreover، this kind of social validity، as alluded to، is stressed by society which provides girls with marriage anxiety. Therefore، girls have to accept the risk of pre-marriage relationships with the ultimate aim of achieving marriage which is called here as purposive risk whereas such a phenomenon has not been observed in boys.