Discourse of First Romantic Love: Gender Scenarios

Abstract

The sexual, gender and family revolutions of the 20th century led to a massive transformation of the institutions of marriage, family and romantic relationships, and with them to the changes in the concept of romantic love, which continue to this day. In modern society, various and even contradictory cultural models and discourses appear, between which individuals are forced to maneuver, using scenarios that are recommendations, schemes of socially expected actions. An important role in the assimilation, application and further formation of attitudes and practices of romantic love is played by the first encounter with it, which is the starting point in feeling for the boundaries of acceptable behavior and the feelings accompanying it. But what experience do individuals themselves refer to first romantic love, how is it evaluated, and what meaning does it have for them? Does this built experience of first romantic love differ between men and women? This study explores these issues by referring to the informants' discursive experience and reconstructing, based on it, the fulfilled gender scenarios of first romantic love, based on a larger cultural model. Based on 30 narrative interviews, 12 scenarios of first romantic love were found, 7 of which are gender specific. There are no fundamental differences in the understanding of first romantic love between men and women, however, its assessment is more emotionally expressed in women, their scenarios are more positively worked out, while men have more negative and ambivalent experiences in the scenarios. The study also confirms that the cultural pattern of romantic love is indeed blurred and contradictory.