Search For Love Research Articles

Searching for Love and Babies: A Qualitative Study on Online Social Support Among Women with Infertility

ABSTRACT With the popularity of computer-mediated communication, accessing online social support has become more accessible for women confronting infertility, yet the role of such support for Chinese women remains understudied. This study investigates the online social support experiences of Chinese women navigating infertility within the framework of Cutrona and Suhr’s social support. Employing netnography and semi-structured interviews alongside thematic analysis, the findings highlight challenges in informational support due to limitations in online information dissemination, with some degree of overlap observed between informational support and network support. Emotional support proves crucial and esteem support aids in mitigating self-blame among online forum members. Tangible assistance primarily involves expressed willingness to help. This research advances social support theory by exploring new areas, clarifying online support mechanisms using Daena Goldsmith’s normative approach, highlighting sociocultural influences, and enhancing understanding of esteem support in the context of stigmatization.

From Sordid Sexuality to Ruin in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land

Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land, in the wake of the Great War or the First World War, which was a time particularly in Western Europe when civilization had fallen to pieces, and it was literally, quite literally in ruin as trenches were dug across the fields of France and Belgium and other countries in Western Europe and as the landscape itself is torn apart, finds only death and self-destruction instead of rebirth or any sense of revivification or any sense of life. The poem deals, in its fragmentary way, not only with the aftermath of the war in its physical repercussions but also with the breakdown of social norms, which earlier ensured cultural sureties. In the process the poem, while vindicating the despair of the individual pitted against the unmanageable disillusionment, shows that this urbanscape is devoid of love and seems to be unable to heal itself. What is left is a poetics of despair where the inhabitants of this ruin wait for redemption from their purgatories, and the search for love is laid to rest in pieces. The paper attempts to demonstrate that the fundamental problem of The Waste Land is the broken bonds of love and sordid sex, the primal cause of ruin and waste, all packed inside a montage of myths, left to the readers to sort out the mess till it dawns on them that all the voices, through their different tales, bemoan, chiefly, the lack of love, an idea that sounds essentialist but keeps in tune with its resonance with the poem.

MAGDALENA CAMACHO, LA CAMARONES, UNA CELESTINA EN LA LIMA DEL SIGLO XVIII. HECHIZOS Y CONJUROS AMATORIOS ANTE LA INQUISICIÓN

This article examines the transgressive figure of Magdalena Camacho “La camarones”, who due to her superstitious practices embodied the profile of the unorthodox female who moves outside of patriarchal structures. Recognized by those who knew her well as a great witch, Camacho fluctuated between a constantly transgressive everyday existence and imaginaries based on prejudice and stigma. She was tried before the Inquisition from 1662 to 1664 in Lima, and her case file exemplifies situations, in which the protagonists are not the people on trial, but the spell they cast. Estrangement, the search for love, social or economic wellbeing were just some of the conflicts that Camacho resolved with her spells.

Origins of Humanism of the Great Oriental Poets – Thinkers Nizami and Navoi

The spiritual heritage of these great Oriental thinkers and prominent figures of medieval Muslim culture is invaluable for the Turkic peoples, since it serves as an ideological and theoretical basis for their modern spiritual and socio-political culture. Reflections of the great Nizami Ganjavi and Alisher Navoi in their famous works about the role and significance of human individuality, the richness and complexity of the human soul, about moral choice, the search for love and happiness, the path to moral perfection, about a just, ideal society, and the role of a wise ruler, are based on deep belief in the capabilities of the human mind and are therefore of enduring importance. Humanity, freedom of moral choice, the supremacy of reason and knowledge are the fundamental principles in the works of the Oriental thinkers, determining the humanistic direction of their work.

Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County as a Paradigm of Bad Parenting

One’s character is shaped by the family he/she has and the way he/she is raised up. Bad parents affect their children tragically, and the later consequences, the parents are the ones who pay for being bad ones. Tracy Letts explores the dark side of family life in his domestic play August: Osage County (2007), one of the most well-known contemporary plays of American theatre in the twenty-first century. The playwright presents the Westons as an embodiment of the image of family disconnected relationships due to bad parenting. Violet is a model of a bad mother who plays a prominent role in destroying her family. The impact of bad parenting is revealed in the circle of the formerly abused children who turned to be abusers of their children or the search for love and care in the others as an alternative to the parent image. This paper examines the reasons for being bad parents concerning Violet in particular and the psychological effects of her aggressive behavior and insufficient care for her three daughters. The importance of the study lies in demonstrating the shape of the characters of the daughters in facing the challenges of life.

Spiritual Addiction: Searching for Love in a Coldly Indifferent World

I describe “spiritual” addiction as a felt compulsion to seek surrogates in the absence of that spirit of unconditional love underlying core personality change. We awaken to a “real” world akin to a prison in which all sides seem morally compromised, so any choice seems to necessitate sacrificing our conscientious relationship to the truth. Thus, spiritual addiction runs deeper than physical and psychological addictions to include socially accepted “addictions” to all we associate with “success”—including our morality and religion. All that we seek may be grounded in a collectively imbibed prejudice toward truth itself. If so, such a prejudice, underlying spiritual addiction, compromises our will, reason, feelings, actions, and character—including all of our relationships. It underlies the reality of a collective moral crisis which, we show, is more deeply a religious crisis tempting us to doubt the reality and attainability of that unconditional love that provides a foundation for hope. To overcome the prejudice underlying spiritual addiction, we show how unconditional love can be realized by placing conscientiousness in the foreground of concern as we are guided by the most reliable moral and spiritual witnesses in our history distinct from any religious group claiming to speak in their name.

Yearning for Freedom in a Prison without Bars in Two Novels: Ṣamt al-Farāshāt/ Silence of the Butterflies by Laylā al-ʿUthmān and Lam ʾAʿud ʾAbkī / I Do not Cry Anymore by Zaynab Ḥifnī

The crisis of freedom that the Gulf woman lives in under a patriarchal male culture that is biased against her and against the Arab woman in general, turns her into a prisoner who lives behind moral bars. Under these circumstances, the Gulf woman's writing becomes a conflict with the man's concepts and the patriarchal male mentality of her society. However, by writing, she reveals the issues of her scandalous oppression, and emancipates herself from her shackles. Writing is one of the forms of freedom, through which she regains her voice that has been stolen from her as a woman and a creative artist. This study seeks to reveal the manifestations of oppression that the woman is exposed to in the feminist Gulf literature in two novels: Ṣamt al-Farāshāt by Laylā al-ʿUthmān, and Lam ʾAʿud ʾAbkī by Zaynab Ḥifnī as samples. The study will reveal the woman's figurative 'prison' and 'jailor': the prison of society with its norms and traditions, and the prison of the Man and his domination as images of her oppression by marriage, and by the siege of social norms, the culture of silence, her prevention from choosing her job and her creative freedom. In return, the study will observe the features of her revolution and rebellion against all these figurative "prisons" such as her refusal of the traditional marriage, her resistance by writing, her search for love, and breakage of the sex taboo. The woman manifests herself between the character of the 'prisoner' and the 'rebellious' woman, between her 'yearning for freedom' and her 'revolt' against the 'bars' in order to realize herself and break the taboos.

Searching for Love: Junction between Thai Buddhism, Consumerism and Contemporary Thai Film

Searching for Love: Junction between Thai Buddhism, Consumerism and Contemporary Thai Film

Don Juan in Search of Identity in the Play "La Nuit de Valognes" by Éric-Emanuel Schmitt

The first play by the contemporary French writer Éric-Emanuel Schmitt, The Night in Valognes (La Nuit de Valognes, 1989), represents a completely new interpretation of the myth originating from the 17th century, and celebrated in the writings of many subsequent authors, from Tirso de Molina, over Molière and Mozart, to Ballester and Handke. The play is situated in a castle in northern France, taking place some thirty years after the well-known adventures of Don Juan, and represents a trial organized by five women, his former lovers. However, the penalty – to marry his last victim, is not executed. The aim of the paper is to argue that in this humorous philosophical play, written by the end of the 20th century, Schmitt is not interested in the problem of seduction, represented in the classical myth, but in the quest of the main character for his identity. His hero does not give the answer to the key question: “Who am I?”, but instead poses the question if our sexual identities are solid and unchangeable. The hero’s search for identity is presented as the quality of contemporary man, re-examining his sexuality through search for love, as well as homosexuality, hinted at in the play as one possible modern identity of Don Juan.

Telaah Konsep Tasawuf Syeikh Yusuf Khatar Muhammad dalam Kitab Mausu’ah Yusufiyyah fi Bayani al Adilati as Sufiyyah

Sufism is a pure teaching originating from the Islamic religion, with roots in the Al-Qur'an and the hadith of the Prophet Muhammad SAW. This teaching emphasizes spiritual experience, the search for love, and the pleasure of Allah. Scholars agree that Sufism is an additional dimension in Islam that strengthens the personal relationship with Allah. The first scholar to be named "Shufi" was Imam Abu Hasyim from Kufa, followed by Imam Dzu An-Nun Al-Mishri and Imam Al-Junaid Al-Bahgdadi as the developer and expounder of the views of tasawwuf. Figures like Sayyidina Hudzaifah Ibn Al-Yaman and Sayyidina Salman Al-Farisi are examples of people who have the knowledge of tasawwuf. The science of tasawwuf is considered a faith, morality, sincerity, and da'wah based on the Islamic religion, faith, and doing good with muraqabah and musyahadah. Self-introspection and cleaning the heart from immorality are also emphasized in the teachings of tasawwuf. The main goal of tasawwuf is to win the pleasure of Allah SWT. and live life with asceticism, feel the need for Allah, and avoid worldliness and immorality. Faqr or poverty teaches the awareness that everything one has is meaningless before Allah, so that the heart can be purified from anything that keeps it away from Him. All of this forms a strong foundation for the practice of tasawwuf which continues to be an integral part of the Islamic religious tradition.

Jagged Love: Narratives of Romance on Dating Apps during COVID-19.

The romance plot is one of the most pervasive narratives in Western society. It is a cultural masterplot: a story with which almost everyone is familiar, which can deeply and intrinsically shape the way we think about how we live. This article examines how people interact with the romance masterplot and how it affects their search for love on dating apps in Australia during the global pandemic in 2020. Using data drawn from interviews and focus groups, and combining sociological research and narrative theory, we explore the way the romance masterplot affects the way people approach romance in dating apps, and how this has been complicated by the pandemic. We propose that participants use of dating apps in this period was characterised by ‘jagged love’, which we have theorised in relation to Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of ‘liquid love’. This manifested cyclically, as participants turned to the apps seeking the security offered by the romance masterplot in a time of global uncertainty; swiped, matched, and messaged in large numbers, and lost faith in the apps ability to deliver on the romantic masterplot. While episodic behaviour on dating apps is not new, the pandemic heightened and accelerated the process as people desperately sought the certainty offered by the romance masterplot, quickly lost faith because of the limitations of the pandemic, and then returned again.

Question of Identity: Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle

Orhan Pamuk is a leading contemporary Turkish writer and winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature. In his novels he tackles certain universal themes, such as the search for a new identity, the conflict between East and West, the domination of Western culture and its impact on Turkish society, the spread of consumerism, feminism, the search for love and its vanity. Pamuk is influenced by the rich literary tradition of Turkey and at an equivalent time he is affected with the writers like Dostoevsky, Albert Camus, Miller and plenty of others. As a postmodernist author, Orhan pamuk’s fiction echoes the priority for the identity of someone. This novel The White Castle is studied for the exploration of the Question of identity like what is real identity of the person. Pamuk himself has faced the perplexity of identity as he is suspect by media of revealing the national sentiment. The protagonist’s Hoja and the Venetian traveler are not happy with their gift identity and within the course of their life they assume a replacement identity.

Love Island and Relationship Education.

The rise of reality TV programmes focussing on relationships and the search for “love” has focussed media attention on the portrayal of healthy relationships, gender roles, and intimate partner abuse (IPVA). Love Island, a UK reality TV programme, was watched in 2019 by over 3 million viewers, a majority of whom are young women aged 16–34, though a younger teenage demographic also watch. Many of these younger viewers may be learning about what healthy relationships are like, and entering their first romantic relationships. Contestant's behavior on Love Island prompted Women's Aid to issue a statement speaking out against unhealthy behaviors in relationships—especially “gaslighting,” a form of emotional abuse that makes someone question their own feelings, memories, and version of reality. Based on our experience of running a relationship education program in 24 schools, as part of the Tender national partnership and our research with young people on their perceptions of Love Island, the paper will examine the role reality TV programmes play in young people's understandings of healthy relationships. It argues representations of relationships on Love Island are framed within normative heterosexuality, and enables the normalization of emotional abuse. However, we also argue that these programmes can be a catalyst for discussion amongst young people and open up spaces, especially online, to challenge dominant constructions of relationships. It also makes recommendations for education policy and practice around relationship and sex education in schools.

Andrés NeumanFracture by Nick Caistor Lorenza Garcia

Books in Review Sakinu Ahronglong 87 Hunter School Jokha Alharthi 83 Celestial Bodies Isabella Allende 83 A Long Petal of the Sea Carmen Boullosa 84 The Book of Anna Anissa M. Bouziane 80 Dune Song L. M. Brown 109 Were We Awake Anne Carson 82 Norma Jeane Baker of Troy Chan Ho-Kei 98 Second Sister J. M. Coetzee 78 Death of Jesus Esther Dischereit 94 Sometimes a Single Leaf Ivana Dobrakovová 110 Bellevue Hélène Dorion 102 Pas même le bruit d’un fleuve Jean-Paul Dubois 103 Tous les hommes n’habitent pas le monde de la même façon László F. Földényi 104 Dostoyevsky Reads Hegel in Siberia and Bursts in Tears Carolyn Forché 79 In the Lateness of the World Marcial Gala 101 The Black Cathedral Helon Habila 86 Travelers Nino Haratischvili 88 The Eighth Life (for Brilka) Sonallah Ibrahim 110 Ice jennifer jazz 104 Spill Ink on It Evan Jones 90 Later Emperors Erik Larson 95 The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz Zülfü Livaneli 94 Serenade for Nadia Henrietta Lovell 107 Infused: Adventures in Tea Adnan Mahmutović 89 At the Feet of Mothers Fernanda Melchor 78 Hurricane Season Poupeh Missaghi 90 trans(re)lating house one Sharmistha Mohanty 100 The Gods Came Afterwards Yelena Moskovich 105 Virtuoso Andrés Neuman 76 Fracture Un Nuevo Sol: British 106 Latinx Writers Ed. Nathalie Teitler & Nii Ayikwei Parkes Frank Ormsby 96 The Rain Barrel Davide Reviati 91 Spit Three Times Samanta Schweblin 84 Little Eyes Adania Shibli 87 Minor Detail Suchethana Swaroop 107 Beyond East and West: A Story of Civilization through the Great Epics Graham Swift 98 Here We Are Rudolf Ungváry 108 Balatoni nyaralò Mario Vargas Llosa 81 Tiempos recios Kemal Varol 96 Wȗf Tian Veasna 99 Year of the Rabbit Kate Wisel 109 Driving in Cars with Homeless Men Yan Lianke 93 Three Brothers: Memories of My Family Jonas Zdanys 92 The Angled Road: Collected Poems, 1970–2020 Monika Zgustova 100 Dressed for a Dance in the Snow: Women’s Voices from the Gulag Into the eye of the hurricane with Fernanda Melchor Adania Shibli mines the details Evan Jones’s Byzantine ballads Remembering rural China with Yan Lianke 78 87 90 93 WORLDLIT.ORG 75 Andrés Neuman Fracture Trans. Nick Caistor & Lorenza Garcia. New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2020. 368 pages. “AN EARTHQUAKE FRACTURES the present, shatters perspective, shifts memory plates.” In Fracture, Andrés Neuman revisits the Latin American genre of the total novel, an all-encompassing narrative exploring every theme, social milieu, and emotional possibility. It’s a reflection on time, a powerful tale about how we reread and react to the past. Themes of identity, travel and translation , memory and love, loss, trauma, and mourning tightly interconnect. Neuman uses imaginative, highly poetic language to tell a cinematic story constructed like a puzzle while raising urgent social, political, philosophical, and ecological issues. This tour de force, akin to a six-voice musical offering, recounts the journey of Yoshie Watanabe, survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bomb, whom we meet as he is about to experience the earthquake preceding the Fukushima nuclear disaster. This event stirs long-repressed memories. The novel’s chapters alternate between present and past through Watanabe’s perspective (as viewed through the narrator's tender and, at times, tongue-in-cheek lens), the four women who have shared his life—between Paris, New York, Buenos Aires, and Madrid—and an enigmatic Argentine journalist. We follow Watanabe around the globe in his search for love, answers, and identity . He wonders whether “all of his travels weren’t the quest for a shifting goal.” Travel as the path to find one’s way echoes Die Winterreise, Wilhelm Müller’s poems put into music by Schubert, which Neuman translated into Spanish. In Paris, Yoshie’s French lover, Violet (the poet Shelley used this flower to commemorate the grief of a lost love), describes their idea of traveling as an escape plan: Books in Review FEATURED REVIEW 76 WLT SUMMER 2020 “He gave the impression that he was testing out his identity, like someone...

Raúl Zurita y la búsqueda del amor que nace de las cenizas: “Pastoral” en Anteparaíso

Este artículo plantea un análisis de la sección “Pastoral” del libro Anteparaíso. Usando como idea principal la desolación descrita en la primera parte de esta publicación, Raúl Zurita erige su búsqueda del amor partiendo de las cenizas que quedan de Chile después de la dictadura. Se demostrará como Anteparaíso es un volumen fundamental de la trilogía de la que forma parte, junto a Purgatorio y La Vida Nueva, ya que representa el punto clave en el que el poeta comprende que puede haber un cambio de la oscuridad a la luz gracias al amor. Este concepto, fundamental en la obra del autor chileno, es el que convierte la desolación y la soledad en esperanza y abre el camino del hombre hacia el vislumbre del paraíso.

Body Fluids and Fluid Bodies: Trans-Corporeal Connections in Contemporary German Narratives of Illness

Medicine uses body fluids for the construction of medical knowledge in the laboratory and at the same time considers them as potentially infectious or dirty. In this model, bodies are in constant need of hygienic discipline if they are to adhere to the ideal of the closed and clean organism without leakage of fluids. In contrast, psychoanalytical feminist body theory by Julia Kristeva (1982), Elisabeth Grosz (1989) and Margrit Shildrick (1999) has deconstructed the abject body and its fluids in Western culture and medicine. While postmodern feminism has often focused on discourses about bodies and illness to the neglect of their materiality, more recently, material feminism has drawn particular attention to lived material bodies with fluid boundaries and evolving corporeal practices (Alaimo and Hekman 2007). Stacy Alaimo has developed a model of the trans-corporeal body that is connected with the environment through fluid boundaries and exchanges (2010, 2012). Influenced by these trends in feminist body theory, illness narratives, often based on autobiographical experiences of female patients or their caregivers, have increased in recent decades in the West (Lorde 1980; Mairs 1996; Stefan 2007; Schmidt 2009; Hustvedt 2010). Such narratives often describe explicitly the material and affective aspects of intimate bodily experiences. In this article, I analyze two German quest narratives of illness: Charlotte Roche’s pop novel Feuchtgebiete (2008) and Detlev Buck’s German-Cambodian film Same Same But Different (2010) that is based on the memoir Wohin Du auch gehst by German journalist Benjamin Prüfer (2007). In both narratives, the protagonists and their partners struggle in their search for love and identity with illness or injury in relation to body fluids, including hemorrhoids and HIV. I argue that Feuchtgebiete and Same Same But Different not only critique medical and cultural discourses on body (fluids) and sexuality but also foreground a feminist trans-corporeal concept of the body and of body fluids that is open to fluid identities and material connections with the (global) environment. At the same time, the conventional and sentimental ending of these quest narratives undermines the possibilities of the trans-corporeal body and its fluid exchanges.

People-nearby applications and local communities: Questioning about individuals' loneliness and social motivations toward people-nearby applications.

The present study aims to deepen the relationship between people's loneliness and relational motivations toward people-nearby applications (PNAs) use, within the uses and gratification framework. Indeed, due to the spread of indifference and mistrust toward other citizens, local communities and the relationships within them can leave some individuals' social needs unsatisfied. An online questionnaire, including the Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults-short version and the Cyber Relationships Motives Scale, was administered to 647 PNAs users (age: M = 26.76; standard deviation = 8.77); hierarchical regressions were performed. Individuals' loneliness associated significantly with the search for love and the desire to meet new people when perceiving offline constraints, but not with the simple desire to meet new people. These results support the idea that PNAs could represent a mean to integrate the aggregation functions of local communities, allowing to find new people to meet nearby regardless of the constraints actually perceived. Being social relationships critical for individuals' well-being, understanding the unsatisfied individual needs underlying PNAs social uses and how these apps could be used within local communities could help in integrating people within their local communities and neighbourhoods again, fostering their well-being too.

Formative and educational aspect of Azerbaijan. The pedagogical message of the poet Mirza Shafi Vaseh (1794-1852)

Abstract The economy of Azerbaijan has been moving forward towards “diversification” for many years and has not been focusing on the petrol sector anymore, but on a variety of fields, education above the others. Azeri education is deeply rooted in sport and health policies, and it finds expression in various sports events promoted by the Government. The history of juvenile politics dates back to 1994, thanks to the authoritative promotional effort of the national leader Gaydar Aliyev. Azeri young people between 14 and 29 are regularly involved in all these events, actively participating in conferences and international scientific research projects. Azerbaijan aims above all at improving the knowledge of the English language among pupils, university students, and leading scientists. Azeri school is a formative and educational laboratory where events promoted by the Ministry of Education are often experimented. Since 2016 Azerbaijan has been focusing on making the Azeri society online-oriented, focusing on immediacy and material, effort, and time-saving. Education is firmly based on the lifelong learning approach, that is fundamental for today’s personal and professional fulfilment. Human beings create their deep inner reality by educating themselves and the others and, in order to feed their souls, they often resort to the literary world, which is full of formative and educational elements. This is the reason to start a detailed reflection on the work of a famous Azeri poet: Mirza Shafi Vaseh (1794-1852). His poems deal with the human being’s search for love, reflection, wisdom and ‘formative’ beauty.

A pornificação do corpo masculino: notas sobre o imperativo das imagens na busca entre homens por parceiros on-line

A partir de uma cartografia sobre os usos que homens fazem de aplicativos de busca de parcerias amorosas e sexuais, tais como o Grindr e o Hornet, buscamos refletir sobre o imperativo das imagens nos sites e aplicativos de busca entre homens por parceiros on-line. Analisamos transformações históricas no âmbito do desenvolvimento tecnológico para pensar como essas mudanças incidem nas buscas por amor e sexo no cenário atual. Ao contrário das visões que entendiam que a internet teria efeitos descorporificadores, na qual o corpo perderia importância como critério nas buscas de parcerias, notamos que o corpo não apenas importa, como tem se tornado central como critério de seleção nas buscas on-line. Mas qual é o corpo desejado neste contexto? Em consonância com pesquisas contemporâneas, entendemos que está em curso um processo que chamamos de pornificação. As imagens, pelas quais os indivíduos se autoapresentam on-line, parecem remeter a iconografia oriunda da pornografia, de modo que, os corpos pornificados, atualmente, parecem se constituir como o enquadramento privilegiado para designar quais corpos importam e são mais desejados nos espaços digitais.

The Honeymoon, A Novel

The Honeymoon, A Novel