Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Romantic studies'

Many pair-bond relationships begin as a result of romantic attraction and sexual desire. Romantic attraction comprises feelings of love, affection, intimacy, and a desire to spend time with another person; sexual desire involves sexual attraction, arousal, and behavior (Diamond, 2003). This dissertation explored how individuals reconcile their experience of predominant sexual desire toward members of one gender (e.g. women) and predominant romantic attraction toward members of another gender (e.g. men).

To study this experience, a small, qualitative study was performed. Participants were recruited via flyers to answer interview questions regarding their romantic and sexual attractions and the impact of those feelings on their relationships with others and their own mental health. The experiences of four participants were then analyzed via phenomenological analysis. Two of the participants identified as male, and two as female. All participants were graduate students. Three of the participants described complicated attractions, reporting that they were romantically and sexually attracted to members of one gender, while also being romantically or sexually attracted to members of another gender.

Participants discussed several aspects of this experience, including: being unsure how to identify their sexual orientations (two participants noted that they do not identify as bisexual because they feel the term implies a sense of equality between romantic and sexual attraction); the extent to which they have discussed attractions with other people (three participants reported that they do not discuss their attractions with their families); the impact their attractions have had on relationships (two participants reported they feel their attractions have impacted their dating lives); and the struggles and benefits participants report related to their variant attractions.

While each of the participants' sexual and romantic preferences was different from the others', all report that acceptance by friends and family improved psychological well-being. Counter to this sense of well-being, however, are limitations in modern language regarding personal identities. All of the participants noted that they chose a label that is closest to what they perceive their collective attractions to be, and that they experience personal confusion about how to label themselves, which translates to confusion when discussing their identities with others.

This paper combines concepts from Romantic and Gothic literature with ecocriticism in order to discuss eco-zombies in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as well as the film, 28 Days Later and the texts that follow the film: the graphic novel, 28 Days Later: The Aftermath by Steve Niles, and the comic books series, 28 Days Later, by Michael Alan Nelson. Throughout this paper, nature, primarily through the eco-zombie interpretation of it, is read as a character in order to determine how much agency nature has over the human characters within the texts and film being discussed. The use Todorov’s narrative theory, in this paper, depicts the plots of these stories, specifically the changes to the lives of these characters and how they are affected by nature in various ways, to depict nature’s ever growing assertiveness over the humans that encounter it as well as how those humans attempt to overcome the disruptions that nature places on their sense of self. Both Frankenstein’s monster and the infected in 28 Days Later, when seen as eco-zombies, and therefore granting agency to nature, exert power of humans through physically affecting them as well as mentally.

Past research has shown that entrainment facilitates social bonding in intimates and strangers. The current study investigated if synchronicity in romantic couples is disrupted by relationship discord. Rocking chair movements were used as an objective measure of synchronicity. Couples rocked together for 3 minutes to assess their baseline synchronicity, and again for 3 minutes after inducing a threat to the relationship in one member of each couple. It was hypothesized that satisfied couples would be more entrained than dissatisfied couples at baseline, as well as after inducing a relationship threat. Results indicated no significant difference in rocking between satisfied and dissatisfied couples at baseline. However, results supported that synchronicity was significantly disrupted in dissatisfied couples, but not satisfied couples, after the threat was induced. These results suggest that relationship satisfaction acts as a buffer to relationship threats and/or that satisfied couples are more likely to remain entrained even in the face of hardship.

The population of older adults living longer and healthier lives is increasing. As age increases, the likelihood of single status increases. Without someone to offer peer intimacy, loneliness becomes a factor for decreased well-being. Research is needed to gain insight into later life romantic love and commitment to offer support for those seeking companionship, love, and intimacy to live more generative and robust later lives, ameliorating the physical and emotional effects of loneliness. Women are more likely to be alone in late life and research is needed to explore experiences with the phenomenon of love in later life from their perspective. This study employed a qualitative transcendental phenomenological methodology, gathering data from interviews, observations, and documentation in order to provide an interpretive description of all the women in the study with the shared experience of love and commitment to a new partner in later life. The study offers insight to families, caregivers, community service providers, and medical professionals supporting the partnership needs of older women. The results also provide a voice for late life women, an underrepresented population in research and literature, who choose love and commitment in later life.

This phenomenological study explored transgender individuals’ lived experiences of romantic relationship. This study utilized the concepts of Jung’s transcendent function and Buddhism’s middle way in order to articulate the transgender individuals’ felt experience of romantic relationships. Eight participants were interviewed and provided the research data, which was then examined in order to articulate and describe the experiences of the participants. This researcher found that most of this study’s participants pursued the fulfillment of their genuine gender individualities and participated in romantic relationships that are built on the full expression of their authentic gender identities. Additionally, many participants reported that their relationships were built around values such as support, negotiation, communication, and compromise. Further, multiple participants described the presence of the third, or in other words, the multiple or plural spectrum, via the ways of working through romantic relationship issues by forming contracts and an openness to co-create defined relationship boundaries. This research arrives at an understanding of the transgender romantic relationship and subsequently, human relationships through depth psychological understanding. The findings are discussed in connection to the themes provided by the participants: the personal evolution of their transgender experience, the experiences of living in a romantic relationship, and the experiences of the third. Further areas of depth psychological research, study, and clinical implications are also discussed.

This study examines how women are portrayed in Pillow Talk and When Harry Met Sally, two iconic romantic comedies from different time periods, 1959 and 1989, respectively. The analysis relies primarily on three film scholars, Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Mark Rubinfeld, and Hilary Radner. With the sex comedy Pillow Talk and the neo-traditional comedy When Harry Met Sally highlighting different time periods, and reflecting a society’s desires, anxieties, and assumptions, these different romantic comedy subgenres deliver male and female gazes, which lead us on a historical journey. The romantic story is comically entertaining, while supporting traditional gender roles, family values, and a patriarchal ideology. Through an examination of the narrative elements, an overriding theme emerges in both time periods; females are seeking fulfillment through marriage. Contributing factors in both plots are race, social class, work, friendship, male/female communication, intimacy, and sexual mores. This work creates a paradigm for analyzing other romantic comedies and genres of film in order to understand what they say about social values.

Anglophone, Protestant literary traditions figure heavily in the historicization of the novel and the central role privacy plays in the narrativization of concealment. Protestantism’s focus on piety through individual self-reflection has been credited as the catalyst for the nineteenth-century inward turn of the novel and its invention of private life and the private individual. Within this Protestant-influenced novel, privacy constitutes one’s political legitimacy and is a concept that has also dominated how literature within and beyond the Anglosphere has imagined the interior qualities that constitute race and racial difference.

A different tradition, influenced by a Catholic context that sees black self-identity and interiorities as inherently insurgent in their inscrutability, opacity, and secrecy, subverts this Protestant literary tradition. While the literary invention of interiority during the inward turn of the novel depends on evolution of public and private divisions, this dissertation will examine how several Catholic-influenced novels posit that the invention of black interiority depends on secrecy not only as disruptive but also as generative, where the language and specter of black humanity emerge as racialized threat after the Haitian Revolution and as a means of undermining the racism and patriarchalism within privacy and the inadequacy of the fixed ideals it creates.

Global self-esteem is a central component of the self, and research has consistently demonstrated its influence on relationship quality. Literature has also shown that self-evaluations of one’s perceived social acceptability and physical attractiveness are especially important to one’s evaluation of oneself and one’s relationships. Internalized homonegativity and body dissatisfaction–particularly evident among gay males–share many similarities with some domains of self-esteem and have also been linked with relationship quality. However, less is known about these two variables and how they influence the relationship quality of gay men. This study examined whether global self-esteem and the variables particularly relevant to gay men, internalized homonegativity and body dissatisfaction, were associated with the relationship quality among gay men, while controlling for three relationship-related demographic variables: cohabitation status (whether the couple is living together or apart), relationship status (whether the relationship is open or closed), and number of partners. The dependency regulation model and sociometer theory provided the theoretical context for this study. A sample of 147 gay male participants were recruited through online advertisements to complete anonymous surveys assessing relationship quality, global self-esteem, internalized homonegativity, and body dissatisfaction. Three hypotheses were tested using a hierarchical linear regression model. The results demonstrated that global self-esteem, internalized homonegativity, and body dissatisfaction each significantly predicted relationship quality; however, global self-esteem was nonsignificant when examined concurrently with internalized homonegativity. The clinical implications of this study were explored, and suggestions were made for future stories to explore this topic with a more diverse population sample (e.g., drawing from different ethnic groups, greater variation in age across the lifespan, and both rural and urban communities) as well as possibly using a relatively new measure, the Gay and Lesbian Relationship Satisfaction Scale (GLRSS), which has been developed specifically for the gay and lesbian populations.

The demands and challenges of early parenthood place adolescent mothers at high risk for developing adjustment difficulties. The current longitudinal study examined the types of relationships that Latina adolescent mothers have with their partners, based on the young mother's level of acculturation and enculturation. The study also examined positive (e.g., partner support, relationship satisfaction) and negative (e.g., relationship strain) aspects of romantic relationships that impact both relationship continuity and the adolescent mothers' psychological adjustment. One hundred and twenty five Latina adolescent mothers (M age=19.49 years; SD=1.34; of primarily Puerto Rican origin) who reported having a partner and their young children participated in this study at T1; one hundred and eight of these mothers returned for a second assessment 6 months later (T2). The majority of participants resided with their partners (70.4%) and approximately 42% of the young mothers were in relatively long-lasting (3 or more years) relationships with their partners. Around 19% of mothers were married, and marriage and co-residence with partner related to higher perceived instrumental support. Mothers' cultural orientation was related to characteristics of these relationships. Less acculturated mothers and mothers who were highly enculturated were more likely to be married and living with partners. The partners of more enculturated mothers were also more likely to be the child's biological father. Roughly 78% of participants who had a partner at T1 and returned for T2 reported the same partner at T2. Although a few demographic and relationship characteristics were related to continuity (e.g., co-residence and relationship with child's father, having Latino partners, and longer relationships), relationship satisfaction was the only unique predictor of continuity. In regard to associations with mother's psychological distress, non-tangible support, satisfaction, and strain at T1 related to distress at T2. However, strain was the only unique predictor of distress; satisfaction had a marginal effect. Importantly, the association between strain and distress was moderated by satisfaction, such that strain predicted more distress at low and medium levels of satisfaction, but not at higher levels of satisfaction. Results are discussed in light of Latino cultural values, developmental issues, and implications for intervention.

The formation and maintenance of romantic pair bonds is a well-represented topic in human evolutionary sciences. This extensive body of work, drawn mostly from the field of evolutionary psychology, has proposed mechanisms for attracting a mate (e.g., resource display, physical cues), attaining a mate (e.g., intrasexual competition), and keeping a mate (e.g., competitor derogation, emotional manipulation). However, this evolutionary model of human pair bonding has not fully addressed relationship termination. If we accept that we have an evolved suite of behaviors that encourage and facilitate pair bonding, then we must also look to breakups and ask whether evolution has played a role in shaping “heartbreak”—the post-relationship grief (PRG) which many individuals endure.

The evolutionary model of human mating predicts divergent mating “agendas” for men and women. The first step in our research program was to conduct a modest pilot study to address how and when PRG differs between men and women. This pilot study is included as Chapter One for convenience. Having concluded that many of the existing suppositions about breakups were not supported by our initial inquiry, we set out to expand and revise the current model so that it can be used to make accurate predications regarding a more complex suite of variables (e.g., life history, sexuality). Chapter Two explains the logic and implications of this expansion via the example of a specific breakup scenario: the loss of a woman’s partner to a romantic rival.

After presenting the possible evolutionary cause and adaptive benefits of PRG, we next tested both new and existing hypotheses as they relate to biological sex differences (Chapter Three) and life history variation (Chapter Four) in PRG. This quantitative foundation for ongoing qualitative study concludes with an overview of PRG in a population that is sorely underrepresented in evolutionary literature—individuals whose sexual orientation is not exclusively heterosexual.

The current study sought to examine the role of traditional values in China and the United States as one of the important social psychological mechanisms through which romantic relationships affect mental health. The work is guided by the Social Structure and Personality framework, focusing on the meaning construction dictated by traditional values in the stress process, while also addressing the structural and cultural origins of meanings. Specifically, I used path models to examine how those internalized values moderate the impacts of romantic relationships on the mental health of Chinese and American college students and also compared the effects across gender and nations with Multi-group SEM method. The results show that traditional values work as a major social-psychological mechanism influencing Chinese students only by exacerbating the impacts of breakups on their depression. In terms of gender and national patterns, the most important finding is that the unconditional main effect of traditional values differs across gender and nations and Chinese women are mostly harmed by those values. The results partially support the theoretical construction and also add to both the meaning studies in the stress process and the substantive research of romantic relationships and mental health.

During the early twentieth century, Japan was modernizing in all areas of science and art, including children’s literature. Ogawa Mimei (1882-1961) was a prolific writer who advanced various literary forms such as short stories, poems, essays, children’s stories, and children’s songs. As a writer, he was most active during the late Meiji (1868-1912) to Taishō (1912-1926) periods when he was a socialist. During that time, he penned many socialist short stories and children’s stories that were filtered through his humanistic, anarchistic, and romanticist ideals. In this thesis, I analyze Mimei’s socialist short stories and children’s stories written in the 1910s and 1920s. I identify both the characteristics of his writing style and the themes so we can probe Mimei’s ideological and aesthetic ideas, which have been discounted by contemporary critics. His socialist short stories challenged the dogmatic literary approach of Japanese proletarian literature during its golden age of the late 1920s and early 1930s. His socialist children’s stories also deviated from the standard of Japanese children’s literature in the 1950s and 1960s. In this thesis, I break away from the narrow views that confined Mimei to certain literary standards. This thesis is a reevaluation of Mimei’s literature on his own terms from a holistic perspective.