Good, Loving Relationships concept from the theorist Buscaglia

Reality Check: Romance and Romanticism behind a Good, Loving Relationship "And they live happily ever after," is one of the most tragic sentence in literature. Joshua Liebman Introduction It started when we were kids, a damsel in distress and the prince charming to the rescue and the ending is always happy. Princesses are always beautiful, kind, gentle and will always be in the situation where they are needed to be saved while the knight in shining armor would always be handsome, charming, and rich, gentleman, brave, strong and so on. Whatever the twists and turns of the story it can be expected that this is the last thing we will remember, that in the end the perfect couple lives happily ever after. When we were kids we do not entirely know how to discriminate what`s real from what is not. Hence while we were starting to create a notion of ourselves, others and the world itself, we cannot help but to incorporate what the fairy tales told us about the world. This primarily influences the expectations we develop and gather towards mate selection, relationships and living with our significant other. We expect, consciously or unconsciously, a happily ever after in our own life story. Body We have been poisoned by fairy tales. -Anais Nin In his ideas on love and relationships, Leo Buscaglia was able to make us realize that there is a need to re-evaluate our conception of being in a relationship. He discussed important aspects that we have to invest on to be able to have a good and loving relationship. Communication, Honesty, Forgiveness, Joy and Intimacy are the major areas he highlighted. But before giving out this list, he first talked about a very significant reality about how people perceived being in a romantic relationship, that is influenced by certain myths. Real and loving relationship should not be in anyways, derived from the expectations rooted on myths. This is the general theme this discussion will elaborate on. To fully understand the concepts of romance and romanticism this paper aims first at discussing the influences of unrealistic expectations to motivations of marrying and to marriage itself. Second this paper will look how teenagers view these marriage myths and lastly an examination on how to decrease, if not totally eliminate, unrealistic beliefs about marriage will be presented. When nobody around you seems to measure up, it's time to check your yardstick.Bill Lemley To help achieve this paper`s goal the following studies and researches will be utilized; The End of Romance: Demystification of Love in Post-modern Age by James J. Dowd and Nicole Pallota. This material will help us understand the concepts of romance and romanticism. How these concepts changed across time was studied by looking at romantic comedies and dramas produced in Hollwood from 1930 to 2000. Dowd and Pallota give us an analysis of the social and cultural changes in relation to this changing nature of romance and romanticism. Romanticism and Motivation to Marry in the United States, Singapore, Burma and India by George Theodorson. Looking at romanticism as a Western influence to Asian countries (Singapore, Burma and India), the researcher for this study analyzes how romanticism influenced motivations in marrying. The Asian countries mentioned above practice contractualism as part of their traditional culture when it comes to marrying and so Theodorson examines a cultural change in this countries in the form of romanticism. This study will help us understand how different cultures view romantic relationship and how they can be influenced by it in turn. The Marriage Quiz: College Students` Beliefs in Selected Myths about Marriage by Jeffry Larson. A marriage quiz was created and utilized by this study that can measure the degree on which students believe marriage myths. Furthermore a thorough discussion of the marriage myths included in the marriage quiz was presented. The author also gives some information about further references that could be used in studying marriage myths. This study also mentioned about the factors that may influence beliefs about marriage. Raising Awareness about Marital Expectations: Are Unrealistic Beliefs Changed by Integrative Teaching? By Elizabeth Sharp and Lawrence Ganong. This material is a study that reveals the effectiveness of integrative teaching of unrealistic and romantic beliefs about marriage. This study also discusses about the intertwined concepts of marital dissatisfaction and romantic myths. This will help us better understand how unrealistic marital beliefs could negatively influence marriage in itself. Completing the Picture: Integrating Ideas from the Sources Love is always bestowed as a gift - freely, willingly and without expectation. We don't love to be loved; we love to love. -Leo Buscaglia Just like most of the words, romance has a long history that goes even beyond the birth of the oldest literature. Moreover just like many other concepts this word entailed a different meaning prior its current conceptualization. Romance was first used to refer to adventures taken by a gallant knight in Europe. Only recently was it used and understood as a love affair CITATION Dow00 \l 1033 (Dowd & Pallotta, 2000). Romanticism has ...