The Sociology Of Heartbreak

The Sociology Of Heartbreak: Why Women Are Shamed For Loving Beyond Boundaries.

Heartbreak is often described as an individual’s loss in romantic and emotional relationships. While growing up every women has gone and still going through various heartbreaks for a certain period of time, in this period some gets lost in the maze of coining love, soul mates and many more terms as myth; in this procedure some identifies the strongest versions of themselves and others go on in life as it is a part of growing.Meanwhile there are women like me who insists on loving the same person after a heartbreak, some may call it delusional but I might call it “some infinities are bigger than other infinities ”. If we interpret from mythologies there are various viewpoints on how Ahalya the daughter of Brahma and wife of Sage Gautam was left heartbroken by her beloved husband who didn’t believe in her faith and turned her into a stone. How Draupadi had truly loved Arjuna but also had to be in a marital relationship with other Pandavas. How Sita waited for Rama only to get shattered because he didn’t want to believe in her purity, despite all she gave “ Aagnipariskha “ yet stayed at a sage’s place being pregnant with Rama’s children. Shachi filled with anger, despair and shattered seeing Indra having various affairs, had to play her role of a loyal wife even when in love with someone else. There are many more tales narrated through patriarchal view ignoring the strong and grieving women. In Indian society we see familial structures, gender norms and cultural aspects shape romantic relationships and heartbreaks cannot be reduced to a private rather psychological event. It is embedded within an ocean of sociology where emotions, collective morality and mental health discourses.

The consequences of heartbreak are increasingly visible in India today, we see a rise of depression and anxiety coming from a path of relational stress even when therapy and mental health support are growing; cultural stigma remains pervasive. Conditioning like therapy only works when people are ready to give in themselves into the procedure and therapy is expensive remains constant,“why would I spend 1000 bucks on each session” echoes within many. From Goffman’s front stage and backstage theory we see that people maintain a mask of normalcy like pretending to be okay, leading daily life bubbling and posting neutral on social media downplaying the pain, the front stage behaviour is only to maintain the social life and identity whereas in backstage we see them grieving alone, confiding in close friends worst for people who has common friends, they prefer writing journals. In Indian society backstage is often confined because of lack of privacy. We can find the similarity in mythologies too, it is a pattern adopted and followed even when it is humanly hurting and restraining a person’s own shaped behaviour, but no one complains as it is a type of social norm, especially in case of women.

We see women slut shamed for choosing many partners even if it is for temporary happiness even when they are still in love with one particular person from the past, even after being betrayed by their lover. If we see social life as a stage where women perform roles to manage impressions in front of an audience. Women’s sexuality is heavily noticed from the preformative lens and slut shaming becomes a mechanism of enforcing patriarchal norms. Women are expected to be dominated by cultural scripts modesty loyalty and many more. The ‘ ideal woman’ is imagined as someone who is pure and is devoted towards a single partner; a way of maintaining family honour. Any changes from the front stage ideal script creates a spoiled identity. Like when Rama denied to take Sita back with him even after knowing that she was held captive by Ravana, because he thought that Sita was impure. Ahalya was not heard like most of the women in today’s world, even when her husband knew that she was raped by Indra, he chose to turn her into a stoned statue; was it too much for to ask for intimacy from her husband? Who believed in staying pure? Women are not heard, they are judged and most importantly by their beloved ones who were supposed to protect them, they are left back for the so called like “ it is for our best ” but is it? Or is it because patriarchal society wants women to be unheard?

However in the back stage, women go through complex emotional realities. Women might carry deep love for a person in past and still seek for intimacy or companionship with others as a way of coping up. This vulnerability, longing or self exploration is rarely accepted in public performance. Instead society coins their emotions into a single stigmatised work “characterless” .Even if they do not intend for any intimacy but a company who will make them feel heard will be stigmatised. Society questions their sexuality as in why a male company and not a female one? Sita even in when deeply in love with Rama had to burn herself only to prove her purity, Rama did not feel guilty about his wife burning herself because of the patriarchal move of what would people of Ayodhya think of her? Draupadi was punished and humiliated in front of the Kaurava Court because her husbands were at fault; relation to two finger test on rape victims, do they really deserve to go through same trauma and prove themselves that they are really a victim?

Heartbreak converting into slut shaming is not just about women’s individual morality but about audience control. Here our society acts as the lifetime present audience, rating everyone’s personal space and social choices, enforcing traditional patriarchal texts of femininity and punishing women who deviate. Thus while men who is going through heartbreak may perform anything and everything without being questioned and without paying social penalty; Indra having multiple mates and was only cursed for losing the throne while Ahalya was turned into stone, losing her social status and dignity proving that women’s performance are policed, exposing the gendered asymmetry in impression management. Women can feel “Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book”

Heartbreak, when seen through a sociological lens is never only about personal loss but a socially mediated experience shaped by cultural norms, gendered subjectivity and moral policing. in Indian society women’s grief and choices are policed through patriarchal scripts, where slut shaming becomes a forever powerful mechanism of control.