Some of us do have an attitude that says he/ she lived happy ever after. Hence, why should we be interest in the book, why love hurts? By sociologist Eva Illouz . Maybe be it will interest us to find how ⁸the sociology of love has changed. Love was a masculine thing. It was the thing of male character. This made love unequal. Love is changing in our society. The book is dealing with issue why romantic love has come to be associated with certain specific forms of emotional suffering under modernity?
Right from the 19th century, the book tells us that love has entered the marriage market. To come to discern how it all works, we are encouraged to see how choice drives our society. Analysis of choice will reveal how marriage has become part of the market as economic realities begin to influence deeply our love. Consumption and the politics of love overlap. The ecology of choice is fully market driven shapping the architecture of choice. Thus, the moral aspects of our choice of partner and courtship rituals are affected by the market. Something special of this market driven love is that romantic actions are first performed and they are then emotionally felt. This means love has come under the regime of emotional authenticity.
Late capitalism proposed desire as a categorical good . Therefore, undue attention is laid on physical appearance and individual choice is valorized. Desire legitimates individual choice. Modern sensibilities define our freedom of choice as the ultimate good letting the structures of capitalism restrict it. The intertwining of the desire and economic realities lead to the intertwining of the value of the self with benchmarks of the market. This condition seems to have linked one’s lovebility as a value marker of the self. Hence. It has become difficult to live the burden of being unloved. When unloved people feel deeply troubled and undergo tremendous pain. Perhaps, this is why we see commitment phobia and the consequent rise of Live-in relations.
We have the challenge to set free marriage and family from the market. In stead of choice defining love, we may have the challenge to define love through sacrifice. Sacrifice is self giving and is a great antidote to choice driven market. The sociology of love that defined love through choice becomes self-seeking. Self-giving love will certainly go a long way to emancipate love and our family. To do this we have the challenge to critically resist the fantasy of love that is socially coded for us by the market.
