Emerging Adult's Perception on Romantic Love, Homosexuality and Pre Marital Sexual Relationship

Abstract

The present exploratory study entitled "Emerging Adult's Perception on Romantic Love, Homosexuality and Pre Marital Sexual Relationship" was undertaken in Hyderabad city. Self developed questionnaire was used to collect data and data were collected from 30 unmarried male and 30 unmarried female respondents who were in the age group 20-25 years. The main purpose of the present study was to understand unmarried emerging adult’s perception on Romantic Love, Homosexuality and Pre Marital Sexual Relationship and also to understand the gender differences in their perceptions on sexual relationships. Findings of the study revealed the gender differences in perception of Romantic Love, Homosexuality and Pre Marital Sexual Relationship. More male respondents compared to female respondents agreed on the concept of love at first sight and both male and female respondents perceived understanding is the most important component of love but people often mistake sexual attraction as love. Male respondents perceived sex as most important component of love where as female respondents perceived sex as not necessary; romance is psychological connection between two people. Male respondents considered physical appearance whereas female respondents considered good job as a most important characteristics to impress opposite sex. Males considered moving apart and females considered family compulsions are the main reasons of breakup of romantic love. Males perceived that in love relationship partners are generally expected to help partner as and when required and females perceived partners are expected to not get involved with other activities and give full attention to them. Majority of male respondents considered homosexuality as normal. In contrast female respondents considered it as abnormal behaviour. Most of the male respondents said sexual intercourse is acceptable if the couple is dating regularly whereas females disagreed on this point. Male and female respondents perceived that people generally get involved in premarital sexual relationship when they consider themselves in romantic relationship and male respondents said that fear of contacting STD and female respondents said that fear of pregnancy is a major repercussion of premarital sexual relationship.