Week 7
Hello Everyone! In this week’s blog post, I will be discussing the last section of my methodology which is the nine behaviors I have chosen to study and how I chose them. I used a combination of literature from the two papers, “Demystifying Toxic Romantic Relationships: Identifying Behaviors and Post-Breakup Outcomes” by Callie Graham, and “Towards a Self-Reflected Romantic Hero: Representations of the romantic protagonist and his approach to Women in Hindi films of the 2010s” by Sofie Vega Wollbraaten. The behaviors I used include:
Stalking – unwanted and/or repeated surveillance by an individual toward another person
Love bombing – a person goes above and beyond for a person to manipulate them into a relationship with them. These behaviors can include being super charming or over complimentary, over-the-top demonstrations of affection, and moving too quickly in the relationship (ie. saying “I love you” super early on)
Cheating – “A person in a monogamous romantic relationship has an emotional or sexual relationship with someone else without their partner’s consent” – WebMD. Every instance that the character(s) are emotionally or romantically or sexually in a relationship with another character aside from their partner counts as an instance.
Changing one’s identity to attract another individual– if one or more characters change their personality or identity to gain the love and/or attention of another. If the character changes their personality or identity once, then that counts as one instance. Every time that they appear on the screen and have interactions with their male counterpart with their altered personality counts as one more instance. They don’t have to change their personality every time for it to count as another instance of this toxic behavior.
False expectations: If a character is interested in someone, then they expect the other person to reciprocate feelings and not like other people but them simply because they showed interest. Instances can include a character verbally telling the other person to like them back simply because they do, or the character expressing frustration that the other person doesn’t like them back.
Displaying Signs of Obsession and Codependency: Occurs if a character feels the need to include themselves in everything the partner does or does not provide any space for the partner. Behaviors also include over-clinginess, being overly attached in a relationship, and not being able to function without the other.
Controlling behaviors: Classified by behaviors in which a character influences how partners spend their time. These behaviors include surveilling or helicoptering the partner, limiting the partner’s interactions with people in their lives, and limiting the partner’s speech and/or actions.
Toxic intrarelationship dominance– the man or woman uses dominance and powerful actions to harm or berate the partner for having other interactions with the opposite gender. Powerful actions include verbally berating others, physically harming others, and threatening to do something harmful.
Emotional blackmail: involves using another party’s fear, guilt, or sense of obligation to pressure them to comply with a demand. Signs may include withholding affection or threatening retaliation to get compliance and insisting that they can’t live without the other.