Peer pressure and societal standards are making some students infatuated with love
By: Aliya Karimjee
As we make our landing in the season of love, single people often feel pressured to enter a relationship and conform to society’s expectations of partnership.
With the popularization of heteronormative nuclear-family relationship standards in media, there’s the misconception that you need a significant other to make you feel “complete and happy.”
Some TMU students and staff feel Valentine’s Day is an expensive “trap.”
Zorianna Zurba, a faculty member in TMU’s professional communications department with expertise in the philosophy of love, recognizes the pressure around finding love keeps people from building a community.
“Traditionally, we think of Valentine’s Day as romantic love and we don’t acknowledge the other forms of love that can exist,” said Zurba.
Because of this, she adds that some people often rely on one person to meet their emotional needs rather than focus on self-love or friendships.
Amulyaa Dwivedi, a first-year journalism student, explains that her friends peer pressure her to get a boyfriend, holding her back from her journey with self-love. The pressure surrounds her through acquaintances, family members and friends, she said.
As an international student, Dwivedi notes that the salient dating politic that asks us to prioritize romantic ventures above all else is more prominent in Canada—leaving her with a culture shock.
Despite these societal pressures, she tries to remember Miley Cyrus’s new song Flowers and the practice of self-love.
Dwivedi adds that Flowers “is like a self-love song and a good [addition] to Galentine’s Day.”
Galentine’s Day is typically referred to as a “girls’ night” or a day to spend with friends feeling empowered by celebrating self-love, friendship and the enduring love we derive from being in community with one another.
“I feel like there’s a stigma that being with someone [romantically] is better than being by yourself,” said Agnese Verrone, a third-year politics and governance student.
She said she prefers being with someone she likes enough romantically or her friends, rather than going on a date for the sake of companionship.
Anna-Giselle Funes-Eng, a first-year journalism student, is celebrating Galentine’s Day this year with an ABBA sing-along screening at the Ted Rogers Cinema.
She believes it’s important to celebrate her friends and herself on February 14th rather than have a negative outlook on this day.
“The standard of a relationship is so binary and exclusive. Anyone who doesn’t conform is expected to be sad, wallow… And that’s bullshit,” said Funes-Eng.
For those considered “lucky enough” to be dating, they reveal an equal amount of pressure to arrange a “picture-perfect” Valentine’s Day.
There are a lot of grand gestures seen on social media, “so it puts pressure on my boyfriend or me to do something big,” said first-year nursing student Kirat Sandahar.
Whether you are celebrating Galentine’s Day, Valentine’s Day or practicing self-love, it’s essential to recognize who our true soulmates are and the role community and self-love play in our lives.
