Liquid love: relationships today

Zygmunt Bauman, a renowned sociologist, used the term liquid to describe some people and their behaviors. Also to talk about companies and governments, and to talk about love. liquid love It talks about fleeting relationships, one-night stands, relationships on Facebook or Tinder that don’t last more than a day of hangover. Fragile relationships, difficult to sustain, that fit into the context of liquid modernity, capitalism and consumerism that surrounds us.

According to Bauman we consume everything, including love. We consume objects, food and people in the same way. We are surrounded by messages that make us think that we can acquire objects that calm our anxiety and worries. We have liquid relationships with money, for example: “you either have liquidity or you don’t have liquidity.” We also have a liquid relationship with work, for example: “Receive a settlement” or “”The worker has been settled.” And, of course, we have liquid relationships with consumer objects, such as books, clothes, furniture, etc.

Self-love avoids liquid love

Bauman says that we have lost the established structures and our relationship with institutions. It says that we live in a liquid reality, that there are no longer patterns and structures that we can follow., that give us security in our lives and when making decisions. Having lost the foundations that helped us in the past, everything becomes flexible and liquid to adapt to a world where everything is changing at great speed.

A consequence of this liquidity in everything is that Our identity, which is the last thing we can root ourselves to, is also liquid. The identity of many “modern people” may seem very marked from the outside, but from the inside it is quite fragile.

And the world around us demands in many ways that we have a flexible identity that adapts to what happens in our environment. Our identity has to be molded to this society and its tastes and that is why it is not stable. Nor are the social strata and institutions stable. Everything is versatile, changing and fickle. So much so that the question of “Who are we really?” draws a deeper void than ever before our eyes.

This liquid identity follows the trend of brands and consumer objects, it is not solid or secure. On the contrary, it is weak and easy to manipulate. Furthermore, I know even more in those fleeting and intense relationships that we establish.

We are talking about an identity that is very dependent on what is outside: whether they are people or objects. So, liquid love is created with fear, because relationships are born from the anxiety caused by the echo of one’s own thoughts in solitude and die from the need to protect ourselves against the possibility that the other will leave us or because we need more emotional intensity and we think that we will only find it at the beginning of a relationship. New relationship.

Thus, our self-esteem becomes just as liquid as the bonds we build. We seek security and reaffirmation externally, we are afraid of committing ourselves and being hurt, because we do not feel capable or worthy of a serious and deep relationship.

Our self-esteem is a consumer of objects that we believe will make us feel satisfied, but in the long run it is never satisfied and always seeks more. The same thing happens with couples (liquid love), we discard them if they have not filled that void that has nothing to do with the outside, but with our interior.

Liquid love, the inheritance of liquid time

Much of what used to work no longer works. The links with our world are greatly affected by these changes, there are almost no jobs for life, houses for life, homes for life and we are even losing partners for life. Liquid jobs, liquid places…, liquid love.

We have a fragile emotional balance, we are afraid to bet on a person who can leave at any moment, for someone who loves us only momentarily or who makes us lose what we consider our “freedom”. Freedom that is essential in this time.

We need to hold on to our power to choose our individuality and “freedom” so as not to bind ourselves to anything. nor to anyone. Thus, the ease and speed with which we achieve things means that we are not prepared for obstacles and that at the first problem we want to throw away our relationship, just as we do with the objects that give us problems.

The liquid love described by Zygmunt Bauman helps us better understand the type of relationships we generate and maintain today: their origin and their course. It is true that there are many factors that have to do with today’s society. Understanding these factors can help us not fall so easily into materialism and consumerism, in daily life but especially in our personal relationships.

The concept of liquid love can make us understand that, although we now find partners through technology, nothing can replace an emotional connection that develops over years. Neither the communication nor the constant work that a relationship requires can be replaced as quickly as objects. It can teach us that although sex has now been liberated, nothing replaces the loving sex of a couple who has taken the time to get to know each other and talk about what they like.

Liquid modernity encourages us not to think, to replace loneliness with objects or a romantic dinner with an expensive and impersonal gift. But just because we live in this society does not mean that we cannot reflect and take the helm of our lives. It does not mean that we cannot decide to spend a weekend at home talking with our loved ones, doing puzzles or playing board games, instead of going to the mall and consuming. It does not imply that we cannot read or have simple tastes, have an old mobile phone and not want one-night sex or ephemeral relationships.

There are many ideas – in some ways unhealthy – that are part of the social current that surrounds us.. The new generations are born with technology and sexual liberation, however with them – and with ourselves – we have the obligation to remember – and to remind ourselves – that not all modernity is synonymous with improvement and that a critical attitude towards any approach, before If we assume it, it is perhaps one of the best positions we can adopt in the face of the forces that try to influence us for their own benefit.

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