Conflict and/or violence in premarital relationships - Research Paper Example

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In order to establish meaningful relationships with members of the opposite sex, dating is very important. In addition, dating allows the individuals to know each other better leading to marital relationships later. However, this socialization could lead to both positive and negative experiences. Moreover, it is evident that dating and courtship relationships hold not only competitive potential but also an exploitative one (White & Koss, 1991). However, there are many ways of presenting unhealthy and violent relationships. Most of the research done earlier on dating violence has concentrated mostly on the physical violence while there are more aspects to examine. Consequently, dating violence is a constellation of several abusive and violent behaviors, including physical and sexual assault threats and harassment, homicide, psychological abuse and kidnapping ". It is therefore evident that dating violence may be in the form of sexual abuse, physical abuse, or psychological abuse (Lamm, 2010). It is evident that there is a relationship between those who are violent during adolescence and violence during adulthood. On the other hand, teen dating violence varies from verbal and emotional abuse to murder and rape. Most adolescents are ignorant on signs of physical and sexual abuse because they consider jealous and controlling behaviors as signs of love. Since most adolescents want to retain their autonomy and they also rely on their peers they rarely report the violence to a parent or adult but only tell their friends with minimal chances of adults knowing (O’Keefe, 2005). There is a remarkable high level of dating violence among high school students. According to research, about 9% to 57% of adolescents have had at least one experience with physical violence in a dating relationship. In addition, it is evident that the physical violence during courtship continued into the early years of marriage for about half of newly married couples. Moreover, reports have shown that in most cases, relationship violence starts in mid-adolescence with high chances of going on into marital relationships (Cano et al, 1998). There is an alarming level of dating violence in the universities. In a recent research, 87-88% of college females and 81% of college males revealed to either have received or inflicted upon verbal violence from a partner at least once. The verbal violence included sulking, yelling, insulting and arguing heatedly the partner. On the other hand, about 35% of college females and 37% of college males revealed to have inflicted upon or received physical violence from a partner at least once. The physical violence incorporated shoving, hitting, grabbing, and pushing. In addition, according to the results there is an insignificant difference between rates of violence from men against women and violence from women against men. However, additional research indicates that violence among dating partners goes on into marriage (Jeffrey, 1996). Forms of premarital violence Actions like sarcasm and making derogatory comments may be clear evidence of psychological abuse. Moreover, psychological abuse may also include insults and name-calling, emotional withholding, yelling, ignoring others, cursing, and treating others like inferior persons. In addition, since verbal attacks can be easily ...Download file to see next pagesRead More