Dating violence: idealization of love and romantic myths in Spanish adolescents

Abstract

Dating violence is a significant problem among adolescents. It encompasses a variety of violent behavior, from verbal abuse to physical and sexual abuse, from threats to rape and murder. Among young people, idealization of love and romantic myths are very common as a consequence of our culture and society, which lead them to develop dysfunctional relationships that somehow favor and facilitate partner violence and sexist ideas in daily life. Education is the basic tool to eradicate discrimination and violence against women. The objective of this study is to explore the false myths of romantic love in adolescents and their related factors. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 16–19-year-old teenagers (n = 180), through questionnaires and by employing the romantic love myths scale, the ambivalent sexism inventory, and the love attitudes scale. Adolescents accepted to a greater degree the love myths associated with idealization than those related to abuse with scale values of Med = 2.72, SD = 0.55, and Med = 1.34, SD = 0.68, respectively. Designed models predict love idealization on the basis of benevolent sexism (β = 0.03; CI 95% = 0.021–0.039), religion (β = 0.198; CI 95% = 0.047–0.349), passionate love (β = 0.038; CI 95% = 0.015–0.061), practical love (β = 0.024; CI 95% = 0.001–0.047), and friendly love (β = 0.036; CI 95% = 0.014–0.058). Hostile sexism and undergraduate studies were associated with the myths that relate love and abuse (β = 0.19; CI 95% = 0.007–0.031, β = 0.208; CI 95% = 0.001–0.414, respectively).