Self-Knowledge for a “Pure Relationship” Supplied by “How-to” Articles about Love:

Analyzing National Women's Magazines Published between 1985 and 2007

Abstract

In this study, we examine “how-to” articles that offer advice on how to build a better relationship of love, focusing on national women's magazines published between 1985 and 2007. We especially focused on the following advice in our analysis data: (a)“Have you repeated fault A because of B?” and(b)“In order to build a better relationship of love, you need to create a way to think about C.”

We sought to extract self-knowledge about the “pure relationship” from these “how-to” articles by performing a qualitative content analysis.

Through analysis of our results, the following discourses were classified in category

(a):

1. “Have you lost the positivity that facilitates commitment in an intimate relation because you have the strong negative feeling of being refused?”

2. “Have you not overcommitted to your favorite male or your lover because you foster strong monopolistic desires, jealousy, and a dependent heart?”

3. “Have you suppressed your feelings and devotion to a partner's desires?”

4. “Have you disregarded a partner's feelings and concentrated on fulfilling your own desires?”

Advice classified in category(b)seemed to promote conflicting views.