Love 2.0 By Barbara Fredrickson

In today’s society when we hear the word “freedom”, we primarily relate it with national freedom. The United States Constitution sheds light on most of our primary freedoms. With the prioritization of all these other kinds of freedoms, the idea of sexual freedom is oftentimes neglected. Leslie Bell, in her “Hard to Get” mentions the word “freedom” quite vaguely and frequently. This is important because sexual freedom in today’s society is confined in a structure of norms set by the society on how women should talk, act, behave, etc. These norms completely destroy the beliefs of love and sexual freedom--especially for women. Meanwhile, Barbara Fredrickson, in her “Love 2.0” offers a new perspective on love. As she explains it, looking at love
Today, there is a rise of women’s educational freedom, workplace freedom, political freedom, and even spiritual freedom. Yet, despite women’s freedom in the modern workforce, Bell provides a perspective towards societal factors that affect women’s limited sexual freedom, whereas Fredrickson focuses more on the biological aspect of love and sex that can act as a solution towards women’s oppression. Love, as shown in movies and TV shows, is oftentimes portrayed to be romantic, unconditional, and everlasting. As opposed to the romance depicted in films, love in reality is much different. Love does guarantee either of those things. Love can be “anything it wants to be”. In theory, our body unconsciously knows what love is when it feels a connection of “positivity resonance” with a person. As Fredrickson explains, “positive connections with others create neural coupling, or synchronous brain activity between people. With repetition, positivity resonance also produces structural changes in the brain” (Fredrickson 120). This is important because positivity resonance can literally change a person’s brain structure. Furthermore, the idea of “positivity resonance” in
Freedom is one of the most important topics when it comes to happiness and satisfaction. However, Leslie Bell in her “Hard to Get” talks about another kind of freedom--sexual freedom. Although women have the same rights as men today, women’s sexual freedom is oftentimes subsided with all other kinds of freedoms. The limitations, structure, and social confinement that society has created for women is nonsensical. With the societal norms created by people on how women should act, talk, dress, behave, and so much more, it can be relentless and difficult for women to confine to such norms. As a result, many women resort to “splitting” to manage their anxiety. As Bell explains it in the simplest terms, “confused about freedom and what it is to be a woman today, young women often split their social and psychological options---into independence, strength, safety, and control versus relatedness, vulnerability, need, and desire---as though they are mutually exclusive and not equally important to human development” (Bell 29). When these young women split to manage their anxiety and defend against uncertainty, it causes problems for these women. “Splitting leads some women to assume that they cannot be strong and autonomous when they are interdependent with others, vulnerable, and intimate” (Bell 29). Splitting, in many cases, creates the good-girl and bad-girl construct that complicates the