Heartbreaking times: an analysis of the impact of social policy on young people's experiences of romantic heartbreak

这篇论文旨在探讨年轻人在分手过程中的心碎经历。以前，社会学对浪漫爱情的研究是有限的，正如斯马特(2007)所主张的那样，因此，这是一个相对较新的研究领域，并没有充分考虑当代的背景(Gabb，2010)。本文试图通过考察这一代人的生活经历来进步和推进现有的文学，并仔细审视重大的社会和经济变化--例如紧缩、新冠肺炎和生活成本危机以及随之而来的对年轻人浪漫生活的影响。社会学分析中没有心碎可能反映了在捕捉这些主观的、独特的经历方面的挑战，这些经历也被观察到与爱有关(Sarsby，1983)。然而，由于它的个人和文化意义以及对年轻人的潜在深远影响，它值得进行社会学调查，该项目试图捕捉到这一现象的复杂性和细微差别。这项拟议的项目将研究年轻人如何在不确定的时期将浪漫置于他们的生活中；探索年轻人如何应对因这些浪漫关系破裂而导致的心碎，并分析这些数据，以破译我们如何最好地支持承受心碎的年轻人。这些问题将有助于促进情感和亲密的社会学，加深对年轻人在当代生活中的生活经历的理解，并为政策和实践提供建议。

This proposed thesis looks to examine experiences of heartbreak through young people's relationship breakups. Previously, sociology has considered romantic love in limited ways as argued by Smart (2007) thus, is a relatively new area of study and does not fully consider contexts of the current generation (Gabb, 2010). This thesis attempts to progress and advance the existing literature through examining lived experiences of the current generation and scrutinise significant social and economic change - for example, austerity, Covid-19 and the cost-of-living-crisis and the subsequent impact on young people's romantic lives. The absence of heartbreak in sociological analysis perhaps reflects challenges around capturing such subjective, singular experiences which have also been observed in relation to love (Sarsby, 1983). Nevertheless, due to its personal and cultural significance and potentially profound impacts on young people, it is worthy of sociological investigation and this project seeks to capture complexity and nuance of this phenomenon. This proposed project will examine how young people position romance in their lives during uncertain times; explore how young people respond to and experience heartbreak as a result of these romantic relationships breaking down and analyse this data to decipher how best we can support young people enduring heartbreak. These questions will help to contribute to the sociology of emotions andintimacy, deepen understanding of young people's lived experiences in contemporary life and generate recommendations for policy and practice.