Bad Love and its three categories

Abstract

Bad love, as its name suggests, refers to unusual relationships between two parties that either harms the interest of one end or generally opposes the society’s objective morality defined by Nietzsche as a set of rigid standards that people are raised and taught to conform to, usually conservative and fixed. (Islam, 2020) A typical instance of bad love is the erotic relationship between parents and their own children. Though only an allusion, the story of Oedipus Tyrannus illustrates how twisted love may bring about destruction and social disapproval, ultimately leading to detrimental consequences. Ancient people describe the demerits of bad love with the media of literature, oral storytelling, etc. Today, bad love appears to be an unusual term since the developed knowledge of biology reveals to the general public about the genetic defects resulted from incest behavior. But if we are to define bad love in a broader sense that takes into account the various forms of negative emotional attachments to certain figures or obsession with problematic social norms, it may be concluded that bad love has never ceased to exist; instead, it changes its form in accordance with the diversifying culture and society. This essay will focus primarily on three types of bad love, namely, love generated by excessive reliance on parents out of sexual desire, love built on gender inequality, and the radical loving relationship between children and parents which sits on the extreme ends of the love spectrum.