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Top1. Introduction
‘Man is by nature a sociable animal, an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidently is either beneath our notice or more than human,’ said Aristotle, a renowned Greek philosopher (Aristotle, 1984). The above quote is universally recognized and supported by numerous studies (Vinciarelli, 2009; Vinciarelli, 2011; Moustakas, 2015; Ozolins, 2017; Boyatzis, 2020; Shetty et al., 2021; Kumari and Vangapandu, 2021). This clearly demonstrates the significance of social interaction (Colomo-Palacios et al., 2017). However, the glamorous world, on the other hand, is revealing a distinct picture, where people are increasingly moving towards virtual space for both searching as well as building relationships. The key determinants of this transition are technological advancements, a competitive work place environment, and an active lifestyle (Hu and Kellinger, 2008; Tarafdar, et al., 2020; Khurana and Misra, 2021). People are becoming more task-driven and output-oriented to gain success in their professional lives by compromising their personal relationships. This generates the hedonic needs of unfulfilled love, belongingness, and acceptance. People start looking for relationships using dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, Ok Cupid, and others to fulfil these hedonic pleasures. According to an article published in ‘The Indian Express’ by Mehrotra, (2021), India has become the second largest revenue market for dating apps after the US, with $323 million of revenue in 2020. These dating apps are also becoming popular in females as it witnessed 12 percent spike in female users in 2020 (The Times of India, 2021). The usage of online dating applications further triggers to cyber dating and live-in relationships, where couples start living together after hook-up (Rosenfeld, 2018). Looking at the current trends, the present research study is an attempt to evaluate the intricated relationships among cyber dating, live-in relationships, hedonic pleasures, and social acceptance.
Sautter et al., (2010, p. 555) defined cyber dating or internet dating as ‘the use of websites that provide a database of potential partners—typically in close geographical proximity—that one can browse and contact, generally for a fee.’ Cyber-dating had significantly altered the meaning and structure of relationships. The primary motivation for using cyber dating platform is to satisfy the hedonic pleasures such as ‘fun,’ ‘excitements,’ and ‘amorousness’ (Bryant and Sheldon, 2017). Furthermore, literature also claims that cyber dating has increased the likelihood of live-in relationships between partners who meet online for hook-ups on dating sites. Narayan et al., (2021, p. 18) defined live-in relationship as ‘continuous cohabitation for a significant period of time, between partners who are not married to each other in a legally acceptable way and are sharing a common household.’ Initially, live-in relationships were not considered with elegance in emerging societies such as India and it was believed that these are meant for western nations. Now, these relationships are also getting acceptability by emerging societies because of modernization of societies and surge of cyber dating (Tribune, 2021). People living in these societies began to recognize that marriage is not required for total fulfillment of a relationship. Moreover, India has finally stepped ahead and walked with rest of the world by legalising the live-in relationships (Agrawal, 2012; Mkrttchian, and Chernyshenko, 2021). The legal acceptability of this relationship in India has further gain popularity and there has been an increase in number of such relationships (Narayan et al., 2021).