The courtship process for Brazilians is often full of exciting and romantic feelings, conversations, and events. Yet, due to the differences in gender roles, these experiences have different meanings and feelings for men and women. How do Brazilian companionate love and marriage look like?
The customs of Brazilian courtship vary in rural regions, small towns, and big cities.
Moving From a Romantic Courtship to a Companionate Marriage
In rural areas and small towns, families often prefer to maintain control over the premarital relationships of their sons and daughters. So, the traditional chaperoned courtships are practiced. Courting couples may go out in groups with their siblings and cousins. In such circumstances, the primary means of courtship are passing glances and smiles. Only couples who are officially engaged go out on dates alone in rural areas. Sexual relationships before marriage are prohibited. Honor and chastity are still significant cultural values.
In urban areas, however, men and women can engage in relatively free forms of courtship. The modernization of Brazilian society has changed the way people date now, especially in cities. Young people can date more easily and freely than they used to. Many young women and men get married because they are attracted to each other and love each other.
The way men and women marry varies between the upper-class and lower-class strata of Brazilian society (Karandashev, 2017). Some are more formal than others; some are registered, while others are not. In any kind of marriage, a man and a woman refer to one another as husband (marido) and wife (esposa).
What Does Companionate Love Look Like for Brazilian Men and Women?
Brazilians value traditional gender roles in marriages, familism, and respectful relations. Many couples live together with courtesy, trust, and cooperation. As one twenty-five-year-old housewife noted,
“Love is trusting in that person, having refuge, being honest with that person, making a home together, working together, raising children together, supporting each other”
(Rebhun, 1995, p.249).
In many families, husband and wife are viewed as loving couples who are bound together by family values and support. Physical labor in the family is part of their gender roles, but it also represents their love. As the proverb says, “Love and faith you see in actions” (Rebhun, 1995, p.249).
This saying expresses the implicit assumption of companionate love. As a thirty-year-old housewife stated,
“Love is a form of keeping faith with the beloved. Cooking the husband’s food, washing his clothes, cleaning his house, having sex with him, bearing his children, are all love to him. He works in the factory, brings the money home, and he pays the costs of the household, and thus he shows his love for her”
(Rebhun, 1995, p.249-250).
This understanding of companionate love is common among young and older people, particularly in less populated areas, such as the relatively small city of Caruaru in Pernambuco State, in a remote region of north-east Brazil. In cosmopolitan and large cities, couples may view their relationships in marriage differently.
Responsible Marital Relationships for Brazilians
For many men and women in marriages, the terms “obrigaço” (obligation) and “consideração” (consideration) characterize their companionate relationships (Robben, 1989; Rebhun, 1995).
Spouses have their gender-specific duties in their relationship, with the husband providing and supporting the home and the wife doing housework and raising children. They can carry out these obligations as “obrigaço” for the interest of the family—honestly, responsibly, and reliably. However, they can perform these duties with personal devotion, respect, and love of “consideração”, with thoughtfulness, sympathetic regard, and consideration for the marital partner. Even though this quality of relationship is not required, consideraço is culturally expected in rural Brazilian families. This is how one man put it:
“When a couple does not have consideração, they treat each other badly. What a man does bad to a woman is to not value her, not listen to her, he betrays her [sexually], he doesn’t let her take part in decisions, he only communicates them to her, he mistreats her even physically. What women do bad to men is to try to dominate him, to impede him from having her physically, to try to manipulate the man”
(Rebhun, 1995, p.250).
The Selfless Companionate Love in Brazilian Families
Many women believe that true love entails putting one’s own interests aside in favor of the interests of the beloved. As an eighteen-year-old woman said,
“For me, love is the renunciation of I. When you like another person, when you love, understand, you give yourself totally to that person, you forget yourself and remember to love the other person”
(Rebhun, 1995, p.250).
In this sense, companionate love between a woman and a man resembles motherly love, with its characteristics of generosity, self-abnegating, and suffering. Brazilian women in love frequently talk of their love as an obligation to self-abnegation. However, men typically do not think of self-abnegation as something they must do for love. This is why women believe that men are incapable of true love.