Africa-Press – Lesotho. Previous articles have been mainly on issues dependent on other people’s impact on adolescents’ lives, partly because those people make part of their supposed role models, whilst bringing them up themselves or
by just being in their environment, hence influencing their actions in one way or the other. This is truly so because children mainly develop by imitation or
modeling. We are however, transiting to a crucial stage, a stage of personal choice. We are transiting through adolescent to young adult stage. We are going to explore how the choices made
by significant others may become crucial determinants of their future. In this article, only one topic will be touched but may not necessarily be covered.
That is marriage. This topic as the focus in this immensely influential stage of humanity, will lead us to yet another diversity of issues confronting young adults. Marriage:
To address this issue, technical terminology may be used, just for the sake of providing readers with existing concepts in the topic; however, as much as possible, clear
explanations will be made to help readers comprehend issues at hand without having to worry about their terminology. As marriage is believed to be a union of two people, as partners in a romantic relationship, love, it
will be important to provide some definitions of love in terms of its different components as reprinted from Prescott, 1957, p. 358 (Zimbardo and Ruch (1979).
It is important to acknowledge the fact that before people get involved into the depth of loving, before they can relate romantically, they first start liking one another.
Following are factors believed to contribute to liking each other, which to some extend even influence a choice of a marriage partner: There is a tendency to like people who live close to us more than those who live far away
from us. People near us are easily accessible to us, and our contact with them is likely to be there for our immediate need for their attention. “If the
frequency of the interaction between two or more people increases, their degree of liking for one another will increase. ” Homans (1950) confirmed. It is common for
people to be attracted to beautiful or handsome people than they will be to plain or ugly people. This has turned out to be one factor determining the choice of a partner.
This is a tricky one as although, generally, people like competent and able people, rather than those with difficulty seeing things, (Scotland and Hillmer, 1962), studies have
also proven that if someone happens to be too competent also, this poses a problem, as they may be too perfect for their partners liking, making them feel
inferior and dump. People like people who like them, this should be a sincere liking not flattery for the sake of winning their love. For example, someone who will praise one for a beautiful
body even when that person knows that they do not have a beautiful figure is actually mocking and this can be a manipulative turn off instead of bringing
positive results: This a theory of complementary needs by Winch (1958) pg. 467, which proposes that our choice of spouse will be a person whose needs are complementary to our own and who can
provide us with maximum need gratification. These factors are also backed up by the following liking theories: This theory refers to the contribution of each member of the relationship relative
to that of another. The more one puts in a relationship the more they should get in return. If a person is serving in an inequitable relationship, he or she
will feel distressed and will try to restore equity to the relationship. This can be achieved by reducing the efforts they were making in the relationship
otherwise, if they can accept the situation they will be putting themselves in a much-compromised relationship. This theory shows that changes in another person’s evaluation of us, impacts on our
love for him or her than if the evaluation is constant. People like a person whose esteem for them increases over time better than someone who has always
loved them without changing or increasing their love for them. Similarly, our love for someone whose evaluation of us becomes more negative becomes negative.
‘Mamohapi
Thokoa is a professional counsellor, facilitator of Psychology of adult education, Communication media and Research courses at the National University of Lesotho –IEMS, high School teacher, and LIEP development stakeholder’s representative. dcs0720@gmailcom
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