The same source defines 'Contract' as "an agreement between two or more parties for the doing or not doing of something specified...an agreement enforceable by law."
Any discerning eye will immediately catch the dichotomy in any attempt to join the two terms and come up with something called a "Love Contract". However, love contracts do exist, as valid, legal documents. This is how Wikipedia defines a Love Contract :
"...a legal contract that is meant to limit the liability of an employer whose employees are romantically involved. An employer may choose to require a love contract when a romantic relationship within the company becomes known, in order to indemnify the company in case the employees' romantic relationship fails, primarily so that one party can't bring asexual harassment lawsuit against the company. To that end, the love contract states that the relationship is consensual, and both parties of the relationship must sign it. The love contract may also stipulate rules for acceptable romantic behavior in the workplace. "
The above definition makes it pretty clear that why a love contract is needed. The important point which we need to see is how effective is it? This discussion will take us to the realms of psychology and behavioral sciences.
Today, all the eminent psychologists and behavioral scientists are unanimous in their view that emotional fulfillment is the key to achieve optimum efficiency in anything we do - be it writing a book, composing a song, or number crunching in an office. As per Transactional Analysis, a theory propounded by Dr. Eric Berne, we all need some positive emotional reinforcements, which he calls positive 'strokes'. These positive strokes help us at every stage of our life - an infant grows healthily when she receives positive strokes from her mother in the form of her tender touch and care, a young kid needs positive strokes from friends in a play-field in terms of acceptance and appreciation, a teenager needs to be recognized as a part of the peer group - without these positive strokes, we can not develop into normal, efficient human beings. And giving and receiving love is the most important positive stroke we can have.
It is in this context that I will like to analyse the case at hand.
Imagine yourself in love (the people who haven't had the good/misfortune, as the case may be, can take the representation of romantic couples in movies to be a good approximation) - everything is cheerful, everyone is a nice human being, the world is all rosy. You have this infinite feeling of "goodness" and "vitality" flowing through you, nothing seems impossible. You are willing to take challenges, willing to push your limits because you know even if things go wrong, you can always fall back upon someone to be with you, someone to support you through thick and thin. Your productivity at work increases, you become a more jolly person, people like to be with you.
Now imagine you had a bitter quarrel with your beloved, or God forbid, have broken up. The world is dark, without joy, life seems empty and without purpose, you are but a shell of yourself....
This highly melodramatic example might be exaggerated, but all I am trying to do here is to bring forth the potent effect love has on our lives. It is this effect that a love contract tries to curb, to keeps in check - and it can have a devastating effect on the social and psychological health of an individual.
A love contract requires the couple to come in open about their relationship. There are two issues with this, one is obvious and the other, not quite. The obvious issue is why will people like to come out in open - which has been adequately discussed by the contributors preceding me. The other issue, which is much more subtle is - How do you know people are in a romantic relationship? Most of our notions of romantic relationships are highly stereotyped and we can attribute it to Bollywood and our hyper-repressive culture. What an HR manager thinks to be a romantic relationship can just be excellent friendship between to people. How can you force people to agree to be in a relationship? In this case too, if Jagruti was forced to put down her papers and Pritam too resigned in protest stating they had no romantic relation , the HR manager would have ended up having a lot of egg on his face.
Another thing is, how can the effects of a romantic relationship be quantified? How can someone judge that the fall in performance is due to something as nebulous as a romantic relationship and not something else? This point can easily be challenged by an employee.
The point about favoritism is valid to some extent, but then, you don't need to be in a romantic relationship to be a beneficiary - a lot of people will vouch for this ! As for efficiency, Dr. Berne will differ, and so do I !! On the lighter side, contrary to belief, having a permanent partner will save a lot of time searching the cyberspace for one !
All in all, I believe a Love Contract is not only an oxymoron, but also counter-productive.
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