A Study of Emotional Relationships among Deaf Adolescents

Understanding emotional words is an issue of special interest in the field of issues pertaining to deaf people. Concepts such as kindness, love, falling in love, hatred and vengeance are among the concepts that are not understood by deaf people in the same way as they are understood by hearing people. This difference in understanding puts forward the question whether deaf people really know what is meant by non-deaf people when they use such concepts as kindness, love, falling in love, or sexual feelings Are they able to understand each other when they interact with non-deaf people? Are they ready to accept these (sometimes unknown) feelings? Or are they confused by these new feelings and concepts which are not known or acceptable for them? This paper presents the findings about emotional relationships and understanding of sexual feelings among deaf adolescents. The sample consists of 63 deaf adolescents who have been interviewed in Tehran, Isfahan, and Mashhad (three big cities in Iran), using the grounded theory methodology. The main objective of this select group, a pilot study was a questionnaire that was made for a PhD in psychology about sexuality and disability The results show that female deaf adolescents have a different understanding of sexual feeling compared to non-deaf adolescents and prefer to have emotional relationships with non-deaf adolescents than deaf adolescents.