Happily Ever After? Contemporary College Women’s Understandings of Love in an Age of Timelessness and Impermanence

• In Event: 078 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 14. Cultural Dimensions of Gender, Love, and Work

Abstract

Through definitions of romantic love and marriage, participants discussed love in late capitalistic terms of work, as a contract, and something that can and should be controlled. Love is something that should be monitored in order to meet the needs of oneself—and one’s partner—and to foresee upcoming risks. In making sense of a princess culture, women draw from traits defined by Illouz (1991) as the therapeutic ethos and romantic ethic. Participants negotiated such tensions through rationalized forms of reasoning, placing the responsibilities for managing love on themselves in what they define as a time of instability and increased divorce rates. Adding to Illouz (1991), however, we argue that women’s negotiations of the notions of romantic love and marriage can be understood through conceptualizations of time, specifically in relation to the (1) investment of time, (2) timelessness, and (3) envisioning the future and endings.

Authors

• Amanda Koontz Anthony, University of Central Florida

• Lauren Norman, Delta State University