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The landscape of our close interpersonal relationships looks significantly different in the 21st century. Cultural, political, and legal changes have to some degree formed this landscape. For example, many adults choose to remain single, or get married much later in life, in their late 30s or even 40s.
countering the myth that ‘men love to live and women live to love’. The Enduring Love? project examines how women and men experience relationships, analysing couple diversity and the factors which shape intimacy and personal life. 2. Research Methodology Enduring Love? is a mixed methods project. The qualitative study used a rich
- Principal investigators: Jacqui Gabb and Janet Fink
- Enduring and endured couple relationships
- Research Team
- Researching relationships
- Parenthood and gender
- Communication
- Money
- Generation
- “I haven’t modelled myself too much on them [parents] because they did do things differently. It was a generation thing”
- Reflexivity
- Stressors
- “Has sex when she doesn’t really want to” “We have wonderful sex very often, it makes me feel loved and cared for”
- Time, space and place
- Relationship practices
- Nurturing the relationship
- Embracing the relationship
- “We often hold hands as we’re going to sleep”
- Investments in the relationship
- Marking the relationship
- Love is...?
- Couple diversity
- Patterns of relating
- Unsettling coupledom
- Multisensory methods
Relationships are contingent and diverse Relationships are maintained through financial, spatial and emotional resources Relationships are sustained through everyday practices of care, thoughtfulness and kindness
Who and how we love may be changing but our desire to be in a relationship endures. Although long-term may no longer mean forever-after, there is no sense that couples perceive their relationships as time limited when they are together. How then do couples experience, understand and sustain long-term relationships in Britain today? The Enduring Lov...
Jacqui Gabb and Janet Fink (Principal Investigators) Martina Klett-Davies (Research Associate) Tam Sanger; Reenee Singh; Manuela Thomae; Danni Pearson; Laura Harvey; Mark Carrigan; Jamie Kesten (Consultant Researchers)
Relationships are comprised of stoicism and passion, choices and lack of choice, contentment and disenchantment – and all the spectrum of feelings and experiences in-between. Studies have added significant insight into personal lives but often the very emotions that constitute the fabric of study have been wrung out of the analysis. We situate emot...
Survey data clearly indicate that it is parenthood which shapes experience and perceptions of relationship quality more than other underlying differences. Gender is an important factor, indeed the responses of mothers and fathers significantly diverged, but it is the absence–presence of children which is crucial. Fathers are less positive than chil...
Good communication is crucial. Making time to talk and listen is highly valued, a means through which couples come to understand, reassure and comfort each other. Getting along and ‘having a laugh’ together alleviates, or puts into perspective, the everyday strains and dificulties of life. Women often experience their partners’ unwillingness and/ o...
Arguments and poor communication, notably around money issues, are frequently cited as one of the least liked aspects of a relationship. These are often linked to anxieties and dificulties generated by the problems of managing the household finances and/or not knowing about a partner’s financial situation. Money also features as one of the reaso...
There is little evidence to support recent theoretical, policy and media emphases on growing social divisions between younger and older generations. It is rather that couples use generational difference as a way of understanding their own personal choices and how particular socio-economic contexts and couple norms shaped relationships in the past.
Couples acknowledge equally the ways their own childhoods, ‘biographical anchors’ and relational histories have shaped their relationships. In this way they show an awareness of the significance of inter- and intra-generational transmission for relationship experiences, practices and expectations. “My dream is getting married and then we’d be t...
Irrespective of age, class or sexuality, reflections on the nature of their values, choices, feelings, actions and personal biographies are systematically used by couples to explain and understand their relationships. “I told [partner] I wanted a [bucket and spade] and she made sure she got me a set. Then we all went to the beach so I could build a...
Pressures exerted on the relationship from external factors, such as bereavement, financial uncertainties, ill-health, the birth of children, changes in employment and housing, have been identified as posing a potential threat to relationship stability. In contrast, our findings indicate that ‘what doesn’t break you, can make you’. “It is tough him...
Childless men and women are 50% more likely than parents to perceive physical affection as a sign of appreciation. Men are three times more likely than women to mention sexual intimacy as something which makes them feel appreciated. Notwithstanding these differences, dissatisfaction with sexual frequency did not undermine overall (high levels o...
Couples relish opportunities to spend time together, either as a way of catching up with the minutiae of their everyday lives or of sharing experiences, such as trips to the pub, visits to the cinema or theatre, and holidays. The arrival ‘home’ after time spent apart is often framed as a highly cherished moment. The dificulties of not having ‘coup...
Ideas about ‘working at relationships’ - and their therapeutic origins and policy imperatives - have informed the study. We have developed a multifaceted approach to ‘relationship work’, taking into account relationship diversity, including age, cultural norms, parenthood, sexuality, economic and social resources. Talking and listening Care Thought...
There are many activities which combine to ‘feed’ the relationship, emotionally, practically, and symbolically; these serve to consolidate togetherness, carve out shared time and create couple memories. Practices include eating together, watching the same TV programmes, sharing domestic tasks and making personally meaningful and thoughtful gestures...
Notwithstanding the ebbs and flows of sexual desire in long-term relationships, sex is identified as important. However couples appear to equally cherish sensory intimacy, with cuddles, attentiveness and a caress being commonly identified as forging closeness.
Public-private boundaries of ‘couple display’, however, remain sometimes fraught. Many LGBQ couples, especially younger ones, say they would not hold hands in public for fear of reprisal.
Emotional and practical work is required to keep relationships alive. Whether explicitly crafted or incidental, these investments in ‘the couple’ are perceived as crucial. Candlelit dinners at the kitchen table, cheeky texts, chocolate bar treats, post-it note messages and saying ‘I love you’ comprise the quotidian of lived and living relationships...
Long-term relationships also include a diachronic dimension; long-term is about a shared past, the present day and a future together. In different ways, to differing degrees, couples seek to mark special occasions that have personal meaning for them. “Every year he brings me an orange rose from a garden that he maintains”
Love is a slippery concept. It is readily invoked by some but not mentioned by others; its articulation and meanings remain hard to pin down. The act of saying ‘I love you’ is identified as important by women and men alike, but a loving gesture is far more highly valued. Examples of such gestures are illustrated by the top five responses to the que...
Couples are what couples do. Sets of contexts, predispositions and lifestyles combine in myriad ways and are underpinned by emotional, spatio-temporal and financial resources. The tension and problematic for policy and practice is to hold the specificities of experience in concert with differences in couples’ lived lives.
Relationship typologies, defined through context and/ or prescriptive dimensions of dys/functionality, efface the multidimensionality of lived lives. Focusing on ‘relationship practices’ highlights the work that couples ordinarily do and through which patterns of relating can be traced. Generational landscapes Relationship experience and expectatio...
Findings provoke us to rethink what constitutes a couple (dyad) and its conflation with the ‘couple norm’. Couple relationships are typically multidimensional in form, with ‘significant others’ such as children, lovers, pets, friends and deities being an integral part of the couple fabric. Relationship practices Literature and empirical studies oft...
A multisensory research design can advance understandings of intimate lives, and especially how structure and agency, past and present, realities and dreams, culture and context intersect in constantly shifting ways.
Research by the OU and University of Brighton shows that technology can play a significant role in improving relationship quality. Our study found that couples who used the Paired app over the course of 3 months saw a significant improvement in communication, emotional connection, conflict management, and comfort in talking about sex issues, and the more couples used the app the better the ...
18 Technology-Assisted Parenthood and Modern Families in the 21st Century Notes Expand Part VI Current Trends in Health and Close Relationships in the 21st Century
In the 21st century, the definition of dating has broadened again; yet such definitions are arguably confounded with research interests and practical desires. For example, couples have been considered to be dating after they have had a first date (Jobe & Williams White, 2007), when they become short-term partners (Garcia & Markey, 2007), when ...
Oct 1, 2013 · Couple Relationships in the 21st Century. Jacqui Gabb and Janet Fink, The Open University [pdf] From the 7 year itch to the 3 year glitch. From grey divorce, Facebook affairs and cheating love rats to sumptuous celebrity weddings, childhood sweethearts and the power of love to conquer all adversities. Stories about couple relationships saturate ...
