The Curious Absence of Love Stories in Women's Talk

Abstract

Sociological debate has dealt with love in a number of different ways. For some, love offers a unique opportunity; it is a path to salvation ( Jackson, 1993 ; Langford, 1999 ). Others, however, take a more sceptical approach to love in modern society: for Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995) love represents the path to extreme individualization, for Illouz (1997) it is ultimately underpinned by consumerism, and perhaps most extreme, for Bauman (2003) love has been destroyed. Giddens offers a slightly different (and more hopeful) perspective and suggests that with growing choice and freedom, love has become ‘confluent’ and temporary subject to individuals' needs ( Giddens, 1992 ). When adult women were asked about love and how they have experienced love in their own lives, however, few of these themes emerged. Instead many women found it difficult to talk about their feelings generally and love in particular. There was an absence of falling in love stories and rather, women explained that they ‘drifted’ into relationships, or they ‘just happened’. The discourses and languages that these women used to explain love and their relationships will be explored in this paper. Love was simultaneously loudly absent and quietly present.