Couple Relationships in the 21st Century [Hardcover]

Who and how we love may be changing but our desire to be in a relationship endures. This book presents an incisive account of how couples experience, understand and sustain long-term relationships, exploring the emotional, practical and biographical resources that couples draw on, across the life course.1. Introduction 2. Relationship Work 3. Communication 4. Sex and Intimacy 5. Unsettling Coupledom 6. Conclusions

Couple Relationships in the 21st Century is an important contribution to the study of intimacy and relationships in general, especially regarding methods, and to the study of couples in particular. It succeeds in being critical towards the popular therapeutic  and sociological  narrative of good couples, while at the same time also offering the reader a deeply felt sense of why so many people still choose to live in couples. (Sara Eld?n, Acta Sociologica, Vol. 59 (1), 2016)

This insightful and engaging book emerges from a research project called Enduring Love & . It focuses on the everyday social features of loving. What is so brilliant and refreshing about this book is the way it undermines the eteronormative assumptions beneath the idea of the couple. & This book has a rare quality, for it not only documents sociologically the experience of enduring love; it also offers & tips on how we might live and love differently. (Les Back, Network, Issue 121, 2015)

[This book] offers a unique window on the intimate world of contemporary couple relationships. The nuanced descriptions of couple interactions [ ] reveal the everyday gestures and small acts of kindness which enable partners to sustain their relatilÄ