The transformation of love? Choice, emotional rationality and wedding gifts

Carter, Julia; Smith, Daniel

Abstract

Illouz (2012) claims that love has undergone a great transformation in modernity. The choice of romantic partners occurs through individual decisions disembedded from moral communities. Romantic love becomes a source of the self as one’s beloved affirms our individuality. Yet our choices bring with them the burden of foreclosed possibilities and doubts around ‘the right choice’. Modern romance potentially installs a consumerist ethic of reversibility to our romantic choices. Here we explore the logic and limits to Illouz’s thesis. Through a focus upon ‘wedding gifts’, we find in both cultural imaginaries and social practices of ‘the gift’ a negotiation with Illouz’s transformation of love. Our argument inverts Illouz: the wedding gift helps articulate the annulment of choice, a decision to commit in spite of choice.

• Online Publication Date: Nov 6, 2019
• Publication Date: 2020
• Deposit Date: Nov 11, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 7, 2021
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (part of Springer Nature)
• Pages: 57-79
• Series Title: Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life
• Book Title: Romantic Relationships in a Time of 'Cold Intimacies'
• Chapter Number: 4
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29256-0
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1705210
• Contract Date: Jul 4, 2019