Abstract:
Using a rich palette of qualitative methods and a large scale online survey, the Enduring Love? project has been studying how couples experience, understand and sustain long-term relationships in contemporary Britain, paying particular attention to the ways in which gender, parenthood and generation shape experience.

In this presentation, Dr Gabb explores the relationship work that couples do and how this serves to sustain their long-term relationships. Relationship work here is more than the drudgeries of domesticity. It offers couples the opportunity to embrace their relationship – through the pleasures of physical closeness; and to nurture their relationship - emotionally, practically, and symbolically through practices of togetherness which carve out shared time and create couple memories.

Focusing attention on the everyday practices that couples do and the material conditions which shape these personal lives, our conceptualisation of relationship work thus inculcates ideas of work and capital whilst keeping a keen eye on the intensity of emotions.

Across the dataset, it was the personal meanings of relationship work that were valued more than their cultural reference points. Commercialised celebrations like Valentine’s Day or grandiose romantic displays from Interflora and/or the ‘guilty’ petrol station bunch of flowers were less fondly received than small acts of kindness.

Knowing gestures and familiar relationship practices demonstrated intimate depth of understanding and investment in the long-term couple relationship.
 
Biography:
Dr Jacqui Gabb is an Associate Dean for Research at The Open University. She has worked as an academic for over 20 years and has published extensively over this time.

Her research centres on intimacy and family life, with particular emphasis on the contemporary dynamics of policy, professional practice and personal relationships.

Her recent research on couple relationships has received widespread critical acclaim and she is recognized as an expert in the field, regularly contributing to national television, radio and international press.

Recent books include: Couple Relationships in the 21st Century (with J. Fink, Palgrave, 2015), The Secrets of enduring Love (with M.J. Barker, Vermillion Random House, 2016), and Researching Intimacy in Families (Palgrave, 2015). Current work is exploring ideas of enduring coupledom across different national, situational and biographical contexts.

Ticket information:
Free

Further information can be found at: http://www.essex.ac.uk/sociology/news_and_seminars/seminarDetail.aspx?e_id=9280