"Friends and Non-Conventional Partnerships"
25-27 January 2002

"Intimacy and the New Sentimental Order"
Bernadette Bawin-Legros
(University of Liège)

Thousands of stories have for the past centuries crystallized romantic love into an archetype which we recognize,and the result is that we are not always conscious of the existence of various love categories.Many historians (de Rougemont,1963) retrace the emergence of romantic love back to the Middle Age,to the time of troubadour culture.Whether the claims of its origin are true or not,the more essential fact is that romantic love has survived and that people still feel an irrestible attraction towards it.

Romantic love is a narrative,it has been constructed in a fictive form i. e in songs,poems,dramas,operas,fairy tails and films but also in reality stories told in biographies and mediated through media.

The grown popularity of romantic stories may stem from the promise inherent in romanticism that if something happens to a person ,it may happen to me also.Therefore romantic love is not only a matter of imagination but an experience which is possible to put into effect.

The situation today is far more complicated than it was during the early stages of romanticism.As Anthony Giddens (1991) writes ,the decline of traditional authority and of social bounds have increasingly receded in favour of an endless and obsessive preoccupation for personal identity.

Romantic love provides a case study of the origin of the pure relationship. Ideals of romantic love have long affected the aspirations of women more than those of men although men have also been influenced by it .The ethos of romantic love has had a double impact upon women's situation :on the one hand it has helped to put women in "their " place i.e home,on the other hand, however,romantic love can be seen as an active and radical engagement with the "maleness" of male society.

.Romantic love in its ideological narrative presumes that a durable emotional tie can be established with someone on the basis of intrisic qualities,qualities that serve as the tie itself.

But in post-modern societies many more women ant men are seduced by something they name intimacy and which refers to personal identity. As Charles Taylor (1989) states ,identity refers to three specific components:the firt is interiority,the feeling that we have of ourselves as human beings endowed with deep insight,the second,the affirmation of ordinary life,the third at last which refers to the expresive notion of nature as an internal moral ressource.

Post -modernism is the era of intimacy because it is the era of tolerancy and moderation.There is no more an unique reference there is no unique pattern of behavior.
Instead of constructing our own identity gradually and slowly like we build a house,we are more tempted today by new beginnings and spontaneous links .Having the situational control (Bauman,1997),the capacity of choosing when ,where,and with whom,we do have sexual relationships gives us the strong feeling of living intimacy.The result is an identity that takes the form of a "palimpseste" where forgetting is more important than remembering.

We are tourists of our own private land and we have enter the world of pure individualism.
The new sentimental order rests more on an individualistic withdrawal into self, on a fundamental and newly redefined distinction between private and public spheres than on tradition. In fact, domestic moral standards have modified: getting married, staying together, bringing children into the world, all this has lost all idea of a pressing moral obligation. The only legitimate union is that which rests on love and dispenses happiness. The family institution is named post-moralistic from the moment that it is dominated by the logic of autonomy and of personal blossoming out. Yet, despite the moralists' as well as some philosophical and religious circles' cries of alarm, the family remains a reliable value and the couple, the place par excellence where intimacy is built and experienced (de Singly, F., 1996).

One of the first questions that is raised when one talks about couples is to know how they are defined. Today, it is indeed difficult to measure precisely who lives alone and who lives in couple, and this all the more that the criteria defining a couple become vague as the instability of structures and the erosion of thresholds develop. It is obvious that marriage alone no longer defines the couple. The fact of living together is also too narrow a criterion, insofar as some people consider that they live in couple though they do not live together (LAT). Everything now happens as if the fact of entering life in couple occurred according to several possible ways: through the institution that marriage embodies, through the fact of sharing the same roof but also through interpersonal exchanges, cognitive mobilization and affective exchanges. Yet, a clear frontier still distinguishes between the project of the individuals who get married and that of those who do not.

The data from the PSBH show that in 1998, people committed themselves much more and in a more durable way when they got married than when they simply lived together. Everything happens as if the idea of a "forever" was better combined with marriage than with the idea of life under the same roof.

To the question "if two persons decide to live together, what do they say to themselves?" (1) it is forever, (2) it is for a long time, (3) it is until we have had enough… one obtains the following results :

Table I

If age is brought in as an intermediate variable, one notes a difference in points of view between the youngest (25-34) and the oldest (65 and +) as far as life under the same roof is concerned, but not as far as marriage is concerned. Whatever the age, marriage necessarily fits in with the idea of duration even if one gets divorced subsequently. The project is that of a long-term commitment.

This difference between the plan to get married and the plan to live together is also marked for people not living in couple

Table IV

N = 6051

with a stronger stress - when one lives in couple - on the "forever" as regards marriage.

N = 6553

If we examine the image of love in people's life, we see that the ideology of a unique love remains very strong and that today, we are far from the sexual and sentimental revolution that took place in the seventies.We are close to the pure relationship described by Giddens (1991)

Table V

Which of the 3 following assertions is the most closely akin to your idea of love?

These results confirm those obtained by European researchers in different surveys about people's values, i.e. that faithfulness remains essential, and this whatever the regions of the world. Yet, the demand for faithfulness (answers 1 and 2) does not herald the return to an uncompromising and virtuous morality: this is only one more expression of contemporary individualism. Faithfulness, or unique love, that is claimed today has lost its ring of unreservedness: what is demanded is not faithfulness as such but faithfulness for as long as love lasts. Therefore, it is not a matter of perpetuating the family order from the beginning of the century: there have indeed never been so many divorces. The plebiscite for faithfulness and unique love testifies above all to the aspiration to a love that would be undivided and deprived of lies. Faithfulness has to do with a frantic quest for fusion rather than with solemn vows. Post-moralistic faithfulness combines the vague hope for a "forever" with the lucid awareness that everything is temporary. Remaining fully faithful for as long as love lasts is an absolute necessity; then the game of love life can be opened again and let the latter play its soothing role. Undivided love does nonetheless not soothe the anguish of transient love affairs but ensures the search for a meaning to life. Love does no longer necessarily require the serious aspect implied by duration but appeals to the imaginary dimension linked to the constituent continuity of self.

Similarly, in the answers that we obtained from our sample, we note that the definition of unfaithfulness remains strongly linked to that of sexual intercourse with a third person.

Table VI

According to you, when is one unfaithful?

N = 6767

Crossing the results with variables such as age or sex does not produce any significant difference. Unfaithfulness is above all the inclusion of a third person into sentimental relationships and this brings us back to the idea expressed by Gilles Lipovetsky (1992), namely that the new sentimental order rests less on collective values than on a deep and individual aspiration towards building his own identity In a macro-social context where social and professional identities are blurred, men and women attempt to build for themselves a space of refuge away from prying eyes. The" new chastity "has nevertheless no purely virtuous meaning; it is no longer a compulsory duty ordered from the outside but it rather refers to a self-regulation guided by love and the religion of the ego. It is the ethos of self-sufficiency and self-protection characteristic of a time in which performative management of self is a priority. The "no sex"-attitude is an illustration of individualistic self-absorption, not of the reappearance of the duties towards the other.

In contemporary love aiming at fusion, Serge Chaumier writes (1999), passion is above all sensual. Desire focuses on a definite and particular object. In courtly love, the lady's personality was of no importance to the knight: only idealization counted. In post-modern love, only individualization matters. Lovers nowadays want both fusion and individualization in the unity and autonomy of the person. Francesco Alberoni (1997) underlines that the stake for modern couples is to reconcile these contradictory desires. This idea is taken up again in de Singly's recent work - Libre ensemble.(2000) It is about being free but not alone. Two dialectical forces thus come into conflict: the one tends to fusion and aims at accomplishment in the couple; the other tends to individualization and to the search for self-development.

As our figures show, lovers want both to maintain the nuclear family, in the form of an exclusive couple, and not to undergo any frustration as they live to the utmost of their respective desires. The essential problem for modern couples is that they encompass love, passion, tenderness, friendship, intellectual connivance, education of the children and exclusive sexual obligation at the same time. Because it is very demanding and only works on itself, contemporary love thus contains the seeds of its own destruction.

This assertion is illustrated by the following results, which issue from the question: are people right to part if…

Table VII

N =6725

This table is a good illustration of the contradictions that are experienced by modern couples, who both aspire to an eternal love that would be undivided, deprived of lies and would last forever, and grant themselves the right to part if there is no passion or conversation left.

Yet, let us not forget that the new way of entering life in couple - such as the notion of couple has been described here - is in fact strongly socially marked. It is outlined in the strongest and clearest way in the intellectual classes (higher degree or university). Yet, it spreads from this avant-garde by leaning on the innovative core represented by young students. Two sectors resisting to the spreading of this model appear: the upper middle classes and the popular classes. For the latter, precariousness, whether professional or conjugal, has traditionally been an evil that had to be fought in order to reach a definite and stable social status. The fact of quickly having to assume a role (married man or woman, father or mother) then becomes a protection against the risks of marginalization. Olivier Schwartz (1990) shows very well how marriage (which lays the foundations of the couple) and motherhood (for women) contribute to direct the expectations of the working classes. These only have too few opportunities to experience conjugal improvisation and lightness. For the working classes, it is not as much a matter of ideological position as of maintaining an ancient way of entering life in couple: how greater the risk to return to precariousness is, how stronger the couple remains.

Table VIII

So when we examine the choice for life in couple and the results according to the last degree, we see that it is in the categories having fewer opportunities to keep studying that marriage - preceded or not by a period during which a roof was shared with the partner - is the most successful. Academics particularly distinguish themselves by a strong propensity to live together before getting married.

As for the place of children, it is striking to note that this desire is considered as very important in all age categories but in a more pronounced way by older people. It is the age bracket of the 65-year-old and more that most clearly asserts that a couple is successful when there is a mutual desire to have a child.

Table IX

Table X

Do divorced people attach less importance to the mutual desire to have a child, as opposed to married people?

Finally, we shall end this "oriented" description of Belgian couples by a look at the cohesion scale, that is when couples are subjected to a series of items and asked if the situations experienced through their couple more or less apply to these items.

According to the results from the 1998 survey, it is the proposition "we do not hide anything from each other" that encountered the greatest support, and this whatever the variable (sex, age or degree).

Table XI

Portrait of couples, general tendencies.

N =1895

Transparency is thus on the agenda whatever the examined category. These results confirm what we have been saying all through the article, namely that love without lies remains a priority, and this as long as love lasts and for all categories of age, sex and cultural level. The paradox comes from the fact that this high ambition does not resist the wearing effect of (even short) time.Secret that was so important for Simmel as well as loneliness and mystery reveal intimacy in its appeal for wrapping up the relation to the other in opposition to seduction and violence .

Conclusion

The intimate life is characterized today by numerous paradoxes and contradictions. Though there are multiple ways of living in couple and though one splits up a lot (while rebuilding couples as soon as possible), it seems, according to the survey we conduct each year and the 1998 results of which we are publishing, that people still very much aspire to faithfulness, as well as to bind durable bonds, and to share a life deprived of lies.

The figures that we are presenting only reinforce what researchers in social sciences have been saying for years, namely that today, fusion in love is a refuge aspiration but that it harmonizes badly with aspirations to autonomy and self-development which are characteristic of our contemporary world. Though it appears frequently through the surrounding ideology and the media, the dominant model can nevertheless not be found as such in all social classes and especially in the popular ones, in which marriage and couple solidarity remain the best guarantees against precariousness.

Yet, following observation is paradoxal : the fact that men and women are enjoined to love each other and to love their children while presenting love as the chance and the ideal of their life is indeed reinforced precisely when a liberation movement especially regarding women seems possible and feasible.

But as we stated it above, modern love attempts a difficult synthesis between irreconciliable dimensions transparency and secret,fusion and self -blossom make the whole project very fragile.

Bibliography

Alberoni (F), Je t'aime. Tout sur la passion amoureuse, Paris, Plon, 1997

Bauman (Z) , Postmodernity And Its Discontents, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1997.

Bawin-Legros (B), Lenoir (V), « Le fonctionnement du couple dans la société Belge » in Familles, modes d'emploi, (B. Bawin-Legros ed.), Brussels, De Boeck, 1999, pp. 3-23

Giddens(A) -The transformation of intimacy,Polity Press ,1991

Chaumier (S), La Déliaison amoureuse, Paris, Armand Colin, 1999

Kauffman (J-Cl), Sociologie du Couple, Paris, PUF, Que sais-je, 1993

Lipovestsky (G), Le crépuscule du devoir, Paris, Gallimard, 1992

Schwartz (O), Le monde privé des ouvriers, Paris PUF, 1990

Singly (F) de, Le soi, le couple, la famille, Paris , La Découverte, 1996

Singly(F) de,Libre ensemble ,Paris,La Decouverte,2000

Taylor (Ch) The Sources of the self ,Harvard University Press ,1989

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