201a Outside of the age range. Not included in the analysis. 201b Outside of the age range. Not included in the analysis. 202a Daniel is a 34-year-old, white, British man. He lives with his partner Robert in London. Daniel was 31 when they entered into civil partnership. They have been together for nearly 8 years, […]

The women 101a Amina is a 30-year-old woman who identifies as Arabic. She met her cur­rent partner Josha less than two years ago and they have now been in a civil partnership for five months. Their marriage was instigated by Amina’s non — EU citizenship. Amina and Josha live together in Amina’s flat in North […]

This book is based on a research project, ‘Just like Marriage? Young Couples’ Civil Partnerships’, which was carried out in 2009 and 2010. It was funded by the British Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC, reference RES-062-23- 1308). In studying personal accounts of formalised same-sex relationships, and by focusing on younger generations’ experiences, we aimed […]

Over the course of a few generations, the everyday possibilities for same-sex relationships in Western societies have altered in dramatic, but uneven, ways. In some contexts, it has become possible for same — sex couples and partners to live more mainstream lives than ever before. There are few contexts in which the mainstreaming of same-sex […]

Same-sex couples have arguably been burdened with the requirement to be in the vanguard of radical political change with regard to their personal relationships. The expectation that gay men and lesbians can or should transform conventions for relating to one another has been a strong one (Auchmuthy, 2004; Hull, 2006; Stychin, 2003; Warner, 2000). Yet, […]

We have noted that in partners’ narratives there is a tendency to locate their commitment to their current relationship in terms of a life stage (see Chapter 4). Most saw their marriage as arriving at a particular stage in both a relationship and in life more broadly. The couples were conscious of their peers (whether […]

For all the couples, the best of times was when they were not work­ing so they could be together; but, more importantly than this simple proximity, it was when the stresses or worries associated with work did not intrude on their time together. They made the point that the time should be ‘stress free’, without […]

Weeks et al. (2001: 107) argue, on the basis of research with a very dif­ferent group of lesbian, gay and bisexually identified women and men in the 1990s, that same-sex relationships contained the potential for creativity and choice. This argument was founded upon the core idea that same-sex relationships had no institutional framework and thus […]

As we noted in Chapter 4, almost all of our couples were living together before they married. The only exceptions arose from the complications of having different nationalities where it was impossible for some cou­ples to live together for long because of immigration legislation. This meant that some had had to return home because visas […]

In this chapter we explore how young same-sex relationships develop and change following civil partnership. There is a cultural expectation that love relationships will change once a couple have entered into a marriage, but such expectations are based on what is known about heterosexual couples. It is not at all clear that such expectations should […]