Zeldin (1994: 75-6) eloquently writes that people ‘have been able to introduce new meaning into [love] again and again, as surprisingly as they have transformed grain into bread and dumplings and millefeuille cakes’. Lindholm (1998) suggests that the normative form love takes often differs depending on the way the social environment is organised. For many theorists (see Bauman 1999, 2001; Beck & Beck-Gernsheim 2002), modern risk society places an emphasis on private individuals shifting for themselves by carefully selecting from the choices provided by a free and open market premised on neoliberal principles of deregulation, liberalisation, and privatisation. Superficially, the concept of individualisation seems incompatible with the dyadic notions of intimacy. In this paper, I examine the connection between intimate sphere and public sphere in order to elucidate the role of such in constructing modern forms and ideals of love. In using the term “love”, I wish to differentiate it from the love that occurs within friendship and familial relationships, so as to focus specifically on that intimate and emotional bond between those who are commonly considered “lovers” or “in a relationship”. I argue that, despite our common perceptions of love being hermeneutically contained by a self-referential intimate sphere, its organisation cannot be divorced from the social environment it occurs.

The public sphere is an intersubjective communicative space between ‘the state and society’ where various actors engage to seek an understanding on the common interest of public issues (Delanty 2007: 3721; Habermas 1996: 360-6; Peters 2008: 36-42). In short, individuals interact publicly in sociologically imaginative ways so as to contextualise private troubles of personal milieux within the intersection of history, social structure and biography (see Mills 1959). The public sphere is frequently framed in terms of how it enables everyday interactions at the microscopic level of social organisation to have an upward influence upon policy decisions at the macroscopic level of social organisation: that is, how lifeworld can exert influence on system. However, through the adoption of the second person perspective necessary to both frame and understand private troubles in terms of common interest claims, the public sphere also imprints upon lifeworld (Habermas 1996). Moreover, as adequate discussion of public issues generally requires political context, policy can also be seen to imprint upon the public sphere. In short, social organisation, at both the macroscopic and microscopic level, informs dominant public sphere discursive formations. Hence, through the public sphere, lifeworld and system individually imprint upon both system and lifeworld.

Gay rights are a relevant public issue useful in demonstrating how lifeworld and system interact through the public sphere. For instance, gay rights might be framed in terms of a common interest claim that gender should not form the basis for the application of rights to consenting adults. Through an expression of solidarity over this common interest, the public sphere can exert influence on the system: specifically, that political institutions must serve the common interest of the people by enacting policy changes that reflect such. Furthermore, the lifeworld becomes imprinted with this new understanding of the common interest: for instance, a heteronormative individual might come to view gay marriage as reasonable in the same way that women’s suffrage is. Relevant to the broader argument I am undertaking here, it is only a small leap to understand how such public sphere discourse might inform degenderized intimate sphere constructions of love.

Before continuing, I wish to suggest that system perspectives also exert influence through the public sphere. Connell (2011: 43) contends that neoliberalism is ontoformative: that is, within the current spirit of capitalism, social relationships have become formatively shaped by neoliberal principles such as those of free and open markets. For instance, Connell (2011: 49) notes that many contemporary heteronormative perspectives on marriage have become colonised by market imperatives, whereby men and women are cynically ‘imagined as entrepreneurs scanning the market and then hiring each other’. Neoliberalism considers the supply and demand principles underpinning markets to be degenderized, deregulated and equal opportunity. I posit that it is not merely coincidental that public issues involving the institutional organisation of intimacy, such as gay marriage rights, are seen to gain more visibility at a time when system perspectives operate to facilitate neoliberal principles.

These neoliberal ideals of deregulated, free and open markets underpin the ideals inherent to what Giddens (1992) terms the pure relationship. For Giddens (1992: 58), this new relationship ideal increasingly supplants marriage in a ‘generic restructuring’ of the organisational force connecting intimacy and sexuality. Within the pure relationship, confluent love, characterised by a mutual reciprocity and ‘equality in emotional give-and-take’ between autonomous individuals, displaces the gendered politics of “one-and-only” romantic love (Giddens 1992: 62). The pure relationship extends only whilst either party ‘gains sufficient benefit from the relation to make its continuance worthwhile’ (Giddens 1992: 63). Likewise, sexual exclusivity is no longer a necessary condition of love, and instead becomes contingent upon mutually determined value (Giddens 1992: 63).

One aspect Giddens (1992: 58) attributes to the rise of the pure relationship ideal is an increase in plastic sexuality: that is, an individualised and malleable erotic expression liberated from heteronormative frameworks of procreation and marriage. According to Hawkes (2007: 3411), Giddens suggests that plastic sexuality is, amongst other things, a product of increases in ‘effective contraception’ and the ‘economic and social independence of women’. However, this is not to suggest a strong determinism to these factors, only that they greatly facilitated the sexual liberation movements of the 1960s which gave rise to ideals of plastic sexuality and confluent love. The relevant point here is that these shifts have occurred in a very public manner. For instance, it is not just that greater reproductive control afforded by effective contraception has allowed individuals to privately rethink the relationship between love, sex and procreation, but rather that this has spilled over into the ways love and sexuality are discussed in the public sphere. Ménard and Kleinplatz (2008: 3) note that whilst popular culture now appears replete with references to sex, ‘sexual content was not commonly included’ in magazines directed at a female audience ‘until the 1960s’.

Evans (2003: 131) observes that the spread of the pure relationship ideal is coincident with a normalisation of divorce. In short, the pure relationship ideal is widespread at a time when public discourse is far less resistive to ending unsatisfactory relationships. Aside from the growing economic and social autonomy of women, Evans (2003: 133) contends that modern individuals are increasingly willing to end love relationships on the basis that those relationships fail to provide desired structural certainties. Bauman (1999, 2001) argues that modern society is characterised by a liquidity of structures combined with a pervasive sense of unsicherheit — that is, a loss of security, certainty and safety. Evans points out that it is not that modern individuals generally hold a conservatism that laments the destabilising of the marriage institution, but rather that it is understandable that some sense of structural certainty is desired in such conditions.

In combining sexual liberation with the lifting of the marital iron cage, the pure relationship can be considered a deregulation of the connective ligaments between love and sexuality. However, Evans (2003: 127-32) is critical of a deregulated and liquid intimate sphere, suggesting that it lacks the structural certainties to cope with the demands placed upon it. Namely that, according to the theories of Marx and Weber (cited in Evans 2003: 128), the alienating rationalisation of capitalism increasingly leads individuals to look towards the intimate sphere to provide the emotional fulfilment unavailable in other spheres such as work. As a result, the expectations of love become harder to fulfil and the ‘appetite for love increases’ (Evans 2003: 130). Hence, the sustenance of the pure relationship rapidly consumes individual resources of time and energy required for other activities.

This compulsive desire to intimately open oneself up to another is what Sennett (1977: 259-68) terms destructive gemeinschaft. For Sennett, the intimate society is one concerned with seeking common identity rather than common interest. In short, Sennett believes that the high value public discourse places upon intimacy leads individuals to become distracted by the motivations and personalities of policy makers and thus fail to focus on the outcomes of performative actions. Fundamentally, the forging of solidarities on the basis of emotional closeness undermines the social distance necessary for the rational consideration of public issues that a politically effective public sphere requires. Furthermore, the emphasis placed on avoiding impersonality means that those who cannot meet the increasing demands of intimacy are progressively excluded from common identity communities, leading to an atomisation of society. In this is a link to de Tocqueville’s (1999/1840) fears that without publicly minded individuals, democratic society would be subject to a slow despotic creep of atomisation that renders private individuals civically impotent and ultimately powerless.

Evans (2003) further observes that the increased demands of intimacy and ultimate lack of fulfilment leads many modern individuals to look to consumerism to provide satisfaction. The free availability of sexual activity allows modern individuals ‘to construct a personal agenda whose priorities are not those of social engagement’ (Evans 2003: 128). In this sense, sexual liberation acts as a repressive desublimation (Marcuse 1964). Sexual energies are no longer civically sublimated into public sphere solidarities, nor even into intimate bonds, thus depriving modern individuals the traditional sites of resistance and shelter from market forces. Moreover, the neoliberal market is readily and actively looked towards to provide emotional satisfaction and social organisation. Evans (2003: 136) contends that love has been reconstituted by a romance industry that sells a ‘definition of love which depends upon the fulfilment of the consciously created expectations of the market place’. In this sense, the market comes to inform public perceptions regarding the expected appearance of love relationships: that is, love becomes a pattern of consumption between two people.

For love to be framed in individualised consumer terms necessarily requires the provision of consumption choices regarding its makeup, particularly in terms of its relationship to procreation. The provision of procreative choice has occurred in a number of additional ways to what has already been discussed. For instance, Gilding (1997: 246-7) observes how innovations in new reproductive technologies such as IVF, have ‘unambiguously shifted the boundaries between the biological and the social, demanding human decision where previously there was biological destiny’. Despite the obvious benefits to couples desiring children, IVF also allows for conception to be entirely divorced from the sexual act. Furthermore, with the availability of sperm and egg donors, the involvement of a second person in the process of having a child can be significantly reduced. As a result, intimate involvement with another person is no longer a precondition for fulfilling a desire to have children. Furthermore, whilst modernist accounts which consider the progression of the family form to be linear have been thoroughly challenged, it cannot be denied that, through industrialisation, the economic role of procreation has undergone a dramatic paradigm shift. In short, where having children in agriculturally based societies was of economic necessity to provide additional labour to the family unit, now ‘children are no longer an asset to the household economy in any sense whatsoever’ (Gilding 1997: 257).

In fact, whilst the value of having children has been reconfigured in terms of intangible emotional benefits to the intimate sphere, these “new” benefits are frequently outweighed by an increased strain on family resources that ultimately has detrimental consequences for love. For instance, Mirowsky and Ross (2003: 92-5) observe that, for many couples, their relationships and careers have rarely had the time to fully mature at the point in life that the couple desire to have children. As a result, couples are rarely able to easily absorb the increased burdens on time, finances and energy, leading to less available resources to invest into the love relationship. For heterosexual couples the added demands of childcare frequently manifest as a reduced earning capacity for the woman, thus reproducing long-standing gender inequalities which significantly problematise pure relationship requirements of equality. Furthermore, the required sacrifices are rarely balanced, with the needs of the child strongly favoured in comparison to the needs of the love relationship between parents.

Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995: 130) contend that this imbalance occurs because parents feel ‘hedged in’ by the ‘barrage’ of ‘imperatives’ that invade their homes via the mass media. In short, parents are surrounded by the accumulation of expert opinions in the public sphere regarding what constitutes good parenting. A failure to implement such expertise in correcting as many defects and facilitating as many skill developments as possible, translates in public perception to a failure as a parent (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim 1995). Hence, public perceptions on the “correct” way to raise children have direct consequences for the intimate sphere in terms of the love relationships between parents.

Halley (2008: 29) states that ‘the rise of the scientific expert parallels the decline of the large family’. As already noted, with industrialisation, procreation shifted in economic terms from boon to burden. Halley (2008) argues that the rise of the expert functioned to legitimise the relegation of white, middle-class women to the domestic sphere: women were tasked with ensuring children were raised according to the latest expertise so as to facilitate the best development of future citizens. Bauman (1991: 199) suggests that the expert arises out of a need for a ‘mediator’ the private individual can trust to interpret and interrogate the ‘supra-personal’ body of scientific knowledge, whilst ‘simultaneously’ gleaning a thorough understanding of the inner-most subjectivities. In short, the expert bridges object and subject.

For Burkart (2010: 23-4), the individualisation of society generates widespread acceptance that authenticity, self-reflexivity, and self-disclosure be considered virtuous qualities. The combination of these qualities with the emphasis on expertise in society gives rise to what Furedi (2004) terms therapy culture. For Bauman (1991: 205), therapy ‘perform[s] the function of love … without demanding reciprocity in exchange’. Instead, therapy provides love as a service in exchange for monetary goods. Essentially, therapy reconfigures love according to market principles, thus allowing system perspectives to colonise the lifeworld.

Notwithstanding, on the surface it appears that therapy culture should remove the threat of destructive gemeinschaft by alleviating social relationships of the obsessive desire for intimate confession. In fulfilling the needs for authenticity in private therapy, individuals should be free to forge civically minded solidarities. However, Bauman (1991: 208-20) argues that therapy culture creates non-self-sufficient individuals who carry assumptions that the series of traps encountered in personal milieux are axiomatically private troubles. This occurs because therapy culture pathologizes difficulties as internally occurring struggles that can be remedied through following a normative script. As therapy culture operates according to market principles, this pathologization process is necessary for therapy to maintain and reproduce its relevance as a product. In doing so, individuals are rendered civically impotent and have no choice but to seek ‘biographic solutions to systemic contradictions’ despite no such solutions existing (Bauman 2001: 106).

Bauman (1991: 205) contends that therapy culture is ‘a demand for [a] functional love-substitute [that] arises out of the failed attempts to obtain the “real thing”’. Evans (2003) argues that whilst many heteronormative individuals consider love in terms of the pure relationship ideal, the conditions for its pragmatic fulfilment rarely, if ever, exist. Moreover, in aspiring to the pure relationship ideal, persistent gender inequalities are more likely to be obscured rather rectified. Jamieson (1999: 491) shares this view that heteronormative love relationships, by and large, remain gendered in terms of inequalities. Both authors note the inequalities between men and women in terms of income, social power, domestic and caring duties, and expectations on the relationship regarding intimacy and sex. Langford (cited in Evans 2003: 124-5) suggests that women have much stronger desire for intimacy than do men, and thus frequently ‘portray their relationships as equal’ despite feeling dissatisfied.

For Giddens (cited in Roseneil & Budgeon 2004: 140), non-heteronormative identities and practices are the ‘pioneers’ of plastic sexuality and the pure relationship. On the surface, same-sex relationships would seem to more readily facilitate the pure relationship, especially considering that they do not carry the same concerns regarding gender inequalities. However, Jamieson (1999: 487) is critical of the idea that same-sex relationships, despite tending towards a greater equality than heteronormative relationships, generally even approximate the dyadic encapsulation of intimacy within the pure relationship. Rather, Jamieson contends that non-heteronormative individuals generally derive love and sexual activity from diffuse and protean support networks. Roseneil and Budgeon (2004) also support this view, noting a tendency towards a “queered” intimacy where friendship roles are more fluid.

What is interesting about the gay “scene” in Australia is the existence of highly racialised hierarchies that arise from the internalisation of dominant white discursive formations. For instance, Chaung (1999: 29-38) recounts the experience of living in Australia as a gay Asian man. Chaung points out how the term “Rice Queen” is commonly used within the gay scene to describe old and typically unattractive Anglo-Australian men who seek out Asian men much younger than themselves. These hierarchies of age largely occur due to the extent to which Asian men are generally considered undesirable to Anglo-Australian gay men. Furthermore, Chaung observes how Asian gay men also internalise dominant white ideals, noting experiences where he had tried to date Asian men but found himself disgusted by their Asian bodies. Many theorists attribute this sort of internalised racism to Australia’s long history with racist policies, such as the White Australia Policy, and racist public discourses (Schembri 2000; Seidman 1993). What this points to is how policy and public opinion can inform perspectives on those others with whom intimate sphere relationships are formed.

It would seem that the relative lack of truly pure relationships beyond idealisations suggests that neoliberalism does not exert as much of a formative force as I previously suggested. However, one point that Connell (2011) makes regarding an ontoformative neoliberalism is that it does not function to entirely remove gendered inequalities so much as to reconfigure and obscure them. This is precisely the conclusion that can be derived from the realisation that the adoption of the pure relationship ideal does not match its pragmatic deployment. The subjective nature of love means that concrete conclusions about its qualities, conditions and causes are often extremely elusive. This is perhaps even more so in a liquid society dominated by neoliberal principles of free and open markets. If my argument has been successful here, what I have demonstrated is that love is not exclusively described and circumscribed privately within the intimate sphere. Rather, the relationship between the intimate and the public is massively complex and inextricably interdependent. Nevertheless, I have barely scraped the surface here. Following the theories of Burkart (2010), new media technologies and an arising culture of staging are problematising and liquifying the lines between private and public in a myriad of new ways. What this means for love and society as a whole is only just beginning to be seen.

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