Exploration of emotional participation within couple relationships
Date
29/06/2016Author
McQueen, Fiona Helen
Metadata
Abstract
The study is informed by work from the 1990s which looked at emotional aspects of
couple relationships and how this interacts with gendered power (Duncombe and
Marsden, 1993, 1995; Benjamin, 1998). The context of couple relationships provides
the backdrop to explore experiences of men and women navigating their emotional
lives through a period of social change in which men are becoming more emotionally
open. I examine to what extent emotional participation is moving towards being
more equal, and whether this has an impact on gender relations within couple
relationships, including consideration of how love can exist within unequal divisions
of labour. The central analytical concepts of gender, power and emotion will be
explored in order to look at whether there has been a change in practices of
emotional participation in couple relationships.
This thesis is a mixed-methods study exploring understandings of emotional
participation within couple relationships. It is based on an online survey of 1,080
people, telephone interviews with 44 survey participants and 31 face-to-face
interviews with participants living in Scotland. I explore the issues of
communication, emotional skill and emotional capital through the narratives of men
and women who are single and in relationships, predominantly heterosexual but not
exclusively.
This research design was used to test findings from previous research to enable an
understanding of how gender shapes cultural constructions of emotional habitus
within intimate relationships. I extend Burkitt’s concept of ‘emotional habitus’
(2014) to argue that ‘gendered emotional habitus’ (plural) are pervasive and enable
the reproduction of heterosexuality within couple relationships. These habitus
provide little room to negotiate alternative ways of doing gender, yet there are signs
of a ‘clash of ideals of masculine emotion’ due to an increase in the value of
emotional skills and the commonsensical discourse that it’s ‘good to talk’, found in
the therapeutic discourse (Brownlie, 2014). I argue these signs of social change have
led to a shift away from relationships in which women crave emotional fulfilment but
do not receive it, to relationships in which men too want emotional closeness with
their partner. The change in gendered ways of valuing emotion have impacted on
how men and women perceive and manage their couple relationships, which is
explored in depth through the concept of emotional participation.