BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

    Living apart relationships in contemporary Europe: accounts of togetherness and apartness

    Stoilova, Mariya and Roseneil, Sasha and Crowhurst, Isabel and Hellesund, T. and Santos, A.C. (2014) Living apart relationships in contemporary Europe: accounts of togetherness and apartness. Sociology 48 (6), pp. 1075-1091. ISSN 0038-0385.

    [img]
    Preview
    Text
    9511.pdf - Author's Accepted Manuscript

    Download (193kB) | Preview

    Abstract

    Drawing on a European cross-national biographical-narrative study of intimate life, this article discusses the complexity of experiences of ‘togetherness’ and ‘apartness’ amongst people in living apart relationships. We explore the five main ways in which interviewees spoke about and understood their current living apart relationships (as: chosen; temporary; transitional; undecided; and unrecognisable), which we argue shows the need for a broader conceptualisation of this form of intimate relationship than is suggested by the established notion of ‘living apart together’. The article points to interviewees’ varying experiences of receiving or being denied recognition and acceptance by others as belonging to a couple, as well as to their differing degrees of desire for, or rebellion against, expectations that living apart relationships should ‘progress’ towards cohabitation.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): biographical-narrative interviews, cohabitation, couple relationship, intimacy, living apart together, recognition
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences
    Research Centres and Institutes: Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics (MAMSIE), Gender and Sexuality, Birkbeck (BiGS), Social Research, Birkbeck Institute for (BISR)
    Depositing User: Administrator
    Date Deposited: 02 Apr 2014 14:08
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:10
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/9511

    Statistics

    Activity Overview
    6 month trend
    577Downloads
    6 month trend
    336Hits

    Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

    Archive Staff Only (login required)

    Edit/View Item Edit/View Item