Enduring Love? Understanding long-term adult couple relationships in contemporary Britain

Enduring Love? is a psycho-social qualitative investigation into long-term adult couple relationships in contemporary Britain. The project will examine the ways in which gender, generation and parenthood get inscribed in meanings and practices around the idea of 'the couple'. The study will explore the gendered 'relationship work' that women and men do to stay together in the socio-cultural context of shifting discourses on love, 'marriage', partnership, intimacy and commitment.The study will comprise 50 couples (aged 18-65), including couples with and without children. It will use an innovative qualitative mixed methods approach, involving participants in diary writing, designing emotion maps, photo-elicitation and semi-structured interviews. These different methods aim to draw upon a broad spectrum of research senses, to access rich accounts of couples' emotional lives and everyday relationship practices.Enduring Love? is based in the Research Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance (CCIG), where it is connected to the Families and Relationships Programme and the Psychosocial Studies Programme. It was developed through start-up funding provided by the OU in support of the Intimate Futures and Relational Lives Research Group.