Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation

305 Pages·2013·3.82 MB·English

by  Eva Illouz

Why Love Hurts

Why Love Hurts
A Sociological
Explanation
Eva Illouz
polity
Copyright © Eva Illouz 2012
The right of Eva Illouz to be identifi ed as Author of this Work has been
asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2012 by Polity Press
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
350 Main Street
Malden, MA 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of
criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6152-0
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Sabon
by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Group Limited, Bodmin, Cornwall
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites
referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However,
the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a
site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been
inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in
any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.politybooks.com
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1 Introduction: The Misery of Love 1
2 The Great Transformation of Love
or the Emergence of Marriage Markets 18
3 Commitment Phobia and the New Architecture
of Romantic Choice (with Mattan Shachak) 59
4 The Demand for Recognition: Love
and the Vulnerability of the Self 109
5 Love, Reason, Irony 156
6 From Romantic Fantasy to Disappointment 198
7 Epilogue 238
Notes 249
Index 282

Acknowledgments
In more than one way, I started writing this book in my head many
years ago, while still an adolescent. It is the product of hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of conversations with close friends and strangers
that left me perplexed and puzzled by the chaos that pervades con-
temporary romantic and sexual relationships. Why is it that despite
their strength and autonomy, women in the four countries in which
I have lived during my adult life (France, the United States, Israel,
and Germany) are baffl ed by the elusiveness of men? Why do men
seem to have become a puzzle and an ongoing source of bemusement
for women? And did the men and women of the past agonize about
love in the same way as modern men and women do? Most of the
surrounding culture instructs us to answer these questions by looking
for the hidden history of our fl awed childhood and to explain the
disarray of romantic lives with fl awed psyches. This book wants to
question this largely unquestioned assumption. It wants to explain
why love hurts by highlighting the social, rather than the psychologi-
cal, context of men’s and women’s encounters.
This book, then, emerges from the intimacy of many hours of
conversation, but it owes much to other, less intimate but no less
important, conversations. My fi rst thanks go to the Wissenshaftskol-
leg zu Berlin, which during the 2007–8 year provided the peace
and quiet of a monastery and the intense conversations of an eigh-
teenth-century salon. I thank Dale Bauer, Ute Frevert, Sven Hillerkamp,
Axel Honneth, Tom Laqueur, Reinhart Merkel, Reinhart Meyer-
Kalkus, Susan Neiman, John Thompson, and Eitan Wilf for engaging
me so compellingly in their thoughts, questions, and often brilliant
viii Acknowledgments
suggestions. Mattan Shachak has been entirely necessary to the
process of writing this book; he has made tangible on a daily basis
the joy of being the teacher of an outstanding student and research
assistant. Ori Schwarz, Dana Kaplan, and Zsuza Berend have read
many chapters; their comments have been crucial in helping me sig-
nifi cantly improve the book. I thank them for their remarkable intel-
lectual generosity. Nathalie-Myriam Illouz, my sister and a brilliant
psychoanalyst, and Beatrice Smedley, my friend and fellow-writer,
have endlessly discussed with me the splendor and misery of love. I
can only hope to emulate the subtlety of their analyses.
A book is a special kind of commodity: it must be not only pro-
duced by expert heads and hands, but also believed in. Polity Press
is unique in its dedication to furthering the global circulation of ideas,
and in its intimate, intense care in the process of producing a book.
I am privileged to have seen this book endorsed so wholeheartedly
by John Thompson. The depth of his care and the precision of his
responsiveness make him an exceptional publisher. Justin Dyer has
been a superb editor, and Jennifer Jahn and Clare Ansell have been
most responsive and helpful as editorial assistant and production
editor, respectively.
I thank all the people, close friends and strangers, who confi ded
in me and told me their stories, sometimes in despair, often in hope
and trust. I dedicate this book to the men and the women I will keep
loving for a long time, painlessly and painfully.
The publishers would like to acknowledge the following for permis-
sion to reproduce the epigraphs:
From INDIGNATION by Philip Roth. Copyright (c) 2008, Philip
Roth, used by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Limited;
Chris Carter, www.catchhimandkeephim.com;
From DISGRACE by J.M. Coetzee, copyright (c) 1999 by J. M.
Coetzee. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin
Group (USA) Inc. and of Vintage, a division of Random House;
From LOVE, ETC. by Julian Barnes, copyright (c) 2000 by Julian
Barnes. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random
House, Inc.; published by Vintage Books. Reprinted by permission of
The Random House Group Ltd;