The Tenacity of the Couple-Norm by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, Marriage & Family, Gender Studies, Psychology, Social Psychology, Law, Family Law, General, LGBT Studies, Lesbian Studies
ISBN: 9781787358898
Google: BDMNEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: UCL Press
Published: 2020-11-05T02:47:44+00:00

Concluding remarks

Amongst the countries in our study, Bulgaria stands out as having the most conservative intimate citizenship regime, with the most powerfully restrictive operation of the couple-norm, which continues to recognize and confer rights on only the married heterosexual couple. More and more people are living outside this conventional arrangement – in same-sex relationships, remaining single, choosing to marry later in life or to cohabit without being married, having children outside wedlock or raising them on their own. Yet the married heterosexual couple-form is still foundational to intimate citizenship in Bulgaria, powerfully constructing deviations as ‘unconventional’ and unrecognizable.

The Bulgarian case studies illustrate many of the ways in which adults are expected to conform to the different facets of the couple-norm, demonstrating the social, and sometimes legal, pressure that is exerted on those who fail to do so. There was little evidence in these case studies, or in the wider body of interviews that we carried out in Bulgaria, that the ruptures and breaks with the couple-norm of which our ‘unconventional’ interviewees spoke were chosen and positively embraced. On the contrary, their stories articulated a desire to live a ‘normal’ life, with the recognition and acceptance of others, and for some, a wish that they might be able to conform to the expectation↔injunctions that they faced – to fit into society as it is. Beyond the personal experiences of misrecognition recounted by our interviewees, there was little political awareness or critique of the multifarious yet persistent ways in which dominant norms about coupledom have the capacity to constrain and impact upon individuals’ lives and subjectivities.

By highlighting key encounters with law, policy and culture, and longer-term experiences of the couple-norm across individuals’ lives, the cases also show some of the changes that have taken place in the couple-norm in Bulgaria over recent decades. With the end of the communist regime, intimate lives became subject to less interference and policing by the state, and possibilities for living outside the married heterosexual couple-form have increased. The case studies also illuminate the diversity of ways in which individuals negotiate and ‘work around’ the expectation↔injunctions of normative coupledom against the backdrop of interventions by families, friends and communities who are committed to upholding the couple-norm. They point to the complex ways in which culture, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity intersect in defining how the couple-form should be lived, as well as the capacities of each individual to oppose and challenge such norms.

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