Why love ends: Eva Illouz on relationships over time

Total freedom of choice sounds like a good thing, but according to sociologist and relationship expert Eva Illouz it mainly makes us feel insecure. She tells us about the evolution of love and relationships over time.

Your book is called The End of Love. What is going on with love these days?

Romantic relationships have become very complex in recent years. We increasingly go to the psychologist for problems relating to our relationships. It may concern conflicts between parents and children, or within a whole family, but it usually has to do with problems in the romantic and sexual arena. Many people find it difficult to build or maintain intimate and loving relationships.

There is also a lot of uncertainty nowadays about how you should behave in a relationship, and the numbers of broken marriages are higher than ever in recent years. When the field of psychology has become so dominated by relationship problems, then to me, as a sociologist, that means there is more going on. Because it can’t be that our psyche has suddenly changed all that much. I think that the social conditions for forming relationships have become more difficult. That’s why I wanted to study how the environment actively shapes who we are and how we interact.

Aren’t relationships problems  of all ages?

There are a few important developments that, combined, have made it possible for uncertainty to become a dominant feature. One very important factor is the rise and the influence of capitalism. That has affected our entire way of life.

There are many similarities between people’s conduct in romantic relationships and conduct in the economic sphere. One example is the fact that self-interest is almost always paramount, even in a relationship. Or the fact that nowadays we leave a relationship very quickly if it no longer meets our needs.

That is very similar to the way companies in the 1980s and 1990s stopped feeling any sense of commitment to their employees, and how management became increasingly leaner and meaner and companies started getting rid of the less-efficient employees to boost the company’s profits. And although at first glance these things don’t have much to do with romantic relationships, they have an effect. Because they set new moral standards and they model new forms of behavior. A lack of loyalty and no commitment to anything rose in value and became legitimate.

It has also become completely normal to view everything in terms of profit and loss. We constantly evaluate what we’re earning with an activity and what we’re losing, also when it comes to relationships.

Capitalism is no longer just an economic model; it has become a form of life that is tangible in all segments of society. And the technology that is present everywhere in our lives only reinforces this.

What role does technology play?

Technology is essentially capitalism. The purpose of dating sites is to make money. This means that there are industries that are making a lot of money out of our sexual and romantic lives.

On top of that, technology is giving us an enormous amount of choice. Freedom of choice is a type of freedom that is very modern and contemporary. It gives the illusion of freedom, while in fact all our preferences are being organized in one single framework: namely a consumerist framework. As a result, romantic encounters are taking on the shape of a consumerist choice.

But we know from research that we are not cognitively equipped to deal with all those choices. Such an overload of options makes us not choose at all, or choose and afterwards very quickly start doubting whether we have made the right choice.

The sexual freedom that emerged in the 1970s also has brought about major changes, as you point out in your book.

Romantic relationships used to follow codes and rules of conduct. And those codes and rules have been completely changed, precisely by sexual freedom. There was once such a thing as ‘courting each other’. There was a very structured way of getting to know each other, with its own rules, and it was aimed at establishing an intimate bond, usually a marriage.

In the 1970s, this way of meeting each other completely collapsed. This means that many people going on a date with each other now no longer know what the purpose is of their date. They don’t know if it’s for sex or just because they like each other. Whether it’s dating once, or with the intention of building a relationship. Most interactions have a framework: ‘I know what the other person is going to say and what I am going to answer’.

These interactions are therefore defined in advance in a certain way. And that helps us out. But in sexual and romantic relationships, the framework is uncertain, and is constantly being renegotiated. Someone likes someone else a lot, but that person only wants sex. That is an uncertain framework. Even in a marriage, you can no longer know what the framework is, because your partner may approach you and say, ‘Hey, I want an open marriage’. And so the framework of the relationship is again called into question. This also leads to a lot of uncertainty.

So the central problem is that we are uncertain?

Indeed, it is the uncertainty that is responsible for the state of chaos that romantic relationships are currently in. I think we can tolerate a certain degree of uncertainty. But at the moment, we are in a situation where it is often impossible to say what kind of relationship you are in, what you can expect of it, what you can and cannot say or what can be negotiated. And that is why more and more people are single, and many people are leaving their partners.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to be vulnerable, because you know that a relationship can end just like that. So it actually leads to a situation where it becomes harder to trust each other. And that has major consequences for how we live.

Japan now has a negative birth rate, because young people there are terrified of entering into a relationship. The fertility rate is very low; people are having fewer children and less and less sex because most sex takes place in stable relationships.

What is the best way for us to deal with that freedom overdose?

You must first of all be or become aware of your freedom. And do something with it. It seems as if sexual freedom has in a certain way become a license to just do whatever you want without worrying about the other person. Someone who cares a lot about animal rights, or cares deeply about the climate, may at the same time ignore phone calls from the woman calling them without giving it a second thought, or suddenly start ‘ghosting’ someone they have dated for a while. That is very problematic and hurtful.

We simply do not yet know how to deal with the freedom we have, or how to best combine it with care and attention for others. I think it is very important that we start thinking about that a lot more and talking to each other.

How do you see the future for relationships?

I expect that a wide variety of relationships will arise. The traditional couple will still be an option, but there will be more people living in open relationships, people who use friends as a substitute for family, people who have children and choose to live as single parents or raise their child with a group of friends, people who marry themselves. So I definitely see a great mix of trends, but I don’t think we can prevent the fact that the traditional family will no longer be dominant. That will disappear.