ABSTRACT
While it is important to study gender roles, it is especially revealing to look at the dynamics whereby relationships are formed. The study of close or personal relationships grew rapidly during the 1980s, involving scholars from a variety of fields, including family studies, sociology, human development, psychology, and communications (Cate and Lloyd 1992). This chapter deals with one type of close relationship known as courtship. Courtship and marriage differ from other relationships in that they are ‘probably the only types of voluntary relationships that have an exclusivity about them: part of the whole business of courtship is the cutting off of other sexual relationships and the devotion of oneself to a special partner’ (Duck 1988: 73).
