ABSTRACT
This chapter examines mid- to later-life women’s narrations of their relationship futurities with younger men. I propose the concept of affective orientation for analysing the entanglements of sensing and power in intimate relationships. The first of the two affective orientations that are identified in women’s narrations is characterized by holding onto one’s independence. It arises from the threat of being immersed in one’s partner economically, emotionally and socially, which the interviewees have experienced in the past. Such an ideal of woman’s separateness from her male partner becomes problematic in the second affective orientation, which is characterized by vulnerability. The interviewees are likely to be in need of care sooner than their younger partners due to the age difference, which foregrounds gendered expectations of caregiving. Women are left puzzled and afraid as they ponder possible neglect while they are vulnerable, which they have experienced in the past. The analysis makes visible a form of affective inequality in which anticipations of future neglect can burden the present in a relationship context.
