ABSTRACT
This chapter is part of a broader research project addressing romantic partnerships, in which we propose that love is an affective and sensorial experience. We live love with the body and through the body. Even though love is an embodied experience, it is contingent on the presence of a significant other. Love, then, is also an affective bond. In this study, we examine couples’ love using a relational approach (Elias 1978; García-Andrade & Sabido-Ramos 2016, 2017; Simmel 2009). Drawing on Simmel’s (2009) notion that a relationship presupposes the condition of affecting and being affected, we show how loving relationships include material conditions (i.e. money), corporeal–sensorial experiences (i.e. menstruation), and emotional content (i.e. jealousy), which generate mutual affection between lovers. An affective structure, following Simmel, implies that the intimacy built in a relationship is characterized by the rules and norms that are part of the society where the relationship is taking place. These rules may generate tensions and conflicts in relationships but can also be changed by the participants in their continuous interactions.
