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Feminism & Psychology
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The Negotiation of Compulsory Romance in Young Women Friends' Stories about Romantic Heterosexual Experiences

Neill Korobov

Department of Psychology, University of West Georgia, Carrollton, GA 30118, USA, Nkorobov{at}westga.edu

Avril Thorne

University of California, Santa Cruz, 277 Social Sciences 2, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA, avril{at}ucsc.edu

For young women in western cultures, satisfying the dictates of traditional romantic norms while sustaining intimacy with same-sex friends and a sovereign sense of self can be daunting. The present study explored how 23 pairs of young adult, white female friends (ages 19—25) attending a public university in Northern California positioned themselves vis-à-vis norms of compulsory romance as they told spontaneous stories about their own and others' experiences. While their story discourse generally oscillated between complicity and resistance to the compulsory romantic interpretative repertoires of `sentimentality', `unrequited pursuit' and `emotional caretaking', such complicity and resistance was often mitigated, qualified or displaced. The findings suggest that for these young women, complicit and resistant positions to repertoires of compulsory romance are synergistic. Implications are discussed for a view of identity development as growth in ideological dexterity and rhetorical fluency.

Key Words: compulsory romance • discourse • interpretative repertoires • narrative • romantic relationships • young women

Feminism & Psychology, Vol. 19, No. 1, 49-70 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0959353508098619
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