10 Love Stories in
Sexual Autobiographies
Elina Haavio-Mannila
J. P. Roos
In Josselsson, Ruthellen & Amia Lieblich (eds) Making Meaning of Narratives, The Narrative Study of Lives, Volume 6, Sage, Thousand Oaks - London - New Delhi 1999, pp. 239-274.
T he experience of love is one of the most universal aspects of human
life. With rare exceptions, some form of love is familiar to everybody.
On the other hand, we assume that love experiences vary by gender,
age, and generation. In this chapter, we shall discuss love experiences,
that is, feelings of love and attraction using sexual life histories written
by Finnish men and women (and also survey data). In the autobiogra-phies,
episodes of love are described almost as vividly when they
happened 60 years earlier as when they took place yesterday. Even
though the memories are influenced by the course of time, the material
provides an excellent background for studying differences between
sexual generations. Our main goal, however, is to develop a typology
of love stories.
Finns, particularly men, rarely use the world love. In Finnish sexual
autobiographies, there are few references to love. In some stories, love
is mentioned infrequently or not at all. Only in exceptional cases is
love a recurrent theme. Nevertheless, sexual autobiographies reveal
subtle aspects of love that are difficult to capture by survey methods.
When autobiographies and survey material are used together, as is
done here, love discourses and processes of different genders and
generations can be described and understood.
239
In the first part of this chapter, we describe love as a wonderful
emotion giving meaning and enjoyment to life. Love in sexual rela-tionships
is analyzed on the basis of the rich material of the sexual life
histories. Then, love as a process, a developmental cycle is analyzed.
In the first section, life stories have been divided into fragments
according to themes. In the second section, several types of life stories
are distinguished, and passages of whole narratives are presented.
Concepts of Love
The sociology of emotion is a growing field in our discipline. Love
and hate are probably the strongest human feelings. Love has been
classified and defined in many ways. A distinction has often been made
between passionate and companionate love. Elaine Hatfield and Rich-ard
L. Rapson (1993) define passionate love as a state of intense
longing for union with another. It is
a complex functional whole including appraisals or apprecia-tions,
subjective feelings, expressions, patterned physiologi-cal
processes, action tendencies, and instrumental behav-iours.
Reciprocated love (union with the other) is associated
with fulfilment and ecstasy. Unrequited love (separation) is
associated with emptiness, anxiety, or despair. (1993, p. 67;
1996, p. 3)
Sex researchers tend to use the terms passionate love and sexual
desire almost interchangeably, but it is more accurate to define sexual
desire as "a longing for sexual union" (Hatfield & Rapson, 1996,
p. 3). Passionate love has also been called falling in love (Alberoni,
1983), romantic love ( Jallinoja, 1984), and limerence (Tennov, 1989).
Companionate love, which is sometimes also called true or marital
love, is a warm, less intensive emotion than passionate love. It com-bines
feelings of deep attachment, commitment, and intimacy. It is the
affection and tenderness people feel for those with whom their lives
are deeply entwined. "Companionate love is a complex functional
whole including appraisals or appreciations, subjective feelings, ex-
240 MAKI NG MEANING OF NAR RATIV ES
pressions, patterned physiological processes, action tendencies, and
instrumental behaviours" (Hatfield & Rapson, 1996, p. 3).
In Western societies today, life is flexible and adaptable; one can
choose to live with someone else in a wide variety of ways. The
romantic love complex has helped to carve a way to the formation of
pure relationships in the domain of sexuality. Pure relationships, that
is, intimate and demanding relationships between lovers or between
very close friends, are characterized by Anthony Giddens (1991) as
follows:
In contrast to close personal ties in traditional contexts, the
pure relationship is not anchored in external conditions of
social or economic life--it is, as it were, free floating. . . .
(Earlier) marriage was a contract, often initiated by parents
or relatives rather than by the marital partners themselves.
The contract was usually strongly influenced by economic
considerations, and formed part of wider economic net-works
and transactions. . . . the tendency is towards the
eradication of these pre-existing external involvements--a
phenomena originally accompanied by the rise of romantic
love as a basic motive for marriage. Marriage becomes more
and more a relationship initiated for, and kept going for as
long as it delivers emotional satisfaction to be derived from
close contact with another. Other traits--even such seem-ingly
fundamental ones as having children--tend to become
sources of "inertial drag" on possible separation, rather than
anchoring features of the relationship. (p. 89)
According to Giddens (1992, p. 27) the creation of plastic sexuality,
severed from its age-old integration with reproduction, kinship, and
the generations, was the precondition of the sexual revolution of the
past several decades. Effective contraception signaled a deep transition
in personal life. Sexuality became malleable, open to being shaped in
diverse ways, and a potential "property" of the individual.
Separation of sexuality from reproduction and marriage has also
meant separation of sexuality and love. According to a survey con-ducted
in 1971 in Finland (Sievers, Koskelainen, & Leppo, 1974),
three fourths of people ages 18 to 54 years agreed with the statement
Love Stories in Autobiographies 241
"sexual intercourse without love is wrong" whereas 20 years later, in
1992, only every other person thought so (Kontula, Haavio-Mannila,
& Suoknuuti, 1994, pp. 86-87). In the Finnish sexual autobiographies
(Kontula & Haavio-Mannila, 1995a), there is a lot of discussion about
the relationship between love and sexual intercourse. The narrators
are mostly of the opinion that a combination of emotional and physical
love is an ideal state of affairs. Nevertheless, most of them admit that
it is not always possible to achieve this.
Autobiographies and Survey Data
Autobiographies are cultural artifacts par excellence. They are
influenced by the social and cultural norms and sanctions prevailing
at the time of their writing. Also, the lives described in them are a
result of various social and cultural factors and historical events. The
present consensus seems to be that there is no life "as such," or life
separate from its representations. We can thus speak of "overdetermi-nation,"
so that it is not possible to say what really determines the
presence of a given event in the life story. On the other hand, we may
be sure that culturally significant valuations, relationships, and life
events are present and highly visible in the texts and will not be lost
in an anonymous mass of data.
Life stories are most fruitful when studying mentalities, basic views
about life, social relationships, and expressions of emotions. They
reveal how different historical events have affected people's lives and
what kinds of social and cultural developments there have been. The
more genuine or culturally unprocessed the qualitative data is, the
better. A combination of detailed knowledge of the life of a relatively
small number of individuals and quantifiable data on many people
provides ideal possibilities for understanding and explaining the social
world.
The purpose of this article is to study love in sexual autobiogra-phies
and survey data. What does love mean to people? What are their
love experiences? How and in what connections do people use the
word love in their sexual life histories? What are the typical love
242 MAKI NG MEANING OF NAR RATIV ES
stories, and how does love develop as a process? Do love stories differ
according to gender, age, and sexual generation?
The data for this article were gathered as part of the Finsex project,
which consisted of three parts: (a) a national interview study repre-senting
the population ages 18 to 74, conducted in 1992 (Kontula &
Haavio-Mannila, 1995b); (b) a content analysis of sex articles and
pictures in the popular press in 1961, 1971, 1981, and 1991 (Kontula
& Kosonen, 1994); and (c) a collection of sexual autobiographies in
1992 (Kontula & Haavio-Mannila, 1995a).
Finland is the only country in the world where the sexual life of
representative samples of the adult population has consistently been
followed over time. Because one of the most important objectives of
the Finsex survey in 1992 was to make comparisons with the similar
1971 survey (Sievers et al., 1974), the method chosen was as close as
possible to the one used in 1971, that is, a two-stage, face-to-face
interview/self-administered questionnaire survey, to be implemented
primarily in the home of the respondent.
One of the two questionnaires used in the survey was filled out by
the interviewers, and the other by the respondents. The interviewer
did not see the answers. The questionnaires were enclosed in enve-lopes
for mailing to the research team. One third of the questions were
exactly the same as those asked in the 1971 study. There were 207
questions and 404 variables. The sample for the study was drawn at
random from the central population register. It was nationally repre-sentative
of the population in the age bracket 18 to 74, excluding
people permanently living in institutions.
The collecting of the data was conducted by 164 interviewers of
Statistics Finland. In 1971, the interviews had been done by the public
health nurses and midwives. The time spent on the interview and on
filling out the questionnaire was 78 minutes, slightly less than in 1971.
In 1992, there were 2,250 responses to the survey, and the response
rate was 75.9%, 77.7% for women and 74.2% for men. The most
responsive age group were those under 25 (83.3%) and the least
responsive (71.8%) those ages 35 to 44. In 1971, 2,188 people ages
18 to 54 responded to the survey, and the response rate was as high
as 92.9%. The response rate in 1992 did not deviate from surveys
Love Stories in Autobiographies 243
made that year by Statistics Finland concerning the spending of leisure
time and elections.
The decline of the response rate did not cause any systematic
self-selection of the respondents. The responses concerning first sex-ual
experiences were very much in agreement in the different age
cohorts in 1992 and in 1971. For example, the 50-year-old people
recalled and reported their first sexual experiences in 1992 in the same
way as the 30-year-old people in 1971.
The autobiographical data were gathered through a competition
published in newspapers and popular magazines. Of the 175 sexual
life stories submitted, 165 could be used in the analysis.
In the guidelines of the competition, respondents were asked to
write about the small things as well as the major changes in their sexual
lives. They were encouraged to describe events, situations, feelings,
and hopes they had experienced in a personal and realistic way.
Certain phases in sexual life were listed in the leaflet: playing doctor
and patient in childhood, growing up with problems in adolescence,
dating and having sexual experiences for the first time, establishing a
long-term relationship or contracting a marriage, having sexual ad-ventures,
establishing new relationships, paying or getting paid for
love, having difficulties in achieving sexual gratification, facing the
effects of aging, and so on. They were also encouraged to assess their
lives: What are the central questions and the most important experi-ences
relating to sexuality? What is it that sexuality has given you at
its best?
The Finnish sexual life stories refer to emotions and events that
have taken place at different stages of the life course: in youth,
adulthood, and old age, and they have been written by people of
different ages. This creates some methodological problems. Are the
experiences of first love reported by young and old people compar-able?
Are people's memories of their emotions of love in youth
different from their stories of feelings of love today? Descriptions of
recent love experiences are probably more "accurate" than reminis-cences
from past decades. Only very strong upsurges of past emotion
stay clearly in mind. Experiences of particularly passionate love are
often very strong. Thus, we suppose that they have not been forgotten
or become falsified with the course of time. Yet, it has also been
244 MAKI NG MEANING OF NAR RATIV ES
observed that negative events and feelings are remembered better than
positive ones (Roos, 1994).
Experiences of love were studied in three age groups/generations
that were differentiated on the basis of sexual norms and practices
prevailing at the time of their sexual initiation, that is, between 10 and
30 years of age:
1. The generation of sexual repression (or inhibition) born 1917 to
1936. In the youth of this generation, sexual matters were taboo and
not to be discussed openly in front of others, especially children. As
safe contraception techniques had not yet been developed, fear of
pregnancy limited sexual intercourse. Double moral standards gave
more sexual freedom to men than to most women; thus, there was a
wide gender gap in sexual behavior.
2. The generation of the sexual revolution born 1937 to 1956. New
contraceptive methods made it possible to engage in sexual relations
without fear of pregnancy. Some feminists were critical of the pressure
for casual sex and felt themselves exploited against their will. In
general, however, sexual liberation was part of the gender equality
and other radical social movements in the 1960s and 1970s.
3. The generation of sexual ambivalence (or gender equality) born
1957 to 1973. Our findings (Haavio-Mannila et al., 1996; Kontula &
Haavio-Mannila, 1995a, 1995b) and American and Russian studies
(Golod, personal communication, October, 20, 1994; Laumann, Gag-non,
Michael, & Michaels, 1994) as well as University of Helsinki
student surveys (Järvinen & Rikama-Alhainen, 1994) indicate that
sexual attitudes and behavior of young people are not very coherent.
The AIDS epidemic and efficient sex education in schools have made
young people aware of the risks of casual and unprotected sexual
activity. Other aspects to be taken into consideration in studying the
youngest generation are individualization and gender equalization
processes. They imply that one cannot coerce one's partner into
coitus; both parties are supposed to have a genuine desire for it, as
well as a right to initiate and refuse sexual contact.
In the following, the autobiographical love stories are analyzed on
the basis of gender and age of the author. Mary Gergen (1992) notes
that our identities are first defined by gender. We are recognized as
"boy" or "girl" in our first moment of life. As personal identities are
Love Stories in Autobiographies 245
always gendered, then so must life stories be. Gergen's concern is with
the gendered nature of life stories. "What are manstories and woman-stories?
How do they differ? And what difference do these differences
make?" (p. 129.) To answer these questions, sexual autobiographies
written by men and women will be compared.
The survey respondents and the people who wrote their sexual
autobiographies are distributed by gender and generation as shown in
Table 10.1. The autobiographers do not demographically deviate from
the Finnish adult population as much as one would expect when using
a self-selected sample. However, older men and educated, young, and
non-cohabiting women are overrepresented. The frequency of sexual
intercourse of the autobiographers is about the same as that of the
survey respondents. The women had more sexual partners, the men
had started their sexual life later, both genders had more homosexual
experiences, and the men had more often had sex with prostitutes than
was the case among the survey respondents.
The main purpose of this chapter is to illustrate different forms of
love discourse in the three generations of men and women. A survey
with structured questions and response alternatives gives information
on the distribution of emotions and events in the population; the same
emotions and events are spontaneously described and reflected on in
the life stories. In this chapter, the use of the survey data is secondary
to the analysis of the life stories. Survey results are presented to avoid
criticism about a lack of statistical representativeness, as was the case
of the Kinsey and Hite reports on sexual behavior (Hite, 1979, 1981;
TABLE 10.1 Absolute Numbers of Survey Respondents and Authors of Sexual
Autobiographies in Finland in 1992
Survey Data Sexual Life Stories
Sexual Generation Men Women Men Women
Ambivalence 409 (213)a 397 (241) 11 45
Revolution 469 (387) 441 (341) 24 47
Repression 226 (174) 306 (173) 18 20
Total 1,104 (774) 1,144 (755) 53 112
a. The numbers of married or cohabiting respondents to the survey are shown in parentheses.
246 MAKI NG MEANING OF NAR RATIV ES
Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948; Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, &
Gebhard, 1953) in which self-selected samples also were used.
The first part of our analysis is based on those excerpts of the sexual
life stories in which the Finnish word for love, rakkaus, was used. The
passages were coded by using the computer software program "Word
Perfect Index" developed by Pekka Sulkunen, Jukka Törrönen, Jussi
Silvonen, Seppo Roponen, and Olli Kekäläinen at the University of
Helsinki. The autobiographers are identified in parentheses by giving
their running number in our files, gender (M = men, W = women),
and age in the year 1992. For example, (45M61) means that the writer
is number 45 in our files, a man, and 61 years old. All personal names
mentioned in the fragments are pseudonyms.
Passionate Love
Falling in love is an almost universal life experience in Finland.
Only 1% of Finns ages 18 to 74 have never fallen in love. The myth
of only one great love during a lifetime applies to a minority of people:
According to the survey data, 20% of men and 30% of women have
fallen in love with only one person during their lifetime. The lifelong
love pattern is more common in the generation of sexual repression
(men 29% and women 35%) than in the younger generations. About
half of the respondents have had two or three objects of love. About
28% of the men and 13% of the women have fallen in love with at
least four people in their lives. The survey sample reported having
fallen in love with three people during their lifetime, the autobiogra-phers
with only two. In both the survey interviews and the sexual
autobiographies, women reported fewer infatuations (in the inter-views,
on the average 2.7, and in the life stories, 2.0) than men did
(3.9 and 2.2, respectively). The number of people one has fallen in
love with during a lifetime is highest in the middle-aged group (Table
10.2).
One third of the autobiographers described feelings of love in their
stories. Middle-aged women most often mentioned the word love in
their stories when writing their sexual life histories.
Love Stories in Autobiographies 247
We shall next discuss stories of passionate love by gender and
generation starting from men of the oldest generation. Then, we turn
to stories on companionate love.
Men's Stories of Passionate Love
The stories of passionate love written by male autobiographers
belonging to the generation of sexual repression mostly refer to falling
in love relatively late in life. Love at an early age seems to be less clearly
recalled than more recent emotions. The feeling of passionate love at
an advanced age may be extraordinarily intense because it often is a
forbidden and hidden emotion that causes feelings of shame and guilt
as it threatens important social bonds, particularly marital relations
(cf. Scheff, 1990).
An example of falling in love is the story of an older married man
who tells about his sudden infatuation at the age of 52 years. He is
married to a chronically ill woman. The object of his love is the wife
of an alcoholic.
We just looked at each other. We immediately wanted to kiss
each other. We accepted the face, the body and the smile of
each other and already longed for the gleam of the eyes of
the other. . . . We were happy when dancing in the crowded
TABLE 10.2 Proportion of Surveyed Men and Women Who Love and Are
Loved by Somebody, and the Average Number of Lifetime Loves
According to Sexual Generation in Finland in 1992.
Number of People
One Has Fallen
Feels Love Receives Love in Love With
Percentage Average
Sexual Generation Men Women Men Women Men Women
Ambivalence 72 82 69 81 3.2 2.3
Revolution 83 77 74 76 3.5 2.5
Repression 70 50 50 44 2.9 2.2
Total 76 72 67 69 3.9 2.7
248 MAKI NG MEANING OF NAR RATIV ES
hall among other people. Oh, those tender glances and hugs.
I, an old man, shivered, and her closeness made my legs
weak. (123M64)
This love affair has continued for 12 years as a parallel (extramarital)
semiplatonic relationship. The lovers meet secretly in connection with
the man's jogging. The narrator lives happily enjoying the love of his
two women. He waits for the few moments when his wife wants to
make love with him. He has not yet had sexual intercourse with the
other woman, even though he feels a strong sexual desire for her; the
longing for sexual union is reciprocated by his beloved.
The love stories of older men also include feelings of guilt and
shame, as well as health problems caused by conflicting pressures from
their wives and other women. Heartache and suffering are reported
by several men, particularly when the passionate attraction to a
mistress has not led to a stable relationship with her. The deprivation
felt by men who stay in poor matrimonial unions makes affairs very
attractive. Obstacles against parallel relations strengthen the passion.
If the man does not leave his wife, he may regret that he did not get
a divorce, even though he was deeply in love with another woman.
One such man (68M50) recommends that one should get a divorce if
"a moderate happiness is to be expected."
Falling in love with another woman while married has led many
men of the generation of sexual revolution into physical infidelity.
Sexual autobiographies written by middle-aged married men include
numerous vivid descriptions of episodes of sexual intercourse with a
new object of love. The testimony of the life stories is supported by
survey results, which show that 58% of all Finnish middle-aged men,
48% of younger men, and 49% of older men have had extra sexual
relationships during a steady relationship. The generation of sexual
revolution has thus been particularly inclined to break the bonds of
marital faithfulness. Infidelity is, in most cases, not followed by a
divorce: only 18% of Finnish married and cohabiting men have been
married or cohabiting more than once.
Older and middle-aged male autobiographers almost exclusively
describe passionate love in extramarital relationships. They do not
mention the word love in connection with their relationship with their
Love Stories in Autobiographies 249
wives. An example of the association between passionate love and
parallel sexual relationships is the story of the above-cited middle-aged
man (68M50). He openly defends his casual and paid sexual
relationships: "I do not know how I could have endured my life
without these." But when an object of his love made a marriage
proposal, he turned back.
Falling in love with a married woman may be very painful, as the
following story of a man of the ambivalent sexual generation shows.
This man describes his feelings of love toward his coworker:
I noticed that I tremendously enjoyed your company. It was
so easy to talk to you even about difficult things. You lis-tened.
Obviously you felt the same kinds of emotions toward
me. Our relationship was exceptionally equal. First after that
deeper development of friendship my feelings started to in-clude
a strong interest toward your body, too. Our acquain-tance
developed into friendship, friendship into affection,
and finally into love. . . . I do not accuse you for flirting. But
what did you seek when you came too close? I was like in
fire. I would have liked to touch and fondle you. I remember
the situation when we sat opposite each other, talked non-sense,
and looked seriously into each other's eyes, right to
the bottom. . . . I cannot get you out of my mind. When I
wake early in the morning in solitude and silence, your pic-ture
floats before my eyes. I wonder what you are doing at
the moment. Do you sleep, make love with your husband, or
lie awake? Do you perhaps think of me? (38M29)
In this asymmetrical love relationship, the man's passion was expressed
in sexual fantasies and masturbation.
Women's Stories of Passionate Love
Like older and middle-aged men, women of the generation of
sexual repression report the context of passionate love is mostly
outside the institution of marriage. Although some of their love affairs
250 MAKI NG MEANING OF NAR RATIV ES
took place at an early stage in their lives, the strong emotion of those
affairs has not faded with the passing of the time.
Unlike the men, the older women autobiographers are often not
married, although the partner is. This is because of greater marital
fidelity among women. During any present or previous steady rela-tionship,
only 20% of the oldest, 34% of the middle-aged, and 33%
of the youngest women have had extra sexual relationships (cf. the
much higher proportions for men mentioned above).
One older woman now in a stable relationship has had several
consecutive good sexual relationships. At the age of 31, she became
infatuated with a married man. The falling in love took place literally
in no time at all.
The man had just turned 50, I was 19 years younger. Our
friends joked about the mid-life crisis but we did not let it
disturb us. I was in the clouds. We met in all possible and im-possible
places, and we rushed to get to bed. . . . we had 15
happy years together. During that time I had no desire to
even look at anybody else. (76W62)
Another older woman (25W57) fell in love with her sister's
husband when she was 17 years old. The infatuation took place while
the sister was in the hospital giving birth to a baby. The autobiographer
was deeply in love with her brother-in-law until his death at the age
of 50. She loved him so much that she did not dare to tell him that
she never had an orgasm with him; she was afraid that he would stop
loving her and having sex with her. It was enough to be together with
him. She had orgasms in sleep when dreaming about him. The lovers
exchanged secret letters and "in those letters tender words were not
spared." The same woman later fell in love with another married man,
who had five children. They worked together far from the locality
where his family lived. The man visited his wife once every 2 weeks,
but at the work site "he gave enough love and tenderness for every
hour in my days." This relationship lasted for 10 years. The narrator
could be near the man she loved, and she felt really good in spite of
some gnawing guilt feelings.
Love Stories in Autobiographies 251
One elderly woman tells about her long-lasting affair with a
married man, whose 10-years-older religious wife does not use con-traceptives.
Thus, the man has to rely on coitus interruptus. He has
potency problems with his wife. In the extramarital relationship, he
has no such problems. "Our love life grew really good with the passing
of the years" (140W55).
The stories of passionate love by older female autobiographers are
vivid both whether or not the infatuation has led to a permanent
relationship. Many older women have lived through several consecu-tive
or parallel love relationships, which they remember with great joy
and pleasure.
Women of the generation of sexual revolution strongly believe in
love. "Love includes everything worth living for. Every human being
needs love in order to live well" (134W49). The positive side effects
of warm affection on physical appearance are reported by several
women. "I still believe that love is beautiful irrespective of age. It
makes a human being beautiful both from inside and outside. The eyes
get a miraculous glow and sparkle, it tickles continuously inside"
(37W40).
Some middle-aged women have found a new love later in life. A
divorced woman enthusiastically describes her recent infatuation with
a bachelor:
I only would like to be with him and fondle him and fuck.
His tender touches, our mutual need for closeness, passion-ate
tongue kisses, loving glances. . . . I thought that I had
lost the beautiful and pure love, but I have found it by
chance, nearer my sphere of life than I would have believed.
Now I am happy and, like a young fool, madly in love.
(37W40)
Passionate love at the age of 40 almost "took the life of" a woman
(49W48). "I loved him both mentally and physically so that my soul
ached. Perhaps one should not give one's spiritual self to another
person so totally." The affair was too wonderful to last for more than
5 years; her recovery from the experience of being abandoned was
very painful.
252 MAKI NG MEANING OF NAR RATIV ES
A woman who has had very many lovers thinks that a woman
should simultaneously have several men in her life,
one as an object of love, one as a partner in philosophizing,
and one for making love. A single man cannot do all of this.
. . . If I find a man who has two of these characteristics, the
relationship can become a long one. (20W47)
In a case in which both partners were married to someone else,
infatuation took place "like a flash" (136W49). Feelings of passionate
love at the beginning of an extramarital relationship are vividly
described in this narrative by another woman:
We went to the dance floor--I looked into his eyes and we
both were "sold." A tall man--he laid his hand on my waist
and trembled. What happened to us? . . . I do not even re-member
if we danced one, two or many dances. . . . I had
not known this man for more than a couple of hours, and he
had confused my feelings. Not in a bad way but by kindling
a brand new marvelous feeling in me! . . . I know that I have
now fallen in love--in a moment. Can it be? . . . I hope that
every mortal being would feel this kind of emotion at least
once in life. I do not intend to go to bed with him and spoil
all this beautiful. . . . The thought of the next week frightens
and charms me at the same time. Can we control the fire in-side
us, or does it rule over us? Since I returned from that
trip, I have woken up early in the mornings and fled in my
thoughts back to those events! It is so easy to work and the
world is more beautiful than before. (170W51)
Some women tell about almost incredible extramarital romances. It
does not matter if the romance will soon end:
I would not have believed that this kind of love would hit
me. . . . Even if this would end tomorrow, I have gotten a
lot, and I hope that I have been able to give as much. He is
constantly in my thoughts. (87W42)
Love Stories in Autobiographies 253
Occasionally, women get a divorce because of a sudden infatuation
with another man. Even though the object of their love would not
divorce, they may be happy in their new relationship. The passionate
love of a woman toward her coworker lasted for 10 years when she
was his mistress: "These years were the best ones in my life"
(136W49).
Love is not only pleasure, it is also a part of the biological
reproduction process. Strong emotions of love made a woman
(87W42) want to have a child with her beloved, even though he was
married to another woman. The narrator has not given up hope that
the man will marry her.
A parallel sexual relationship can be quite satisfactory when there
is love (87W42, 114W39). The relationship may help one endure an
unsatisfactory marital relationship (107W42). Unusual although not
rare cases are those in which a woman falls in love with an unattainable
man (cf. Norwood, 1986). Infatuation with a man with whom it is
impossible to have a real permanent relationship may enhance the
emotion of love (64W53, 161W50). Some women even look upon an
unfulfilled love as best (20W47).
In contrast to the love stories of elderly and middle-aged women,
young women of the generation of sexual ambivalence tell about
passionate love in marriage.
Pekka is so superior compared to other men. He is a think-ing,
feeling, but nevertheless strong man, and I know that he
loves me as me, not as a mental picture. He is the best I ever
have met. He makes everyday life a feast, also in bed.
(40W26)
But there are also many desperate love stories written by younger
women. One woman (78W30) fell totally under the spell of her idol.
She floated in a golden bubble of happiness. She shivered after a night
together, but the man was completely indifferent to her. In this case,
the object of love was totally unattainable.
Fantasies of romantic love are common among young women (for
example, 98W31). One woman (115W29) had earlier dreamed about
and been in love with a rock singer. In her love story, she compares
254 MAKI NG MEANING OF NAR RATIV ES
imaginary and personal love. The difference is that a real man is flesh
and blood, that is, alive. Before her marriage, she had longed for a
person she could love and touch. "A close and working couple rela-tionship
is the best that sexuality has given me."
Marital love does not always exclude feelings of attraction toward
other people. A woman (116W31) who loved her husband never-theless
enjoyed it when a coworker flirted with her. This man radiated
sex, and at a certain level, she wanted him, but she did not engage in
sexual intercourse with him. The erotically attractive coworker rep-resented
something she hungrily longed for: a beloved.
Companionate Love
Companionate, true, or marital love is affection and tenderness
that people feel for those with whom their lives are deeply entwined
(Hatfield & Rapson, 1996, p. 25). Most episodes of falling in love
take place at a relatively early age, and the period of passionate love
usually lasts for 1 or 2 years (Tennov, 1989). The warm feelings of
companionate love last longer. Loving and receiving love nowadays is
relatively common: 73% of the Finns surveyed say that right now,
there is some man or woman that they really love, and 68% of them
think that right now, there is some man or woman who really loves
them. Feeling and receiving love is most common in middle age, but
also young women love and are loved to a great extent (Table 10.2).
Men's Stories of Companionate Love
Marital love is not described as enthusiastically as passionate love.
Men especially point out problems. When writing about love in
marriage, men of the generation of sexual repression comment posi-tively
on the endurance of love in marriage (12M65), lack of quarrels
(19M59), satisfaction when they have been able to mentally support
their wives (123M64), and good sexual lives (153M70).
Male autobiographers of the generation of sexual revolution often
complain about their marriages. One (58M44) is dissatisfied with his
Love Stories in Autobiographies 255
wife's unwillingness to make love as often as he would like, that is,
three times a day. This extreme case is an example of gender discrep-ancy
in the strength of sexual desire. About 51% of the Finnish men
surveyed in 1992, and 61% of the women, were of the opinion that
"an adult man has a stronger sexual need than an adult woman." About
40% of the men and 16% of the women would prefer to have sexual
intercourse more frequently than they now have in their present steady
relationship. The above-mentioned man's wish to have coitus three
times a day is an exceptionally high frequency of desired intercourse.
The survey data show that most men would like to have intercourse
more often in their present couple relationship when they have had
their latest sexual intercourse more than 3 days ago. Most women long
for more frequent intercourse when more than a month has elapsed
from the last intercourse.
One man (70M40) is frustrated because during 15 years of mar-riage,
his wife has not accepted his tenderness and love. He wants to
love her during good and bad days. The wife expresses only hate and
bitterness. But he has a strong will, and the couple has continued to
stay together. The autobiographer does not love any other woman in
the same way as he loves his wife. During the whole marriage, he has
not had any outside sexual relations, not even infatuations worth
mentioning.
According to many autobiographers, a rewarding sexual relation-ship
is essential for marital love. One man (173M46) writes that he
thinks that it is good to have had sexual experiences with many women
before marriage.
None of the male autobiographers of the generation of sexual
ambivalence have written about marital love in their sexual life stories.
Women's Stories of Companionate Love
In the later stages of marriage, companionate love often takes the
place of passionate love. True love may flourish even when one or both
of the spouses falls ill and the sexual life suffers. This happens
relatively often: One fourth of the women of the generation of sexual
256 MAKI NG MEANING OF NAR RATIV ES
repression reported that their own or their spouse's illness caused
problems in sexual life.
In a beautiful love story, a woman (165W69) tells how she daily
visited her husband in the hospital and fondled him. She even took his
"little fellow" into her hand and tenderly pressed it. There was no
longer passion but only love, which she wished would stream from
her into him. When he was dying in the hospital, the spouses were left
by themselves. She kissed his lips, which never again would whisper,
"My dear wife." She kissed his little fellow, who had given her so many
moments of joy.
A frequent problem in marital life is the lack of loving words. The
emotional bond is taken for granted; one feels that there is no need
to repeat self-evident things. Many older women complain about the
lack of tender words spoken by the husband:
My husband rarely spoke about his feelings. If I sometimes
asked, he only said: "You should know." As a woman I
would sometimes have longed for some mumble of love but
it did not belong to his nature. However, I received plenty of
care and security during our long marriage. That must per-haps
be interpreted as love--the love of a Finnish man!
(105W63)
Even though most women enjoy physical sex less than men do
(Haavio-Mannila & Kontula, 1997), an older female autobiographer
(105W63) writes that the sexual relationship gives warmth and close-ness
to marriage. It helps to get over conflicts; it is a resource. The
Finnish surveys of 1971 and 1992 show that the gender gap in finding
sexual intercourse pleasurable has diminished during the last 20 years.
An example of this is that one woman of the generation of sexual
revolution (179W51) fell in love with her own husband at a late phase
in her life when she finally learned to enjoy sexual intercourse. She is
happy for being able to love and to be loved. "And now there is no
need to be afraid of getting pregnant."
In the generation of sexual revolution, in the same way as in the
preceding generation, men and women seem to have different opin-
Love Stories in Autobiographies 257
ions about how to express their feelings of love. Men do not think
that nice words are necessary, whereas women expect verbal expres-sions
of love (104W38). Sometimes, lack of words or harsh words are
forgiven because the woman knows that the husband loves her even
though he handles her badly. Several women complain about the
silence of their husbands. A women (103W38) knows that her husband
loves her but considers it futile to repeat it after many years of living
together. The husband says that his actions should speak for his
emotions. The narrator longs for the joy of receiving a small smile, a
caress, or a touch of the hand in daily chores without implications that
one should go to bed.
The process from passionate to companionate love is described by
a woman (6W50) who tells how her happy marriage "in the course of
more than twenty years has changed from love to companionship."
One sexually satisfied woman (97W52) who has been married for 25
years gets a lot of joy from mutual marital love. "Our busy life
necessarily brings problems and tries our patience, but having joint
goals in life helps us to get over the difficulties."
But there is also skepticism in regard to the possibilities of achiev-ing
happiness in companionate marital life. A woman (32W42) doubts
if satisfactory sexual activity can be included in marital and family life.
She thinks that marriage is a degrading institution that makes women
slaves. She cannot imagine that it might include real love and soli-darity.
The women of the generation of sexual ambivalence do not take
marital love as seriously as older women do. They are even able to
laugh at the infidelity of their husbands. In one case, a woman tells
how her husband fell in love with her again after having been unfaith-ful
(38W28). But there are more traditional descriptions of really good
marital love, too.
Our life is happy, our sorrows are small and mostly related
to money. We talk things through. Pekka is a real home psy-chiatrist
and he peacefully opens my bottled-up feelings. He
is for sure the first and last person in the world, in addition
to our children, of whom I honestly can say that I truly love
him. He is a skillful lover. (40W26)
258 MAKI NG MEANING OF NAR RATIV ES
In this case, the passionate love felt by the autobiographer (see the
citation above) has not faded away in marriage.
Women more often than men emphasize the positive sides of
companionate love. The older and middle-aged women write with
some astonishment about love in their long-lasting marriages. Some
younger women describe marital love almost as enthusiastically as
passionate love. The deep feelings of infatuation have not yet withered
away.
"Love Stories," Love as a Process
Love is not just an emotional state, but rather a long process with
different stages. The developmental processes are more or less regular.
A feeling of passionate love changes into a calmer companionate love,
or into indifference, bitterness, anger, or hate. But there are also
different variants that are dependent on the context, that is, on the
full life story. In the following, we shall present some typical love
histories in Finnish sexual autobiographies.
The autobiographies reflect the idealized and highly idiosyncratic
images of proper love life, which might be called lovemaps. A lovemap
is not present at birth; it is a social construction, like a native language.
It is a developmental representation or template in your
mind/brain, and is dependent on input through the special
senses. It depicts your idealized lover and what, as a pair,
you do together in the idealized, romantic, erotic, and
sexualized relationship. A lovemap exists in mental imagi-nary
first, in dreams and fantasies, and then may be trans-lated
into action with a partner or partners. (Money, 1993,
p. xvi)
A lovemap is a social script, a process whereby people are subcon-sciously
and consciously conditioned and gradually programmed to
follow those rules, values, and behavioral patterns by a society, sub-culture,
ethnic, or socioeconomic group (Francoeur, 1990, p. 692).
We shall not describe the development of people's lovemaps through-
Love Stories in Autobiographies 259
out their lives. Instead, we try to derive from our individual love
stories some general types of love or prevailing love scripts or love-maps
that are shared by a certain number of Finns in the 20th century.
Many people experience various love episodes in the following
order: arousal of interest in the other sex, falling in love, intercourse,
cohabitation, pregnancy, marriage, end of love, finding new objects of
love, divorce, or death of the partner. There are many exceptions to
this pattern. Everybody does not go through all the different stages in
the love process. And many people nowadays take their second, third,
fourth, and so on chances in love.
We shall present only some variants of love stories and simplify
them radically. We try to classify people according to their major love
story/stories during their lifetimes. The method of selecting fragments
on the basis of the word rakkaus may lead to a narrow view of love
stories, as there are several other Finnish words that refer to the
emotion of love without actually using the word. Thus, in the follow-ing
classification, stories that did not include the Finnish word for love
are also included.
We classified the 165 stories by giving three codes to each person,
indicating the main love story type during his or her youth (18-34
years), middle age (35-54 years), and older age (55+ years). Then a
general or main code was given to each person, trying to capture the
essential type of story of love in his or her life. Only 11 of the 39 older
people could be classified as the same love story type through the three
stages of the life cycle. Of the 70 middle-aged people, 39 were
categorized as the same story type in youth and middle age. This means
that people's love life is not constant throughout life. The following
versions of love stories--which are not unique or improbable--could
be found in the texts:
1. One great love that is cherished and continues today. This may
be connected with some searching first. Of all sexual narratives, 17%
belong to this pattern (Table 10.3). This model is the classical ideal
based on the Christian marriage contract, but perhaps it is not now
considered to be an ideal life pattern. As examples of one and only
love throughout life, the following two cases representing the genera-tion
of sexual repression are given: A woman (117W72) became
260 MAKI NG MEANING OF NAR RATIV ES
TABLE 10.3 GOES HERE
Love Stories in Autobiographies 261
attracted to a married man during her wartime service, but this love
did not lead to sexual intercourse. She got married at the age of 19 to
her first and only sexual partner. The marriage lasted for 53 years. "I
have still today not found anybody else to go to bed with other than
my own husband." The other example is a man (123M64) who
became engaged in a semiplatonic relationship later in life but who
continues to love his sick wife.
A woman belonging to the generation of sexual revolution
(161W50) had fantasies about a Lutheran minister during her search-ing
period and finally married him. The husband wants her to totally
avoid kissing other men. "This shows that he cares for me. We respect
fidelity and a sexual union exists exclusively between us." A man
(10M, no information on age) who has been married for 10 years says
that neither of the spouses has ever had sex with other people. The
couple had sexual intercourse for the first time on their wedding night.
The author thinks that good sex at home is the best vaccination against
infidelity. The spouses dress up for making love.
One variant of the story of permanent love throughout the life is
told by a woman (38W28) of the generation of sexual ambivalence.
She describes a love affair that cools, dies, and then flames up again.
This kind of nostalgia for an old love and an ability to reawaken it is
not very common in the autobiographies.
2. Several consecutive loves, each more or less important. This
version of love stories may include several marriages, but more
typically cohabitations or, among younger people, just going steady.
These stories also describe failures in love, being left by the other,
leaving the partner, and experiencing other disappointments. A typical
case is a woman (32W43) whose story includes some elements of the
illusionary love story type (6). Her real loves are seen as illusions, but
sexually attractive, whereas the more realistic relationships lack sexual
interest.
In the oldest age group, there are many women who have found
new loves after the death of their husbands (92W61, 126W73,
164W80, 165W69). One older woman (174W68) got pregnant and
married at an early age. She then fell in love with a married man,
whom she met daily while pushing the baby carriage outdoors. The
lovers moved in together, but after 5 happy years, the man died. The
262 MAKI NG MEANING OF NAR RATIV ES
woman then had several consecutive relationships with men who often
were younger than herself; some of them she met on vacations abroad.
Now she is alone for the first time in her life. The physical signs of
getting old make her insecure in relation to younger men.
Of the life stories, 27% were classified as consecutive loves. They
are much more typical of women (34%) than of men (13%). Of the
male narratives, one can mention the story of a man (22M69) who
loved his wife who did not love him: "The only thing my wife was
satisfied with were our bed affairs." The husband was faithful to his
wife, but after 42 years of marriage, the spouses divorced. The man
had several consecutive relationships with women he got acquainted
with through advertisements in newspapers. One of these women
wants to dominate and marry him, but he hesitates.
3. Searching: several loves that are failures until finally the writer
finds the real one and the story continues as type 1 or ends at this
stage. This is nowadays a sort of cultural ideal: Most people con-sciously
seek partners and are either never satisfied or then finally find
the right one (see, e.g., Jong, 1995). About 19% of the narratives can
be characterized as continued searching, which is most common in the
youngest age group. An example is a young woman (128W25) who
dated for a year, gaining sexual self-esteem. Then, she fell in love with
another man and felt she was in heaven. The couple stayed together
for 7 years until the man made another woman pregnant. Since then,
all her sexual relationships have been short-term, lasting for 2 months
or so. She longs for a man to be at her side. "Is it my fate to be the
other woman?" she asks.
4. Partnership: love leads to marriage and dies but the marriage
does not. About 15% of the sexual life stories represent this pattern.
These versions of love stories are most common among older men and
middle-aged women.
There is an interesting variant (12M65) where the elderly man
loves his wife (his first and great love), who is not too interested in
sex. He has other sexual relationships because the wife is not inter-ested
in having sexual intercourse. The whole story ends on a tragic
note when the man learns to make love with his wife, but their sexual
life ends at the same time due to her illness. So, throughout the story,
the man loves his wife (but probably not vice versa).
Love Stories in Autobiographies 263
Another, rather specific variant (17W49) is reported by a woman
whose husband lives far away and has another woman there. The
writer still loves her husband and does everything to keep him. She
has no other relationships, even though the spouses do not often meet.
This might also be classified as a love at a distance story (8).
The quality of the past or present couple relationship is important
for the choices one makes when there are alternatives to traditional
life patterns. In many relationships, the sexual appetites of the part-ners
vary considerably. People clearly do not choose each other
primarily because of their sexual compatibility. This is often described
from both sides: The wives describe the disgusting insatiability of their
husbands (51W46), and the husbands describe the disappointing
disinterest of their wives (68M50). But men also can be completely
disinterested, which sometimes causes great traumas for the wives.
5. Complementary or parallel affairs: being in love with two or
more people at the same time. These people are sexually active, often
unmarried, divorced, or separated, and they enjoy sex and love. They
are not necessarily only young but people who feel themselves to be
young (20W47). In these cases, the enjoyment of life, openness to
different relationships, and sexual ability are very impressive. The
sexual lifestyle of these people recalls that of Don Juan, but many of
them are able to enjoy their sexuality even after the phase of conquer-ing
a new partner.
Another variant of parallel relationships are partnership marriages
with one or more affairs, passions, and real loves. Here the writer falls
in love, gets married, and notices his or her mistake but does not
divorce. Instead, several new relationships come and go (or maybe one
real love outside the marriage), and they are sometimes, but not often,
described as having a positive effect on the marriage. If the relation-ship
is revealed, the consequences vary from divorce to quiet accep-tance.
These affairs do not normally begin immediately after the wedding
or moving in together but after a period of faithfulness. Also, at a
certain age (around 50 for men, somewhat earlier for women), they
may become more intense. Many women describe extremely satisfying
new love affairs at 40 and 50. Thus, the stereotype that men can
begin a new life at 50 but women cannot does not seem to be valid.
264 MAKI NG MEANING OF NAR RATIV ES
Demographically, the chances for middle-aged women to find new
unmarried partners are poorer than those of men. But when they have
found one, even if this is a man married to somebody else, they seem
to be very happy.
One fourth of the sexual life stories have as the main theme parallel
sexual relationships. Parallel relations are much more common among
older and middle-aged men than in the other groups.
The following types are more or less short episodes that usually do
not take up the whole love story:
6. Love for an illusory man or woman: that is, a completely
mistaken image of the "real" man/woman with whom one is in love.
This is then revealed afterward and may result in divorce (168W24
and 146W33) or an unhappy marriage (51W46), which may last long.
7. Love at a distance: love affairs where love is completely or
almost one-sided, where the partner is elusive or disappearing, and
where the loving partner never knows what the object of his or her
love really felt. These stories vary from youthful loves for rock stars
(115W29) to more mature cases where the lover does not show up
too often or not at all or where the infatuation is the result of a few
encounters. This is a modern variant of the classical romances, where
the lovers either get each other in the end or don't, but the descriptions
of love are always abstract, lacking any concrete forms, such as the
story of Hëloise and Abelard (168W24 and 17W49).
8. Passion á la Annie Ernaux (1993): the woman organizes her
whole life just to be able to meet a man, who comes and goes as he
pleases. Some such episodes are discussed by our authors, too
(25W57).
9. Loss of the loved one and what happens next, or leaving the one
who loves the autobiographer. In many of the above versions of love
stories, the loss of the beloved plays an important part. But these losses
may in some cases become full stories, where the loss structures the
whole life of the author (141W, no information on age) or where the
separation comes out of the blue: the husband just says one morning
that he has found someone else and is leaving. In several other stories,
the beloved dies or leaves the writer. But there is also the other side:
The authors leave people who would not like to separate (41W21).
Women may lengthen the affair out of pity. One woman describes how
Love Stories in Autobiographies 265
she refused to accept the divorce until she was ready, and the partner
agreed to wait. The couple separated, and now the old partner keeps
in touch (20W47).
10. Jealousy. In many of the stories, jealousy is discussed, usually
by the object of jealousy. Usually, it is the man who is extremely jealous,
controls everything, and makes the writer's life unbearable. In a few
cases, the authors themselves describe their feelings of jealousy, but
only if they have been able to overcome them. It is thus conceivable
that there are stories where the jealousy of the partner marks the life
of the writer. She gives up affairs because she does not want to hurt
the other, or she voluntarily restricts her life in other ways.
Because we did not specifically seek episodes about jealousy, we
cannot yet describe in full all cases of jealousy in the autobiographies.
For instance, case 146W33 is a description of the complete transfor-mation
of men from spiritual and sensual partners to egoistic, posses-sive,
and, in the end, violent husbands. Jealousy in connection with
male communication deficiency and alcoholism is a problem in Fin-land.
These patterns of transformation and deception in love are well
documented and analyzed by Finnish scholars (e.g., Heinämaa &
Näre, 1994).
11. No love. Even though the proportion of people who have
never fallen in love in their lifetime is only 1% of the population, there
are some people who at present are outside the realm of human love.
In some cases, they have earlier in their life been in love, and thus have
a love story to tell.
When one looks at the frequency of people telling different types
of love stories (the major type characterizing the life as a whole), there
is a clear gender difference: Women more often report consecutive
loves, whereas men more frequently tell about parallel, complemen-tary
love affairs (Table 10.3). The main generational difference is that
young, sexually ambivalent people often are still searching for real
love. Elderly and middle-aged people more often were classified as
having partnerships or parallel loves.
We also classified the stories separately for each life stage, and we
will now look at the type of love separately in youth, midlife, and old
age for the three generations. Readers should keep in mind that the
266 MAKI NG MEANING OF NAR RATIV ES
stories of youth and middleage of the older autobiographers and of
youth of the middle-aged ones are retrospective, whereas the younger
people describe more recent events and feelings.
The development of love life during the life course will be exam-ined
simultaneously from the point of view of age and generation
(Table 10.4). Let us first look at how getting older influences love life
in different generations, that is, the effects of age on type of love when
generation is kept constant. Searching for love is clearly a phenome-non
of youth in all three generations. Having only one great love is
naturally equally frequent throughout the life cycle in both older
generations in which one can follow the love process. Stories of
consecutive loves increase when people get older. Parallel relations are
very rare in youth, flourish in middle age, and decline after the age of
55. The effect of age on partnership is small.
We can also see the same results by looking at generational differ-ences.
Generation has no influence on the proportion of people
searching for love, which is common to the youth of all three genera-tions.
The oldest generation cherishes one and only one great love
throughout the life cycle. Consecutive and parallel loves are charac-teristic
of the generation of sexual revolution, who appreciate "pure
relationships" that are not determined by tradition. Partnership does
not vary by generation.
There are some cases in which both age and generation have an
independent influence on the type of life story. The generation of
sexual revolution often (32%) takes a second chance in midlife when
it enters into consecutive love affairs. The generation of sexual repres-sion,
which was very faithful in its youth (only 5% had parallel
relations), became sexually liberated in its midlife by engaging in par-allel
sexual relationships (34%) but has decreased them in its older
age (21%).
The age or life stage effects on central aspects of the love story can
be summarized as follows: People search for love when young. They
develop consecutive and parallel relations as they mature. Having only
one great love in a lifetime and living in a partnership is not related
to age when the influence of generation is controlled. The main
generational difference in the life stories is that people of the genera-tion
of sexual repression tell about one great love more often than
Love Stories in Autobiographies 267
TABLE 10.4 GOES HERE
268 MAKI NG MEANING OF NAR RATIV ES
those belonging to the generations of sexual revolution and ambiva-lence.
It is also obvious that consecutive and parallel relations are most
common in the generation of sexual revolution.
Even though the survey data could not be classified exactly in the
same way as the autobiographies, both data sets indicate that about
one fifth of Finns represent each of the five main types of love stories:
one great love, consecutive loves, searching, partnership, and parallel
loves (see Appendix). Also, the gender and generational variation of
the story types follow the same pattern in both research materials. This
gives us confidence in the reliability and validity of data on love and
sexuality collected by using two different sociological methods.
Conclusion
In this study based on Finnish sexual autobiographies and survey
data, the main question to be answered was: Are people's love
discourses and maps universal, largely independent of gender, age, and
generation, or can we discern patterns here?
The love stories by men and women have both different and similar
elements. Men often report parallel relations alongside their marriage,
whereas women tell about consecutive loves. Men do not talk about
their feelings of love, and women complain about this lack of verbal
expression of feeling. Particularly elderly men in partnership mar-riages
discuss the emptiness of the intellectual relationship with the
wife, especially when they have found a new object of love. In the
generation of sexual repression, men have had to find a reason for
their unfaithfulness, whereas in the later generations, people can just
change partners without explanation. Men often complain about the
lack of interest in or even avoidance of sexual intercourse of their
wives. Older and middle-aged women write bitter stories about the
shock when a beloved man suddenly abandons them. Brave, inde-pendent
young women finish their unsatisfactory romances easily
themselves and feel great relief and joy after their decision.
The experience of feeling love seems to be the same for both men
and women: Both are happy when they feel loved, and both tell in the
same way of the ecstasy of passionate love and of the security of
Love Stories in Autobiographies 269
companionate love. In the quality and depth of the emotions of love,
the manstories and womanstories resemble each other.
Most of the love stories in sexual autobiographies fell about
equally into the following five types: (a) one great love, (b) consecu-tive
loves, (c) searching, (d) partnership, and (e) parallel relationships.
The consciously searching type of love story is most common among
young people. The main love discourses of middle-aged and older
people are more often concentrated on problems related to a devital-izing
marriage, parallel relationships, and taking "other chances,"
establishing consecutive relationships that might be purer and more
rewarding than their old relationships.
We also studied the central characteristics of love stories at differ-ent
stages of the life course of the three generations. Searching for
love is typical of the time of youth in all generations. In midlife, many
people's love stories are characterized by consecutive and parallel
relationships, irrespective of sexual generation. In older age, most
people have stopped having parallel relations.
The effect of generation is most obvious when one looks at people
having only one great love in their life. The proportion of these love
stories is much higher in the generation of sexual repression than in
the other generations. The influence of the sexual revolution can be
seen in the high frequency of stories of consecutive and parallel love
in both the youth and midlife of the presently middle-aged generation.
Finally, we shall present some general impressions of love stories
in the postmodern world, where nothing can be taken for granted and
many things that were earlier determined by tradition have to be
negotiated and reinvented. In the light of the Finnish sexual life
histories, faithful, monogamous love for a single person throughout
the life course seems to be a rare thing. Most marriages are in the end
quite disappointing. It needs a lot of active effort and interest to keep
a marriage going. Instead of living in the same faithful relationship
"until death do us part," most people are faithful in consecutive
affairs, that is, in time-limited love relationships. And quite a few are
regularly having several different relationships at the same time, often
with work colleagues who also are married or cohabiting. In the
Finnish love stories, pregnancy is not an issue. The arguments for
270 MAKI NG MEANING OF NAR RATIV ES
entering new relationships seem mostly to be sexual or emotional
incompatibility with the earlier partner--not simply adventure. There
are a few cases where marital happiness and extramarital affairs flour-ish
simultaneously, but not too many. The happiest people seem to be
those with an active and many-sided sexual life, with different expe-riences,
and with well-functioning relationships at the present time.
Love Stories in Autobiographies 271
Appendix
Comparing Types of Love Stories
in Autobiographies and Survey Data
The frequency of different types of love stories found in the sexual
autobiographies can to some extent be compared with that in the total
population. One great lifelong love is, according to both the autobiographical
and the survey data, very rare. Only 21% of men who were married or
cohabiting and loved somebody at the time of the interview (N = 774) and
27% of the respective women (N = 757) were totally monogamous, that is,
had fallen in love only once in their lifetime, were in their first marriage, and
had not had extra sexual relationships during any steady relationship. In the
autobiographical data, one great love was reported by 19% of the men and
16% of the women. A logistic regression analysis of the survey data shows that
total monogamy is characteristic of women, 18 to 24-year-old people (and least
typical of people 35 to 44 years old), people with less education, and cohabiting
versus married people.
Living through several consecutive marriages is much rarer than having
had several sexual relationships consecutively (or simultaneously). Only 18%
of the presently married or cohabiting Finns have been married more than
once, whereas 87% of all Finnish men and 71% of all women have had more
than one sexual partner during their life course. Of the sexual life histories,
27% were classified as consecutive love stories.
As an indicator of partnership, one can use people in steady relationships
who think that the relationship is unhappy or neither happy nor unhappy. Of
both men (N = 889) and women (N = 886), 12% live in a partnership
marriage. If the percentages are calculated from the total sample, they are 10%
for both genders. About 13% of the male autobiographers and 16% of the
female ones tell stories of partnership. People writing sexual autobiographies
are a little less happy in their steady relationships than people in general, as
was shown earlier (Kontula & Haavio-Mannila, 1995a).
Parallel sexual relations as the main love story type characterizes 35% of
male and 20% of female autobiographies. This is less than the proportion of
the surveyed people who have had sexual relationships during their steady
relationships (52% of men and 29% of women). Most extra sexual relation-ships
in Finland are casual and do not characterize people's whole lifestyles.
This explains the lower proportions of people with parallel relationships in the
autobiographies compared to the survey data.
272 MAKI NG MEANING OF NAR RATIV ES
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