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Based on extensive couple and individual interviews with young same sex couples who have legally formalized their relationships, this book argues that same sex marriages as they are lived need to be understood in terms of interlinked developments in lesbian and gay life, heterosexual relationships and in personal life.

This article explores the value of the concept of 'the ordinary' in analysing formalised couple and family relationships. This is a concept that is coming to the fore in discussions of same-sex relationships. It is often associated with heterosexual tradition, convention, and normativity with respect to the social institutions of marriage and family and has also been defended as representing the everyday politics of contemporary post-traditional, non-conventional, and non-normative couples and families. The article explores the value of focusing on 'the ordinary' for connecting what might appear to be contradictory developments in formalised couple and family life by drawing on data from a UK study that was based on both joint and individual interviews with 50 same-sex couples, where partners were aged under 35 when they entered into civil partnership, prior to the availability of same-sex marriage. First, it considers some of the 'ordinary' troubles that formalised same-sex couples and families encounter and the ways in which they can be simultaneously viewed as traditionally conventional and post-traditional or non-conventional. Second, it examines how civil partners' accounts of their ordinary experiences of love and care were underpinned by and troubled traditional meanings and conventional practices associated with married couples' commitments. Third, it analyses how partners' comparisons of previous generations' marriages to their civil partnerships (which they tended to view as 'ordinary marriages') appear to trouble traditional conventions as regulative while simultaneously espousing emergent conventions as freeing. Taken together, participants' personal accounts point to how by focusing on 'the ordinary' we can address a characteristic of contemporary family that some commentators have trouble grasping: its double nature. By this, I mean the ways in which family forms and practices can be simultaneously traditional and post-traditional, non-conventional and conventional, as well as troubling of and incorporated into the social institutions of marriage and family. The analysis highlights how the concept of the ordinary provides a way into the double thinking required of sociology to understand marriage and family as contemporary social institutions.

How significant are class identities to lesbians and gay men? In the 1990s some theorists implied that lesbian and gay identities were classless or post-class ones. This paper challenges this idea by considering personal narratives of class (dis-)identification that were generated via interviews with lesbians and gay men in the 1990s. The salience of class was explicitly and implicitly articulated in narratives of 'accepting', 'rejecting', 'ambiguous' and 'disrupting' class identities. Interviewees' narratives suggested the relative strength of sexual identities over class ones and their accounts of class had much in common with apparently 'weak' mainstream class identities. However, viewed relationally and historically, their narratives troubled the idea that lesbian and gay identities override or transcend class ones. They undermine arguments about the insignificance of class to identities more generally, and complicate arguments about the individualization of class.

This article is concerned with sociological conceptualisations of lesbian and gay sexualities as reflexive forms of existence, and identifies core problems with these. Our sociological narratives about lesbian and gay reflexivity tend to be partial in two senses. First, they talk about and envision only very particular - and relatively exclusive – experience, and fail to adequately account for the significance of difference and power in shaping diverse lesbian and gay experiences. Second, they tend to be underpinned by overly affirmative and normative projects, and are often narratives about how lesbian and gay life should be. Our narratives about lesbian and gay reflexivity sometimes confuse analysis with prescription, and actualities with potentialities. Their partiality limits the analytical purchase they afford, and is an inadequate basis on which to analyse contemporary lesbian and gay identities and ways of living. The article proposes an approach to studying lesbian and gay living that is orientated more towards reflexive sociology than the sociology of reflexive sexualities.

There is a dearth of research on the dissolution of legally formalised same-sex relationships, which can be partly explained by same-sex marriage and civil partnership being relatively recent possibilities. However, it is also the case that divorce as a topic of research has been marginalised in the renewed interest in family and relationships that has focused on diverse intimacies, family forms, family practices, friendships and personal life. This article analyses data from a qualitative study of same-sex divorce and civil partnership dissolution to consider the reasons that partners give for the ending of their formalised relationships. We argue that our analysis illuminates the need to reinvigorate research on divorce and dissolution more generally to fully understand changing social norms as they concern marriage and similar legal arrangements. We do this by analysing the three main reasons our study participants gave for the dissolution of their relationships: finances, infidelity and wellbeing. Such reasons can be read in part through a gendered lens as previous research has tended to do, but they also go well beyond gender to provide insights into how marriage and relationship ideals, aspirations and practices are being reconfigured contemporarily.

A growing body of social-scientific work has explored friendship as a source of relational goods and as a model for democratic relating. Friendships have been seen as resources for the self, sources of emotional, social and material supports, as central to elective families and affective communities and as pure relationships. Also, an egalitarian friendship 'ethos' has been proffered as a solution to the power imbalances associated with other relational forms such as family. These are partial views of friendships. Drawing on data generated for a study of critical associations, this article explores how friendships can be experienced as good, ambivalent and disappointing. There is an assumption in some of the literature that suffused friendships are especially rewarding. However, our own data suggest that they can also be personally troubling. We conclude that idealised friendships are not the answer to the problematic realities of other relational forms.

Couple studies generally focus on heterosexual relationships where partners are interviewed together or apart. This article discusses a study of same-sex couples' Civil Partnerships that interviewed partners together and apart. It considers the methodological and analytical challenges raised by our approach by discussing how the different interactional settings of the interviews shaped the stories that couples and partners told, the links between relationship narration in interviews and their 'doing' in practice and the insights generated into the sociocultural factors that shape relationship scripting. The joint interviews produced couple and marriage stories. They illuminated couples' scripting agency and factors that enable and constrain partners' scripting authority in interviews and beyond. The individual interviews produced biographically embedded narratives of 'relating selves'. These contextualized and complicated couple stories of (non-)negotiated relationships. Our approach enabled us to make links between relational scripting in interviews and the flow of power in situated research, relational and sociocultural contexts.

Over a couple of generations new possibilities have opened up for how we organize our relationships. This is especially true of same sex relationships where there is an increasing acceptance of civil unions and same-sex marriages. Many young same sex couples and partners are now living more ordinary lives than ever thought possible before, and marriage can be an important part of this. Based on extensive couple and individual interviews with young partners who have legally formalized their relationships, this fascinating new book argues that same sex marriages in everyday life need to be understood in terms of interlinked developments in lesbian and gay worlds, heterosexual relationships and in personal life. The book sheds light on the generational and biographical factors that influence same sex relationships and discusses the implications for how we understand changing heterosexual relationships and marriages. This topical book will provide compelling reading for all those interested in sexuality, gender, the family and personal life.

This article aims to open up debate on the policy implications of ageing sexualities. The article begins by discussing the heteronormative perspective that frames current discourse on older people's needs and citizenship. It then presents data from an empirical study to highlight the concerns that older lesbians and gay men have about housing, health and social service provision, work and job security, and relationship recognition. The article illustrates how the heterosexual assumption that informs policy making can limit the development of effective strategies for supporting older lesbians and gay men; and raises broader questions about policy making, social inclusion and citizenship.