Beyond romantic love – an analysis of how the dilemma of closeness vs. autonomy is handled in relationship anarchy discourse

Abstract: In recent years, romantic love has been problematized and questioned by sociologists and activists. Part of this questioning comes from relationship anarchy, a phenomenon which can be described partly as a critical school of social philosophy, partly as a comparably small-sized social movement. Sociologists such as Beck and Beck-Gernsheim argue that romantic love suffers from a conflict between closeness and autonomy. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how this closeness vs. autonomy dilemma is handled in relationships among five relationship anarchs. I use qualitative interview methods to collect data, which I then analyze within a discourse analytical framework using an adapted version of Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm theory. I argue that while relationship anarchy may appear as an expression of individualism, it is more accurately interpreted as a new paradigm in which closeness and autonomy no longer is a dilemma to be solved.