Eva Illouz - Why love is more difficult to experience

Anybody living in modern societies has encountered love, or at least knows people who have encountered love.

About Eva Illouz

"I’m a sociologist and I teach in Paris at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences.
My work is about the sociology of emotions, the sociology of capitalism, the sociology of consumer culture and the interface between all of these. I’m the author of 13 books, and perhaps most recently The End of Love."

What is love?

Anybody living in modern societies has encountered love, or at least knows people who have encountered love. Of course, people encounter love. The question that a sociologist would ask is: what are the conditions in which people encounter love, and are there difficulties? What is the nature of these difficulties?
Modern people are preoccupied with love and with the idea of love in a way that their predecessors were not. We have come to view love as a condition for a successful life. And we view love as an essential part of our autobiography. Traditional societies did not view love in this way. One of the reasons why love has acquired such crucial importance for modern people is that it articulates what is perhaps the main public philosophy of modernity: individualism.
Individualism is and was the great vector for the making of modern law, as well as modern economy and the family. In the 16th century, for example, Shakespearean lovers make claims against their families, against their communities, in the name of love. Those claims are individualist claims, which cannot be implemented because society has not yet fully moved to an individualist society. But this helps us understand why love has played a fundamental role in the broad history of individualism. It has been the moral foundation for the individual’s revolt against communities and families. This is what some historians have called affective individualism.

Key Points

• Modern utilitarian individualism makes romantic love difficult to sustain.
• The separation of sexuality from emotions makes it more difficult to experience love.
• Women’s demands for equality challenge the previous stability of accepted gender roles.
• There are tensions between modern family structures and the desire for excitement.