The increasing popularity of love marriages in Arab societies is often examined through the lens of individualization and challenging local gender norms. Nasser El-Dine’s ethnographic study among young adults in Amman shows that this framework overlooks forms of love that are deeply embedded in everyday relational practices and gender roles.
While exploring the dating and marriage experiences of mainly highly educated, middle-class Jordanians and Syrians, Nasser El-Dine found that they experience love through various dimensions of sharing daily life and care. Deeply felt forms of love and intimacy are embedded in the quotidian aspects of life, such as eating, sleeping, and living together.
Moreover, the research participants view love as an interpersonal force that makes people do things for their loved ones, feeling it through both giving and receiving care, including its material aspects. Gender-specific household duties are seen as ways of caring for a spouse—wives show love by making coffee in the morning, keeping the home tidy, and cooking meals, while husbands do so by providing for the family, bringing home what is needed, and taking the family out.
– These mundane forms of sharing and caring were often highly romanticized, the researcher notes.
Nasser El-Dine also examines how love affects gendered household roles and power dynamics within relationships, and how these are negotiated. Love emerged as a significant factor in shaping power relations, as it made individuals more prone to compromise and sacrifice. This dynamic led some young people to adjust their gender-specific expectations for a spouse. However, their sacrifices for love rarely extended to significantly transcending normative gender roles. Additionally, the intertwinement of love and everyday caregiving practices further reinforces the power structures of marriage, in which men act as providers and women focus on household chores.
The study provides insight into the continuing popularity of “traditional marriage” in Jordan and the broader MENA region. Although arranged marriages are rare nowadays, especially among the educated urban middle class, it is generally not considered acceptable for couples to get to know each other independently; dating typically takes place under family supervision. Many young adults believe that such so-called traditional unions can work, as affection and love may gradually develop through the sharing of everyday life during engagement and marriage
Interestingly, love tied to the sharing of everyday life and gendered forms of care was not important only to those young adults who preferred “traditional” forms of marriage. Socially liberal young couples—some of whom cohabited before marriage—also experienced it as romantic.
– The study thus highlights similarities in the experiences of love among socially conservative and liberal young adults in Arab societies. Gendered caring practices remain central to relationship dynamics in both groups, Nasser El-Dine concludes.
Sandra Nasser El-Dine, originally from Kuopio, currently works as a researcher in the MIGDIA research project in the Helsinki metropolitan area.
Public defence on Friday 25 April
The doctoral dissertation by Sandra Nasser El-Dine in the field of social anthropology, titled When Loving is Giving: Caring Practices as ‘Doing’ Love in Jordanian and Syrian Young Adults’ Intimate Relationships in Amman, will be publicly examined at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Tampere University at 12 o'clock on Friday 25 April 2025. The venue is Main building, Auditorium D11 (adderess: Kalevantie 4, Tampere). The opponent will be Docent Samuli Schielke from the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient. The custos will be Professor Laura Huttunen from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Tampere University.