The Shaping of Contemporary Morality in Intimacy Decision-Making in Britain

Abstract

In this paper I aim to draw attention to the continued emphasis on ‘moral tales in stories of family construction. In research projects on both conventional family practices such as marriage and non-conventional ones such as living apart together (LAT) and mixed-sex civil partnerships, morality continues to emerge as a core guiding principle for how relationships are organised and maintained. Yet beyond the importance of children in these moral tales, little consideration is given to the other dimensions and shapes that this ‘morality’ may take. Here I bring together three qualitative research projects to illustrate the strong drive of moral obligations in the face of family fluidity, relationship plurality, and individualised therapeutic discourse. With this data I argue that obligations continue to organise relationship decision-making, and we can imagine these obligations as formed of three interrelated dimensions: (1) social ‘oughts’, formed of culture, norms, and values (e.g., we ought to get married because that is the normal thing to do in our society), (2) relational ‘oughts’, including children, family, friends, life/family course, death, health (e.g., we ought to live apart to protect the children), and (3) individual ‘oughts’, which involve strongly held personal beliefs, and an ethic of self-care (e.g., we ought to get a civil partnership because it aligns with my feminist values). Understanding the shape of contemporary intimate morality is an important step in developing future theory, policy, and practice in the field.

1. Introduction

Recent sociological writing has noted the importance of personal relationships for the creation, moulding, and shaping of our moral perspectives, beliefs and identities (Abbott 2024). Seebach (2017) suggests that through the intimate practices of a couple relationship, individuals are able to construct a ‘moral law’ of the individual which has the capacity to inform and shape an individual’s wider sense of morality and ethics. In this paper I hope to build on this contention and set out some more detailed observations of how and in what ways intimate bonds can lead to and construct moral practices and ethical beliefs. Much work in the sociology of families has previously focused on morality and family practices (Duncan and Edwards 1999; May 2008; Finch and Mason 1993; McCarthy et al. 2003; Harman and Cappellini 2015; Perrier 2013; Mason 2004). This influential body of work has been critical in contesting assumptions that morality and personal life is increasingly selfish and individualised (Bauman 2003) or ‘cold’ and rationalised (Illouz 2007). Indeed, relational sociology (Abbott 2020, 2024) and relationality in family studies (Mason 2004) have been crucial in highlighting the ongoing importance of others (actual and imagined) in individual decision-making and ethical practice.

In this paper I bring together and reflect on my own body of research to provide a contribution to this work in relational sociology, elaborating in more detail and context the ways in which a sense of morality or ethical practice may be developed and enacted through intimate relationships. This brings together research spanning more than 10 years and focusing on various practices of constructing intimate relationships: marriage (Carter 2017); living apart together (Carter et al. 2016); and civil partnerships (Carter and Hayfield 2023). The next section details the existing research and current debates informing discussions of morality in the context of family life in Britain.

2. Existing Debates

In British family sociology, the 1990s was characterised by a focus on changing family structures including high divorce rates, increasing levels of cohabitation and childbirth outside of marriage, and a plurality of family structures such as blended and step-families. For some social commentators, this was indicative of wider changes in how individuals related to each other, reflecting an individualisation of people’s aspirations (Giddens 1992), a fluid, transitory, and contingent approach to relationships with others (Bauman 2003), resulting in a chaotic experience of love and ultimately an empty, zombie-like shell left for the family (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1995). This theorising relied on arguments which suggested that morality was no longer situated within an abstract (or real, physical) moral community, guiding and policing moral character and behaviours (Illouz 2013). Instead, morality itself had become individualised—based solely upon an individual’s sense of good and bad, right and wrong (Bauman 2003). In later years this work has been extensively critiqued, not least because of the lack of diverse or intersectional analyses and the reliance on individualised explanations of the self and morality, drawn from white, Western, middle-class norms of behaviour.

In the midst of this theorising another body of research was producing work which suggested that despite the growing variety of family structures and formation, family decisions were still embedded within a moral framework and ethic of care—but one that incorporated this growing focus on individualism. Finch and Mason (1993), for example, do not contest that family decision-making is no longer embedded in an abstract moral or ethical frame but is instead ‘negotiated in context’. This research on adult kin relations and obligations of care highlighted the importance of various relational factors such as ‘reciprocity’ and ‘deservingness’ in how people explained making decisions about providing care and support for adult family members. Morality in these cases, therefore, is constructed as, and within, a process of reflection on a variety of dilemmas concerning the care of other adults. In her later work, Mason (2004) went on to highlight the significance of relationality and relational decision-making in how individuals and families decided where to live. Thus, a ‘relational-turn’ began to emerge in family and intimacy studies at this time with an increased focus on how people continued to make intimate and family life decisions in relation to those around them, to varying degrees of inclusiveness (Mason 2004).

Providing further contextualisation on the contours of family morality, McCarthy et al. (2000, 2003) focused on the moral tales told in stories of parenting and step-parenting. These authors found that adults were keenly aware of the importance of moral decision-making when it came to making decisions that would affect their children. Indeed, the presence of children within families created a ‘moral imperative’ for the responsible adults to put the needs of the children first. These authors did find an additional secondary imperative concerning the moral ethic of adult (parent) self-care. But this was always a secondary imperative, and how it played out alongside the primary concern for the children was impacted by the gender of the responsible adult. Contrasting with Finch and Mason, however, McCarthy et al. (2000, p. 800) are less certain about the degree to which individuals are freely negotiating their moral terms and orientations, instead suggesting that when considering such things as obligations to children, we remain embedded within a ‘morally absolute’ society.

Thus, the moral imperative of children became a common motif in studies of family life and practices, especially for women and mothers (actual or potential). Many studies emphasised the importance of the social context in which moral decisions were being made within families. For example, Harman and Cappellini (2015) noted the importance of social class on the moral judgement of children’s lunchboxes and Perrier (2013) demonstrated the impact of moral panics and societal outrage on mothers’ reproductive timing and decision-making. Duncan and Edwards’ (1999) work on lone motherhood and paid work pointed out the ways in which lone mothers used ‘gendered moral rationalities’ as the basis for decision-making in their lives, taking into account the intersection of their gender and economic situation to make moral decisions. This idea of gendered moralities can extend into potential motherhood where women invoke ideas of femininity and motherhood to provide a moral reasoning for embryo loss in fertility treatment (Czarnecki 2022).

While much of this research focuses on children as a primary moral imperative in family and intimacy decision-making, there is a smaller body of work concentrating on intimate coupledom itself as a continuing source of morality or ethics. There are two aspects to consider here: i. the embeddedness or disembeddedness of morality from wider social groups and frameworks (e.g., Illouz 2013, 2021) and ii. the capacity for intimacy itself to provide stable and deep-rooted concepts of morality. Previous research indicates that children may be able to provide one aspect of external moral authority guiding adult decision-making (McCarthy et al. 2000). These questions remain: can a more individualised approach to morality lead to external or embedded notions of morality beyond the children imperative? And how might such agreed notions of morality emerge from intimate, loving relationships?

Several authors attempt to address these questions. Drawing upon and, importantly, deviating from Giddens’ (1991, 1992) work on love and intimacy, Seebach (2017) writes about the importance of love to modern conceptions of morality, noting that love is the contemporary source of morality rather than social norms of etiquette and community sanctioned behaviours. For Seebach, love and loving relationships can create stable and durable bonds that can reduce the complexity of the future by removing choice and individual accountability. Moreover, by enacting (individual) rituals of love, faith and belief in love become social and a wider social good: ‘[a]s an end to individual choice and an aim to live, as a socialising element in society of individuality, as a place for the realisation of the self and one’s future in society, the love relationship had become an answer to the creation of durable social bonds in a society without divine rules or a collective horizon of meaning’ (Seebach 2017, p. 99). Using this Simmelian analysis, Seebach thus suggests that in a time when social regulation has been splintered into thousands of little individual moral centres, love itself can provide the external framework guiding and shaping our sense of morality and individual ethics. Love endures because couples believe in it—they believe it to be ‘right’ and morally ‘good’. Such a ‘morality of love’ provides an external—social—guide to right and wrong, a new social ethics derived from individual laws and shared love bonds. However, Seebach is less clear on what form this morality of love takes—what specific aspects of morality can be discerned in this model of right and wrong?

Taking a similar approach and the starting point of shared love/intimacy as a basis for collective morality, Reid Boyd et al. (2019) attempt to define a concept of ‘intimate civility’ which encompasses morality. For these authors, individuals are only capable of developing an understanding of morality and empathy if they have had experience of these in secure, intimate relationships. It is in intimate relationships—parental as well as romantic—that people construct an individual code of ethics which can be extrapolated beyond the intimate context to wider social relations and civil society. Reid Boyd et al. (2019, p. 5) propose ten concepts which may be considered in the context of intimate obligations, and which include issues such as the dialogical nature of intimate civility as it is worked out ‘incrementally, between people over time and particular to their situation and experiences’; and that it involves the imagination and empathy to consider ‘not-yet-said, not-yet-imagined relationships’. In these and other respects, intimate civility is not dissimilar to the love frameworks created by Seebach’s moral laws of the individual. Both suggest the existence, or idealised existence, of an externalised framework for morality.

Bringing much of this research together, Abbott (2020, 2024) suggests that intimate morality involves both obligations that are subjectively understood and guiding ‘normative’ standards which individuals can draw upon to inform decision-making. These resources are drawn upon in both ‘pre-reflexive’ and ‘reflexive’ methods of evaluation (Abbott 2020, p. 134). Thus, in practice, morality is ‘engaged with by relationally constituted and inextricably entangled subjects, whose intersubjectively emergent action falls somewhere along a continuum between intuitive responsiveness, mundane reflexivity in the moment of practice itself, and ‘concentrated reflections’ on more occasional moral quandaries that social life throws our way’ (Abbott 2020, pp. 134–35).

To explore this further, and to propose some more detailed components for these frameworks of morality, I delve into research data from projects focusing on marriage, living apart together relationships, and mixed-sex civil partnerships in Britain. The next section outlines these studies in more detail.

3. Research, Methods, and Data

In this paper I draw upon data from three past research projects, spanning more than 10 years. The first is ‘Why Marry?’, a project spanning 2007–2010, the second is ‘Why Live Apart Together?’, an ESRC funded collaborative project 2011–2013 on which I was a research fellow, and the third is ‘Why Have a Mixed-Sex Civil Partnership?’, a smaller scale collaborative project from 2020 to 2021.

3.1. Why Marry?

The aim of this research was to try to understand why young women were still choosing or aspiring to get married, despite the growth of alternatives such as cohabitation, and the high divorce rates in Britain. The project used a loosely feminist research design which prioritised the voices of women in conversational style data collection techniques (Ramazanoğlu and Holland 2002). Through a variety of participant recruitment methods largely based on convenience and snowballing, 23 women between the ages of 19 and 30 were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. The age range of 18 to 30 was used to narrow down the sample frame to include those women who were likely to be engaging in intimate relationships and considering possible intimate futures but not necessarily yet decided on these.

All participants identified as heterosexual, except one who identified as bisexual. The majority were white, more than half were middle-class (15 had attended university), and most lived in a city in the North of England. The sampling methods used mean that the resulting pool of participants was relatively homogenous. Interview transcripts were analysed using close reading, coding, and sorting into recurrent themes (Mason 2002). The wider study was concerned with understanding why young women were still choosing to marry in the mid-2000s, a time of relative social and economic prosperity and freedom for young women. Participants were asked about their past, present, and future relationships and ideals, as well as their views on love, commitment, romance, weddings, and marriage. Findings from this research have been published in various places and more details about the method can be found in these (e.g., Carter 2017; Carter and Duncan 2018).

3.2. Why Live Apart Together (LAT)?

The aim of this research was to find out more about the various reasons for and circumstances of couples who live in separate residences. While a number of studies before this project had explored living apart together relationships, this was the largest of its kind at the time to explore this supposedly new and emerging phenomenon from a multi-method perspective. The wider project involved three methodological phases which included a nationally representative survey, 50 semi-structured interviews, and a smaller number of in-depth psycho-social interviews. The semi-structured interview participants were recruited from the national survey and a roughly even number of men and women participated. While the majority of participants in this sample were white British, a wider range of class/socio-economic positions and age ranges were recruited. All were in mixed-sex relationships at the time of interview.

As a research fellow on this project, I conducted many of the semi-structured interviews that formed a part of the database. Interviews took place all over England and Scotland but centred on Northern England and the South East. The interview phase of the project was designed to uncover the more detailed explanations and motivations for why participants lived apart from their partner and interviewees were asked questions about their current and previous intimate relationships, the care practices they shared with intimate others, the level and degree of contact and communication they practiced, how their relationship fitted within wider kin and friendship networks, and how they envisaged their LAT relationship progressing into the future. As with the Why Marry study, interview transcripts were analysed and coded into themes by two researchers on the project team who later discussed and agreed a set of codes and themes. Findings from this research were disseminated widely and more details of the methodology can be found in various publications (e.g., Duncan et al. 2013; Carter et al. 2016).

3.3. Why Have a Mixed-Sex Civil Partnership (MSCP)?

When civil partnership law extended to mixed-sex couples in England at the end of 2019, I was keen to understand, given my previous research focuses, why couples would choose a civil partnership instead of marriage, living apart together, or cohabitation. Not only was this an interesting legal phenomenon, but it also represented one of the most significant changes to British family law in recent decades. The purpose of this project, therefore, was to understand better why those in mixed-sex relationships would choose to have a civil partnership. This was a small-scale qualitative study designed as pilot research for a larger future project. The methodological approach was exploratory and qualitative, using semi-structured interviews and recruiting again using convenience and snowball approaches.

This project coincided with a global pandemic and so the planned face-to-face interviews changed to online interviews, which allowed recruitment from a much wider geographical spread. Although civil partnerships were only available to mixed-sex couples in England at the time of interviewing, we did also talk to couples based in Scotland who were planning civil partnership ceremonies once the law change passed into Scottish law. The sample were self-selecting and therefore rather homogenous, although perhaps also reflective of those who were quick to enter into civil partnerships following the national campaign (Wright 2019). We spoke to 21 participants in 15 interviews (nine individual interviews, six with couples) who ranged in age from 27 to 62 years old. We spoke to 15 women and six men whom had been in relationships lasting between 5 and 30 years; most were heterosexual, white, middle class and with no reported disabilities. Transcripts from this project were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis (Terry and Hayfield 2021). Further details of the methodology involved in this project and broader findings can be explored in other publications (e.g., Hayfield et al. 2023; Carter and Hayfield 2023).

The conceptual explorations of morality in this paper are illustrated by data from these three pieces of qualitative research on relationship formation in Britain. Like Holmes et al. (2021), I am using secondary analysis to revisit this data in order to produce new findings. I am not focusing on the findings of one project to answer multiple questions but rather multiple projects to answer one question. This approach was selected as an efficient alternative to collecting more or new data and to capitalise on easily accessible existing datasets, reducing research burden to participants (Gregory and Williamson 2022). Moreover, working across multiple datasets allowed me to extend the explanatory reach of each individual project, creating cumulative rather than atomized knowledge (Hughes et al. 2020).

What connects the studies in this paper is a focus on relationship formation and relationship maintenance, formalising, or continuation. In contrast to other recent writing on relationships which tends to focus on endings (e.g., Illouz 2013, 2021), these separate sources of data all focus on ongoing intimate partnerships. While the majority of participants are white British, together the samples reflect a wide-ranging group of men and women, across age groups, class positions, family composition, geographical location, and education level. In the discussion below I selectively use elements of participants’ accounts from across the different projects in an attempt to build a theoretical picture of what intimate morality might look like and how it is shaped by and through romantic love relationships. In this way, an abductive approach to analysis and theory building was adopted (Timmermans and Tavory 2012), which provided the framing for revisiting, defamiliarizing, and re-coding the interview data focusing on intimate morality. The participants included in the analysis were selected as exemplary cases, illustrating in the most clear terms the argument presented in this paper (Holmes et al. 2021). While additional participant accounts could have been selected, in the interests of brevity, I chose a limited selection. Below

Table 1. Participants and projects included in the analysis.

Name (Pseudonym)	Age Range	Project (Date of Interview)
Eleanor	20–29	Why Marry? (2008)
Susan	20–29
Zoe	18–25
Mandy	30–39
Eva	20–29
Rebecca	20–29
Stephanie	40–49	Why LAT? (2011)
Carrie	30–39
David	50–59
Michelle	20–29
Hannah	30–39
Delilah	30–39	Why Have an MSCP? (2021)
Robyn	30–39
Ursula	20–29
Flora	50–59
Eryn	50–59
Marina	30–39
Ink	not disclosed
Mo	20–29
Emma	30–39

Source: Interview data (2008; 2011; 2021).

provides details of participants quoted in this paper, including when they were interviewed and for which project.

4. What Shapes Morality Now?

Looking back over the data from these research projects, it seems that despite pluralising intimacies and fractured traditions, people are searching for something durable, stable, and long-lasting. This is not a universal desire, of course, but it is a desire that has emerged to a significant extent in all three projects included here. While this may be called a desire for ‘commitment’ or an end to endless choice (Carter and Smith 2019), there appears to be more to this desire than a contingent or confluent attachment to or within relationships (Giddens 1992). Indeed, as others have noted before, once children are considered, a moral imperative is activated that supersedes other intervening actions or behaviours which are not in the interests of the children (McCarthy et al. 2000, 2003).

Here I argue that we can discern other moral dimensions in participants’ accounts that both shape the direction and practices of intimacy and extend beyond the intimate couple to shape a wider sense of morality or moral good. These moral dimensions can be derived from participant accounts, discussions, decisions, or actions that are characterised by ‘ought’ as opposed to ‘want’ or ‘must’. The interaction of these motivations can be seen most clearly in the Why LAT project where the primary reasons given for living apart from a partner fell into, i. a desire or want to live apart, ii. a necessity or constraining situation which meant participants must live apart, or iii. a need to living apart because of obligations to others, or a sense of ‘ought’ to live apart (Duncan et al. 2013). We can also consider these findings in light of Mason’s (2004) typology of relational practices in response to residential decision-making where she found such decisions were made through relationships with others and shaped by obligations, constraint, and agency. It should be noted that in many cases all or a mix of these dimensions were present for LAT participants; they are not mutually exclusive but instead describe a complex intermixing of motivations based on differing experiences and perceptions of agency and constraint. For example, we might assume that a ‘want’ or desire to live apart is characterised by an active and somewhat unconstrained agency (or relational individualism in Mason’s terms). A need or ‘must’ directive to live apart may be characterised by a constrained agency which is unable to act freely (relational constraint), while the idea that a couple should or ‘ought’ to living apart may be considered as reflecting a freely active but constrained agency (relational inclusion, Mason 2004). As agency is never simply one thing or another, it makes sense that want/must/ought are in constant interaction or tension in the relational decision-making process.

As an example, we may take McCarthy et al.’s work on the moral imperative of children in stories of parenting and step-parenting. While parent narratives will contain aspects of ‘want’ and ‘must’, these are morally superseded by the ‘ought’—the moral obligation to the children. Thus, parents here are choosing to be constrained in their actions or decisions by a sense of what is ‘right’ and ‘good’ for the children. In this case, ‘ought’ is what guides parents’ narratives of family construction and decision-making. Next, I detail a breakdown these ‘oughts’ still further, using data from the three projects discussed above to illustrate each dimension. These are social, relational, and individual ‘oughts’.

4.1. Social ‘Oughts’

This dimension of morality is closely related to what we traditionally understand as social norms, values, or mores. This is a sense of a collective morality that we have cultivated through a shared culture, but that is also diffracted and differentiated by class, gender, race, sexuality and so on (Abbott 2024). This collective morality becomes internalised and felt at an individual level to be a guide for how to behave, or as Abbott (2020, p. 135) puts it, this is ‘intuitive responsiveness’ in everyday intimate decision-making. The argument here is that this aspect of morality is both derived from experiences of intimacy, and through these experiences, shapes individuals’ application of moral behaviour in wider society.

This moral dimension is most clearly illustrated by the young women (aged 19–30) interviewed for the Why Marry project, perhaps because social ‘oughts’ are key resources for younger adults who have yet to develop strong relational or individual ‘oughts’ (see the discussion below). This was often expressed as a desire or idea that they ‘should’ marry such as Eleanor who said, ‘I think we kind of thought if we were going to have children, we should get married before we had children because it provides a bit more stability and security’ (emphasis added). Note also the ‘should’ is in relation to having children—the original moral imperative. Likewise, marriage before children was considered a social taboo by Susan: ‘it’s still a taboo subject I feel in the eyes of kind of general society it’s more, slightly more unacceptable I feel in like the opinions I get from other people to have a child before you get married’. Susan is combining the moral frame of children and ‘general society’ as a ‘generalised other’, constructing a sense of what is considered ‘normal’ according to white, British, middle-class social norms (Holdsworth and Morgan 2007).

For others, the social element of the ‘ought’ to get married was expressed through an appeal to ‘tradition’ or as a form of nostalgia for an imagined idealised past. This drawing on an external guiding force (tradition) frees participants from the ‘hard work’ of relationship decision-making; instead, they can allow institutions and existing frameworks to ‘do the thinking’ for them (Carter and Duncan 2018). Zoe, for example, commented, ‘I think I’d rather see like more old-fashioned like families and they all sit down and have their tea at the same time […] I’d rather it be more acceptable to be a normal family.’ While for Mandy, relationships of the past followed a shared understanding of progression: ‘there still seems to be quite a traditional pattern of we’ll meet, we’ll settle down, we’ll have an engagement, have a wedding, have a year or so and then have children.’ This was a view shared by Eva: ‘[you] meet someone, after a few years, you know, live together, then a couple of years after that get married, then a couple of years after that have kids, that feels like a nice sort of steady progression, can’t really go wrong…you know I mean there’s rational reasons for those sort of gaps.’ Even participants who are more cynical and reluctant to commitment to life-long relationships note the social narrative, story, or collective fairytale that is told about the ideal future for young women. Rebecca for example comments: ‘I think most of my friends, and maybe deep-down [I], have got this like little fantasy in their head they’ll just meet Mr. Right [he’ll] sweep them off their feet you’ll get married and live happily ever after’.

For these young women then, there is a social element to the moral imperative to get married (or have a long-term monogamous relationship). This isn’t just a personal decision based on rational decision-making (Illouz 2013), it is a decision and desire that is embedded in wider considerations of what ‘general society’ considers to be the ‘right’, ‘normal’ or ‘expected’ thing to do (Seebach 2017). More than this, there is a collective understanding of how relationships ‘should’ progress which includes dating, cohabitation, and marriage followed by children. This also indicates a temporal dimension for social ‘oughts’, which provide a clear trajectory from the past into the present and beyond into the future. This temporal element enables the enactment of notions of ‘tradition’ in shaping moral relationship norms which create connections for participants between their parents and past generations, their current and future selves, children and subsequent generations (Carter 2017).

It is clear from this data that considerations of what one ‘ought’ to do are still very central for how these participants make decisions about their personal and intimate lives. We can also see signs of how this moral thinking can extend outwards to form broader moral tales of how one ‘ought’ to live in relation to wider society. For example, taking the above quotes as a guide, we can imagine that socially, we ought to provide secure and stable environments for children, to reproduce ‘normal’ (white, middle-class) families who eat tea together, we should adhere to ‘rational’ stages or progression through life, and our ultimate goal should be to attain happiness—potentially achieved by being ‘swept off our feet’ by Mr or Mrs (or Mx) ‘Right’. We are obligated to society to create safe and understandable trajectories through a complex and risky social environment.

4.2. Relational ‘Oughts’

More than 20 years ago, Mason (2004) pointed out the importance that relationships with others had on how people made decisions about where to live. Since this time, much work has been produced highlighting the importance of relationality and relational thinking to intimate life and personal decision-making (e.g., Keil 2025; Nordqvist 2021; Roseneil and Ketokivi 2016). Here I argue that relational intimate thinking concerns the consideration of children as well as family, friends, and wider society. In addition, however, relational thinking may involve thinking about one’s orientation to life/family course, time, death, and health. While life course is clearly present in participants’ account above of stages that life should progress through in order to be considered ‘successful’, this was largely speculative given the young age range of the women interviewed. The data presented below is mostly taken from the Why LAT and Why have an MSCP projects, where there was both a wider age-range of participants, and many had also had experience of multiple long-term relationships, often involving children. In addition, many of the MSCP participants were actively involved in planning a civil partnership and therefore were on the precipice of a significant life event, one which was often considered to precede having children, for those aged in their 30s.

Thus children emerged as strong influences in decision-making, whether this was the decision to live apart, or the decision to get a civil partnership. At noted above, children figure centrally as a moral imperative to everyday parenting practices and decisions (McCarthy et al. 2003). This was the case for future, prospective children, as well as younger and adult children. For example, both Delilah and Robyn (both in their 30s) were concerned about ensuring their relationships had legal status before having children; as Robyn says: ‘I knew I wanted to have children and I wanted some, the legal recognition and the kind of marking of our commitment in some way shape or form before we did that’. Having children was also often cited as a reason to get married in the Why marry study. Indeed children did act as a moral imperative or core moral narrative in stories about the decision to get married (Carter 2017).

It was not only prospective or young children who needed protecting with a legally recognised relationship, however. Participants also noted the importance of considering older—or even adult—children in making intimate decisions. This was particularly apparent in the Why LAT data where we were often interviewing separated or re-partnered parents who were in the process of making decisions about co-residency. In many cases these decisions involved the established homes of children, which parents were reluctant to destabilise. For example, Stephanie had ‘to sort my daughter out first, she comes first really’ and Carrie did not ‘want to rush into it [cohabitation] because my son suffers from ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder], and he doesn’t deal with change very well. So um, I just want to take it, each day as a t- at a time. I’m not saying it will never happen. I do hope it does happen’. And as David put it: ‘the last thing a 16-year-old lad wants is somebody coming into their life and pretending to be dad.… They come first every time and their feelings come first’. Obligations to children did not disappear with their adulthood and five older respondents in the Why LAT interviews raised concerns about inheritance issues if they initiated cohabitation with their LAT partners. It was clear that the primary consideration for these participants was to protect the status quo for their adult children rather than pursuing their own relationship goals.

Thus ‘children’ operate at the level of the imaginary (as actual children are rarely consulted in participant accounts, even when they are adults) and, in this state, they presented a moral imperative to formalise a relationship and to make residential decisions based on their needs and priorities—relational inclusion (Mason 2004). But relational thinking was exposed not just in these significant life course decisions, it also emerged as a significant factor in decision-making about civil partnership ceremonies. As Ink explains, ‘[Partner] decided he wanted to invite our two younger children and I was like “hang on a minute, what about the two older ones”, so then there’s four of them, they’ve got husbands and partners, and I said to him “y’know what this is ridiculous, let’s just have a little gathering, I can invite some friends, invite your mum and your brother, and let’s just do that” so we agreed that’s what we would do, and that’s what we did’. Although Ink was reluctant at first to have a big ceremony to mark their civil partnership, she eventually ‘wanted the shebang, I wanted y’know, family to be there […] I wanted to make it a bit of a do’. As noted in previous research on weddings, the idea that weddings are ‘for’ others such as parents, wider family, and friends is not unusual. These wider networks are vital in weddings to legitimate the ritual as a recognisable social event (Carter and Duncan 2017).

Moreover, family and friends are often centrally involved as helpers, coordinators, and key figures within the wedding event (Carter and Duncan 2018). Indeed these relationships frequently shape the wedding itself. As Emma, for example, explains she ‘wasn’t planning to wear a white dress at all, until my friends got quite upset, and my mother got really angry about it and said I looked horrible in the dress that I bought’. Given these relational pressures, Emma did ultimately wear a white dress which she felt ‘really uncomfortable with’. Relational obligations to others can therefore range from the moral imperatives represented by dependent children on relationship formation or co-residency decisions, to considerations of others’ preferences in the construction of a civil partnership ceremony.

The final aspect of relational ‘oughts’ I want to consider here is how obligations to others are constructed through the lens of time, death and/or health. These may be considered as social ‘oughts’ as they potentially relate to the interaction of individuals with wider social institutions in the context of intimate relationships (e.g., the health service, funeral services, or state bodies). However, I am including them under relational ‘oughts’ because the way that these external organisations are drawn upon to construct moral accounts is relational; in other words, the ‘figure’ of death or ill-health is another character in the narrative of formations of intimacy. Thus, decisions about the future of a couple are made in relation to these spectral figures. As Ursula notes, ‘to be legally recognised as each other’s other halves so for any hospital visits or next of kin notifications or, yeah, heaven forbid one of us dies or something like that. It’s sort of then going, actually, the person that I want my life’s work to go to is this person, not my family, necessarily, or his family’. Likewise for Flora: ‘I suppose that you can find other ways around it, I don’t know you can write wills and you can have legal documents and things like that but one thing that is particularly difficult is if one of you is ill and decisions need to be made about your care, if you’re not married [or] doing a civil partnership’. Thus the ‘mundane reflexivity in the moment of practice’ (Abbott 2020) may involve thinking about relationships with other people and institutions, as well as imagined or spectral figures.

4.3. Individual ‘Oughts’

The final aspect of intimate morality to consider here is that which emerges from the personal, or individual belief systems. This is not so much about individual orientations to emotions or constructs such as love and commitment but rather about individual moral positions in relation to the self or others. This is the aspect of morality that Abbott (2020, p. 135) describes as the ‘concentrated reflections’ on the ‘more occasional moral quandaries that social life throws our way’. Thus, this section is about how individuals exert concentrated reflexivity to define a moral position in relation to a particular question. Here I explore this aspect as it arises through discussions of personal politics and in particular, feminism in the Why Have an MSCP sample, and notions of self-care which emerged from the LAT research. It is worth noting that McCarthy et al. (2000) found the latter as an alternative but secondary ethic in the moral tales of (step)parents.

One of the clearest narratives that emerged from the interviews with people choosing to have a mixed-sex civil partnership was an adherence to feminism as a key motivator for the rejection of marriage (and weddings). Feminist politics was evoked as an argument for equality between same-sex and mixed-sex relationships, as well as for equal relationships, not marred by the patriarchal history associated with heterosexual marriage. Eryn was a primary example of this as she noted: ‘we’ve taken a step politically, towards envisaging a more equal future for [couples] who are opposite-sex, that don’t have to be constrained by the traditions of the past, which are traditions of ownership […] I mean, all of my life I’ve just never entertained this concept of wanting to be a bride wanting to take a man’s name none of it ever made any sense, ever’. Likewise, when asked why she had chosen an MSCP, Marina responded: ‘I can’t get over the very very historical roots of marriage, that’s rooted in the idea of women being passed over from their dad to their husband […] and that’s just not something that I want to be associated with at all, so that’s the primary reason’.

For Ink also, marriage was embedded in an old-fashioned past which did not tally with the contemporary feel of mixed-sex civil partnerships or the future-oriented trajectory of her imagination: ‘we always said neither of us wanted to go down that route [marriage], we were quite happy as we were […] we don’t want to get married, it’s very patriarchal, it’s very old fashioned, it doesn’t suit us y’know, we are people of the 21st century’. It is also a very personal decision, one that does or does not ‘suit’ the approach of individuals and couples. Reinforcing this idea that the decision to civil partner instead of marry is personal rather than social, Mo comments: ‘I really want to make the point that I’m not bashing people who want to do the traditional thing […] some people think by opting for civil partnership you’re saying there’s something wrong with marriage but I really see it as just our choice’. Thus a very clear distinction is being drawn here between personal moral choices of what is considered ‘right’ and wider social beliefs. There is an awareness that for these participants at least, there is a mismatch between what is considered a moral good socially (marriage) is not consistent with their own moral-political beliefs in the inequality embedded within traditional marriage. Perhaps the moral tale here is not so much about the morality of equality but rather the morality of tolerance, of allowing differences of opinion and accommodating others in the longer term fight for justice and equality.

Feminism emerged much less frequently as a theme for those in living apart together relationships (and very rarely for the Why Marry sample). Instead, a fairly common theme among LAT participants was self-preservation, negative preference, and obligation, especially for the women participants (Duncan 2015). This is because as Abbott (2024) notes, drawing on work by Gilligan on abortion decisions, ‘moral decisions and experiences in personal relationships are constituted in relation to patriarchal imbalances’ where women undertake the greater burden of care, bear the greater cost of relationship failure, are more likely to be financially dependent on partners, and are more likely to risk physical, emotional, and financial abuse in relationships with men (Gilligan 1982, 1993, 2013 in Abbott 2024, p. 314).

In response to the significance of patriarchal relations in framing everyday intimate realities, we can see an ethic of self-care emerging and presenting a strong moral imperative for women that might sit alongside the moral imperative of children. For even when children were shared by LAT couples, women were at times reluctant to share a residence with the father, even for the sake of the children. For example, Michelle had ‘kind of learnt from my lessons and … I don’t want to lose everything in my house, I don’t want to be possessed, I don’t, and I don’t want to be beaten up [small laugh], by someone who’s meant to love me. Um so, yeah, I’ve just, kind of become a bit wary’. As a result, Michelle did not live with her current partner, even though she described it as a ‘good relationship’ and they shared a son together. In this instance, Michelle is choosing to place her own sense of safety and security at the heart of her decision to live apart from her partner. This is not a simple decision, however, as Michelle goes on to say, she ‘would love to live with him and have a perfect family, and I fight myself’. There is clearly some internal conflict between the moral imperatives for self-care/self-preservation, to care for the child, and to be seen as a ‘perfect family’—the individual, relational, and social ‘oughts’.

Previous negative experiences can have a significant impact on present and future conceptualisations of intimate morality and the way that intimate decisions are framed and made. Hannah, for example, enjoyed the autonomy LAT provided but, recovering from a searing divorce, was ‘keeping him at arm’s length, … I’m trying not to get too close ‘cause my heart’s trying to be sensible, and you know, not fall in love too deeply and just make the same mistakes that I did before’. Hannah is conscious that in order to take care of herself, she needs to behave in a particular way that avoids the potential to bring harm to herself. It is perhaps these ‘individual oughts’ that demonstrate in the clearest way how experiences of love and intimacy can create or shape an individual ‘moral law’ which can be applied to worlds and experiences beyond the intimate sphere. For through their experiences within intimate relationships, these participants are creating a moral law which encompasses notions of compassion and justice, for the self and for others.

5. Conclusions

Morality remains centrally important in how everyday decisions are made within and about personal, intimate relationships. These relationships are also central in providing a space and context within which individuals can construct a sense of moral worth and goodness which they can take into wider society. From the data presented in this paper, it can be argued that morality continues to operate on a social level, enabling ‘intuitive responsiveness’ (Abbott 2020) by allowing individuals to draw upon a collective sense of moral good or ‘ought’ framing intimate relationships (marriage, children, relationship progression). There are also important relational ‘oughts’, concerning obligations to children, family and friends, as well as considerations of the spectral figures of death, time, and ill-health. Taking a broader view we may consider this relational morality as taking shape within intimacy, but being applicable far beyond the family in how individuals orient themselves to questions of wider ethics of care, obligations to others beyond the kinship network, and in relation to looming figures of authority such as the state. One final strand of morality in practice may be the concentrated reflexivity that is required in special circumstances (such as choosing to have a civil partnership or to live apart together) to provide a framework for action. In these cases, an individual ethic is narratively constructed and drawn upon to provide a moral accountability for acting outside of what may be considered the social norm (marriage or cohabitation). This individual ethic—whether feminism, self-care, or another—may be formed within the context of intimate relations, but it has clear and wide application beyond this environment.

Morality operates at all levels of thought and social life, although, as is clear from the literature, is experienced differently depending on individual positionality including, age, gender, class, race, sexuality, and so on. It is possible that, given the emphasis on concentrated thought, individual ‘oughts’ increase in importance with time, age, marginalisation, or adverse life experiences. In the absence of these, the social and/or relational oughts have prominence in (young) people’s imaginations. Thus, drawing on Seebach’s conceptualisations of the moral law of the individual, and Abbott’s useful discussions of morality in practice within intimate life, I argue that ideas of morality continue to fundamentally shape intimacy, and wider social relations beyond the couple. These should be considered as containing but not limited to obligations to children and wider kin, informed by social expectations and norms, and including more personal ethical codes. In this way, morality can be considered as a constant process of change and flux, continually being engaged with by individuals at the level of everyday life. It is through this continual interaction with ideas of morality that a general sense of ‘what is right’ continues to have meaning in contemporary society. For as Abbott notes,

‘it is in the intersubjective enactment of moral awareness and concern, conducted at its various levels of deliberative engagement, that moral phenomena—what decent and considerate conduct entails, the expectations of care in relationships, the terms of evaluation and judgement we apply to ourselves and to others, the reasons for and means of sanctioning, the ethical practices through which we enact our beliefs, and even our more broadly construed understandings of what is just, fair, and right—are sustained, moulded, and transformed’.

(Abbott 2020, p. 135)

And it is in the formation and sustaining of intimate, personal relationships that this moral awareness and concern emerges.