Mementos of a Love Faraway: Everyday Objects with Great Meanings
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3986/dd.2023.1.04Keywords:
emotional objects, long-distance relationships, love, intimacy, abstract presenceAbstract
This article explores the role of everyday objects in long-distance relationships (LDRs) that connect two geographically distant partners. Focusing on LDRs within Europe, the study is based on interviews with people in such relationships. The article discusses one of the practices of creating a partner’s abstract presence, called recognizing the sentimental value of objects. As part of developing and maintaining intimacy in the relationship, imagining the partner’s presence is reinforced through emotional objects. The article contributes to the intersection of material culture and mobility studies by exploring the role of objects in emotionally linking geographically distant partners.
Downloads
References
Afshar, Maryam (2014). Understanding possession attachment in the era of the internet of things: A comparative analysis of the nature, motivation and strength of attachment to material objects versus meta objects. PhD dissertation. Seattle: Washington State University.
Ahmed, Sara (1999). Home and away: Narratives of migration and estrangement. International Journal of Cultural Studies 2/3, 329–347. https://doi.org/10.1177/136787799900200303.
Ainsworth, Mary S. (1969). Object relations, dependency, and attachment: A theoretical review of the infant-mother relationship. Child Development 40/4, 969–1025.
Arditti, Joyce A., Kauffman, Melissa (2004). Staying Close When Apart: Intimacy and Meaning in Long-Distance Dating Relationships. Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy 3/1, 27–51. https://doi.org/10.1300/J398v03n01_03.
Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. American Psychologist 55/5, 469–480. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.5.469.
Baldassar, Loretta (2015). Guilty feelings and the guilt trip: Emotions and motivation in migration and transnational caregiving. Emotion, Space and Society 16, 81–89. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2014.09.003.
Barr, Ashley B., Simons, Ronald L. (2014). A dyadic analysis of relationships and health: Does couple-level context condition partner effects? Journal of Family Psychology 28/4, 448–459. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037310.
Baumeister, Roy F., Leary, Mark R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin 117/3, 497–529. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497.
Belk, Russel W. (1988). Possessions and the Extended Self. Journal of Consumer Research 15/2, 139–168.
Berli, Corina, Schwaninger, Philipp, Scholz, Urte (2021). “We Feel Good”: Daily Support Provision, Health Behavior, and Well-Being in Romantic Couples. Frontiers in Psychology 11, 622492. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.622492.
Bowlby, John (1982). Attachment and loss: Retrospect and prospect. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 52/4, 664–678. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-0025.1982.tb01456.x.
Cameron, Jessica J., Ross, Michael (2007). In Times of Uncertainty: Predicting the Survival of Long-Distance Relationships. The Journal of Social Psychology 147/6, 581–606. https://doi.org/10.3200/SOCP.147.6.581-606.
Candlin, Fiona (2010). Art, museums and touch. Manchester: Manchester university press.
Charmaz, Kathy (2000). Grounded theory: Objectivist and constructivist methods. Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed.) (eds. N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln). Thousand Oaks: Sage, 509–535.
Chatterjee, Helen, Noble, Guy (2016). Museums, Health and Well-Being (1st ed.). Milton Park: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315596549.
Clarke-Salt, Yvonne (2017). Loving over Skype: Tactile Viewing, Emotional Atmospheres and Video Calling. Journal of Popular Romance Studies 6, 1–21.
Clarke-Salt, Yvonne (2018). Between the Covers: Couples Making Books Together as a Practice of Love. The Materiality of Love: Essays on Affection and Cultural Practice (1st ed.) (eds. Anna Malinowska, Michael Gratzke). Milton Park: Routledge: 55–67. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315228631.
Collins, Nancy L., Feeney, Brooke C. (2004). An Attachment Theory Perspective on Closeness and Intimacy. Handbook of closeness and intimacy (eds. Debra J. Mashek, Arthur P. Aron). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, 163–187.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, Halton, Eugene (1981). The meaning of things: Domestic symbols and the self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Derrida, Jacques (1996). Archive fever: A Freudian impression. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Fairbairn, W. Ronald D. (1954). An object-relations theory of the personality. New York: Basic Books.
Fox, Greer Litton (1975). Love Match and Arranged Marriage in a Modernizing Nation: Mate Selection in Ankara, Turkey. Journal of Marriage and the Family 37/1, 180. https://doi.org/10.2307/351042.
Gatzia, Dimitria Electra, Arnaud, Sarah (2022). Loving Objects: Can Autism Explain Objectophilia? Archives of Sexual Behavior 51/4, 2117–2133. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02281-5.
Giddens, Anthony (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge, Malden: Polity Press.
Giddens, Anthony (1992). The transformation of intimacy: Sexuality, love and eroticism in modern societies. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Gostič, Maja (Forthcoming). Konceptualizacija intimnosti v zvezah na daljavo. PhD dissertation. Ljubljana: Univerza v Ljubljani.
Hazan, Cindy, Shaver, Phillip (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52/3, 511–524. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.52.3.511.
Hill, Philip (1997). Lacan for beginners. London: Writers and Readers.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell (2012). The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Oakland: University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520951853.
Horvat, Srećko (2016). The radicality of love. Cambridge, Malden: Polity Press.
Hoskins, Janet (2013). Biographical Objects. Milton Park: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315022598.
House, James S., Landis, Karl R., Umberson, Debra (1988). Social Relationships and Health. Science 241/4865, 540–545. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.3399889.
Illouz, Eva (2007). Cold intimacies: The making of emotional capitalism. Cambridge, Malden: Polity Press.
Illouz, Eva (2012). Why love hurts: A sociological explanation. Cambridge, Malden: Polity Press.
Jewitt, Carey, Price, Sarah (2019). Family touch practices and learning experiences in the museum. The Senses and Society 14/2, 221–235. https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2019.1619316.
Kernberg, Otto F. (1976). Object-relations theory and clinical psychoanalysis. Lanham: J. Aronson.
King-O’Riain, Rebecca Chiyoko (2015). Emotional streaming and transconnectivity: Skype and emotion practices in transnational families in Ireland. Global Networks 15/2, 256–273. https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12072.
Klein, Melanie (1932). The psycho-analysis of children. New York: W Norton & Co.
Klein, Melanie (1984). The development of a child (1921). Love, guilt and reparation and other works 1921-1945 (ed. Melanie Klein). New York: Free Press, 1–53
Klein, Melanie (1996). Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. The Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research 5/2, 160–179.
Klein, Melanie (2017). The collected works of Melanie Klein. London: Karnac Books.
Kolozsvari, Orsolya (2015). “Physically We Are Apart, Mentally We Are Not.” Creating a Shared Space and a Sense of Belonging in Long-Distance Relationships. Qualitative Sociology Review 11/4, 102–115. https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.11.4.05.
Longhurst, Robyn (2013). Using Skype to Mother: Bodies, Emotions, Visuality, and Screens. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 31/4, 664–679. https://doi.org/10.1068/d20111.
Lorenz, Konrad (1935). Der Kumpan in der Umwelt des Vogels: Der Artgenosse als auslösendes Moment sozialer Verhaltungsweisen. Journal für Ornithologie 83/2, 137–213. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01905355.
Mahler, Margaret S. (1963). Thoughts about Development and Individuation. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 18/1, 307–324. https://doi.org/10.1080/00797308.1963.11822933.
Malinowska, Anna, Gratzke, Michael, eds. (2018). The materiality of love: Essays on affection and cultural practice. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Marschall, Sabine (2019). ‘Memory objects’: Material objects and memories of home in the context of intra-African mobility. Journal of Material Culture 24/3, 253–269. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1359183519832630.
Master, Sarah L., Eisenberger, Naomi I., Taylor, Shelley E., Naliboff, Bruce D., Shirinyan, David, Lieberman, Matthew D. (2009). A Picture’s Worth: Partner Photographs Reduce Experimentally Induced Pain. Psychological Science 20/11, 1316–1318. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02444.x.
McGowan, Stephanie (2002). Mental Representations in Stressful Situations: The Calming and Distressing Effects of Significant Others. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38/2, 152–161. https://doi.org/10.1006/jesp.2001.1493.
Miller, Daniel, ed. (2001). Home possessions: Material culture behind closed doors (1. ed.). Oxford: Berg.
Miller, Daniel (2008). The comfort of things. Cambridge, Malden: Polity Press.
Moran, Anna, O’Brien, Sorcha, eds. (2014). Love Objects: Emotion, Design and Material Culture. London: Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474293891.
Neustaedter, Carman, Greenberg, Saul (2012). Intimacy in long-distance relationships over video chat. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 753–762. https://doi.org/10.1145/2207676.2207785.
Parreñas, Rhacel S. (2005). Long distance intimacy: Class, gender and intergenerational relations between mothers and children in Filipino transnational families. Global Networks 5/4, 317–336. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0374.2005.00122.x.
Pettigrew, Jonathan (2009). Text Messaging and Connectedness Within Close Interpersonal Relationships. Marriage & Family Review 45/6–8, 697–716. https://doi.org/10.1080/01494920903224269.
Praper, Peter (1996). Razvojna analitična psihoterapija. Ljubljana: Inštitut za klinično psihologijo.
Purbrick, Louise (2014). “I love giving presents”: The emotion of material culture. Love Objects: Emotion, Design and Material Culture (eds. A. Moran, S. O’Brien). London: Bloomsbury Academic, 9–20. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474293891.
Rusbult, Caryl E. (1980). Commitment and satisfaction in romantic associations: A test of the investment model. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 16/2, 172–186. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(80)90007-4.
Sarup, Madan (1994). Home and identity. Travellers’ tales: Narratives of home and displacement (eds. G. Robertson, M. Mash, L. Tickner, J. Bird, B. Curtis, T. Putnam). Milton: Routledge: 93–104.
Sigman, Stuart J. (1991). Handling the Discontinuous Aspects of Continuous Social Relationships: Toward Research on the Persistence of Social Forms. Communication Theory 1/2, 106–127. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.1991.tb00008.x.
Smith, Timothy W., Ruiz, John M., Uchino, Bert N. (2004). Mental Activation of Supportive Ties, Hostility, and Cardiovascular Reactivity to Laboratory Stress in Young Men and Women. Health Psychology 23/5, 476–485. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.23.5.476.
Thien, Deborah (2005). After or beyond feeling? A consideration of affect and emotion in geography. Area 37/4, 450–454. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4762.2005.00643a.x.
Tseng, Chi-Fang (2016). My Love, How I Wish You Were By My Side: Maintaining Intercontinental Long-Distance Relationships in Taiwan. Contemporary Family Therapy 38/3, 328–338. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10591-016-9384-8.
Vištica, Olinka, Grubišić, Dražen (2017). The Museum of Broken Relationships (1st ed.). New York: Grand Central Publishing.
Winnicott, Donald W. (1953). Transitional objects and transitional phenomena; a study of the first not-me possession. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 34, 89–97.
Winnicott, Donald W. (1984). Primary Maternal Preoccupation. Through paediatrics to psycho-analysis: Collected papers (1st ed.) (ed. Donald W. Winnicott). Milton: Routledge, 300–305.
Downloads
Published
Versions
- 2023-02-27 (2)
- 2023-02-23 (1)
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors guarantee that the work is their own original creation and does not infringe any statutory or common-law copyright or any proprietary right of any third party. In case of claims by third parties, authors commit their self to defend the interests of the publisher, and shall cover any potential costs.
More in: Submission chapter
