South African Adolescents’ Constructions of Intimacy in Romantic Relationships

Abstract

Localized understandings of adolescent romantic relationships are needed to expand our knowledge of the diversity of adolescent romantic experiences and to challenge negative discourses of adolescent heterosexual relationships. This study explored the constructions of intimacy of 20 adolescent men and women in romantic relationships from one low-income community in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. Using Charmaz’s constructivist grounded theory method, we found that our participants reproduced dominant romantic and gender discourses in their intimacy constructions within a community context of limited and limiting discourses. We argue that they could benefit from alternative discourses, more opportunities to interact privately and intimately with their partners, and to reflect on and articulate their romantic relationship experiences.

Keywords

intimacy romantic relationships adolescents low-income South Africa

Most previous studies on adolescent romantic relationships have been conducted with White, European, and American middle-class samples (Milbruth, Ohlson, & Eyre, 2009; Pagano, & Hirsch, 2007). Knowledge of other groups of adolescents’ romantic relationships is therefore relatively limited (e.g., Collins & Champion, 2011). Furthermore, in the South African context, adolescent romantic relationships are often studied because of their links with pressing psychosocial issues, rather than for the value of understanding the relationships themselves. As research indicates high rates of adolescent pregnancy (e.g., Panday, Makiwane, Ranchod, & Letsoalo, 2009), HIV infection among South African youth (e.g., Harrison, 2008), the prevalence of gender inequalities and normative gender roles (e.g., Shefer et al., 2008), and the presence of violence in adolescent romantic relationships in South Africa (e.g., Flisher, Myer, Mèrais, Lombard, & Reddy, 2007), it is not surprising that a vast amount of South African research into adolescents’ romantic behavior and experience has focused on intimate partner violence, sexual behavior, and HIV/AIDS. Frizelle (2005), however, argues that the resultant negative constructions of adolescent romance in research literature lead to “limited and narrow responses to the challenges of youth” (p. 79).

The majority of studies on adolescent romantic relationship experiences to date has focused on the observable characteristics of romantic relationships (Collins, Welsh, & Furman, 2009) and has thus taken positivist-empiricist approaches using standardized instruments to measure various predefined relationship constructs. By using quantitative measures of intimacy, researchers have approached studies of adolescent romantic relationships with preconceived notions of intimacy (Allen, 2004), and fewer studies have focused on how adolescents subjectively experience intimacy in romantic relationships (Collins et al., 2009; Williams & Hickle, 2010). According to Giordano et al. (2005), a fuller understanding of adolescents’ constructions and experiences of intimacy requires an exploration of such subjective intimacy experiences.

Intimacy researchers should also take into account that the beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, and experiences of people regarding intimate relationships are influenced and shaped by cultural, ethnic, historic, economic, familial, social and environmental factors that define appropriate behavior and inform expectations for relationships (e.g., Collins et al., 2009; Milbruth et al., 2009). Appropriate behavior and ways of experiencing are learnt in families and communities that are gendered (and racialized) sites in which dominant definitions are reproduced and reinforced (Reddy & Dunne, 2007). Thus race, gender, and class interact in complex ways in the construction of heterosexual identities. These identities are racialized and ethnicized and are expressed through social class positions (Bhana & Pillay, 2011; Luyt, 2003; Pattman, 2002; 2005).

Heterosexuality discourses are central to young people’s cultures and relationships (Bhana & Pillay, 2011) and shape their constructions of themselves as romantic partners. These discourses prescribe certain ways of behaving in and experiencing romantic relationships, including those behaviors and experiences related to intimacy. Influenced by constructions of heterosexual identities, intimacy intersects in complex ways with race, gender, class, and sexuality (Pattman, 2006).

An array of different gender and heterosexual identities are constructed within South Africa’s unique sociohistorical contexts and an “uneven landscape of social interaction locates each individual in pre-existing, while at the same time changing,” notions of identity (Luyt, 2003, p. 65) as identities are constantly renegotiated as individuals interact with others (Pattman, 2006). Ways in which gender inequalities operate at a contextual level to reinforce unequal power relations between women and men have been well documented (Bhana & Pattman, 2009). There are, however, also signs that new gender roles are emerging that are based on notions of respect and equity (Bhana & Pattman, 2009). Studies have shown that men and boys, while performing hegemonic masculinities as they are reproduced and reinforced by cultural discourses of traditional masculinity, also express dissatisfaction with the construction of, and thus their performance of, men as hedonistic and sexually, economically, physically, and emotionally powerful in relation to women (Luyt, 2003; Pattman, 2002; 2005). Furthermore, Bhana and Pattman (2009) argue that South African females exercise far more agency in their relationships with men than research has indicated, and are not simply passive victims conforming to gender roles and norms.

According to Shefer et al. (2008), traditional gender roles and relations predominate in economically disadvantaged and historically disenfranchised Western Cape communities such as the research community targeted in this study. Traditional beliefs about male dominance and female subservience are still evident together with traditional gender roles that prescribe a division of labor, which constructs a woman’s domain as the household and a man’s domain as the paid workforce (Shefer et al., 2008). Women are the primary emotional caregivers in families, while fathers are often only marginally involved in the caretaking of children (De Jager, 2011). Recent research also indicates that the people living in our research community are predominantly Christian and regularly attend churches that support traditional gender roles (Lesch & Engelbrecht, 2011).

In conclusion, the above indicates that adolescent intimate heterosexual relationship research is needed that broaden our understanding of diverse adolescent groupings and pay attention to the subjective experiences of adolescents. South African research, specifically, should challenge prevailing negative discourses of adolescent intimate heterosexual relationships, and acknowledge and explore the range of discourses and subjective experiences within the diverse South African adolescent population. This study aimed to contribute to such knowledge by qualitatively exploring the romantic intimacy constructions of adolescents living in one South African, low-income community.

A Social Constructionist Approach to the Study

From a social constructionist perspective, meanings are produced by a process of reflexivity in which people reflect on a set of actions from within a frame of reference, or discourse, which provides them with a way of interpreting the world (Richardson, 2012). The discourses held at a particular time by a particular group, already having been constructed, sustained, and reconstructed through interaction and conveyed through language, make meanings readily available to individuals (Sarantakos, 2005). The social constructionist perspective thus emphasizes the important role that culture and society play in the construction of meaning by providing frameworks through which we can understand objects and experiences (Sarantakos, 2005).

Romantic relationships are fundamentally social psychological phenomena (Cavanagh, 2007). While the feelings individuals have about romantic activity stem from their most personal values, they also reflect the widely adopted ideological beliefs deployed by society and culture (Cavanagh, 2007). These contextual ideological beliefs guide thoughts and actions, shape emotional experiences, and influence romantic expectations (Cavanagh, 2007), providing individuals with a lens through which to interpret and react to events associated with romantic experience (Sarantakos, 2005). Since the understandings and experiences of romantic relationships are likely to be products of cultural meaning systems that already exist (Collins & Madsen, 2006), they reflect socially constructed representations of reality. Furthermore, definitions of intimacy acknowledge the interpersonal, interactional, and temporal construction of intimacy between individuals (Laurenceau, Barrett, & Rovine, 2005; Prager & Roberts, 2004;). According to Prager and Roberts (2004), “intimate interactions are characterized by shared understandings of one another’s selves” (p. 45) and intimate relationships by “mutual, accumulated, shared personal knowledge” (p. 46).

Method

Participants

The participants all lived in a small village and on surrounding farms, a few kilometers outside a large town. Almost all the inhabitants of this community are Coloured, working-class people. The term Coloured was used during the Apartheid era to refer to people of mixed racial origin but is still used today by people to identify a racial or ethnic category (Engelbrecht, 2009). The authors are mindful of the ideological and political contention surrounding the use of such racial designations as Coloured. However, the term Coloured in this study does not denote race. Rather, following Laubscher (2003), the term is understood in the sense of Bourdeius’s concept of habitus: all those social and cultural experiences, as part of a shared meaning system, that shape people.

The research community, similar to other South African, Western Cape, Coloured, rural, communities, is characterized by the prevalence of psychosocial problems including drug and alcohol abuse and dependency, family fragmentation, school truancy, conflict and violence including intimate partner violence, and the use of weapons (Engelbrecht, 2009).

To increase the likelihood that participants had had some experience of dating and romantic relationships and to focus the research on a more homogenous developmental group, the study focused on individuals in late adolescence, aged from 16 to 18 years. Such learners, attending the secondary school located in the community, were informed about the research and invited to volunteer to participate.

Theoretical sampling determined the number of participants that was included in our study. Theoretical sampling refers to the further collection of data after conducting initial interviews to elucidate and develop the theoretical categories that emerged from the initial data (Charmaz, 2006) until the emerging categories are fully developed with patterns recurring and no new information surfacing (Fossey, Harvey, McDermott, & Davidson, 2002). After the analysis of 20 participants’ interviews, we reached this point and concluded sampling. Our sample therefore consisted of these 20 participants, 10 female and 10 male with an average age of 17 years. Participants’ relationships at the time of the data collection ranged from 3 months to 4 years in length and participants’ partners ranged in age from 14 to 20 years. All of the participants were in heterosexual romantic relationships.

Either one or both of the participants’ parents were employed. Parents’ employment consisted primarily of farm work and mothers were also employed as domestic workers, which points to the low-income status of these participants. The participants all reported high levels of academic achievement and had leadership positions either at school or in their churches. Most had intentions of pursuing tertiary education and had aspirations of professional careers. All participants reported that they did not use any illegal narcotics and the majority of participants did not drink alcohol, except for a few boys who reported drinking in moderation on weekends. Our group was therefore not representative of the broader adolescent group in this school. We suspect that this rather select group was a result of our study depending on voluntary participants and our participants needing their parents’ consent to participate. It is therefore possible that the more responsible and conscientious learners were more willing to participate and/or their parents may have been more involved and therefore completed and returned the parental consent forms.

Constructivist Grounded Theory

The constructivist grounded theory approach was chosen as the systematic, yet flexible qualitative method for gaining an understanding of participants’ views and actions from their perspectives (Charmaz, 2006). In line with a social constructionist stance, Charmaz (2006) views the use of grounded theory method and theorizing as “social actions that researchers construct in concert with others in particular places and times” (p. 129), with data collection and analysis being created from shared experiences and relationships among the researcher, research participants, and other sources of information. Thus this constructivist view of grounded theory holds that data and analyses are social constructions and the resultant theory depends on the researcher’s view and cannot be independent of it (Charmaz, 2006).

Data Collection

After obtaining institutional permission and ethical clearance from the relevant institutions to implement the research, we sought informed assent and parental consent from participants and their parents before the interviews were conducted.

Interviewers

Since trained interviewers from the same background as the participants were not available to the researchers, we decided to use volunteer postgraduate students who had qualitative research training and some interviewing experience. Also, in other studies in the same communities (e.g., Lesch & Kruger, 2004), adolescent participants indicated that they preferred to talk to strangers about personal matters rather than to interviewers from their own community. The bulk of the interviews were therefore conducted by four White, postgraduate students in psychology. For reasons that we explain later, two Coloured undergraduate psychology students conducted interviews with three of the participants later in the data collection process. Each interviewer attended a training and orientation session to equip them for interviewing participants. Interviewers were provided with an interview schedule (described in the next section) to ensure that the topics necessary for gaining relevant information were covered. They were sensitized to maintain a casual, conversational atmosphere, following the participant’s lead whenever possible (Charmaz, 1990).

We need to acknowledge here that our data and the understanding that we offer of these adolescents’ intimacy constructions have been influenced in various ways by the socioeconomic differences between White, educated, middle-class, young adult interviewers and Coloured, working-class, adolescent interviewees. Within discussions of qualitative methodology (e.g., Karnieli-Miller, Strier & Pessach, 2009) it is argued that it is necessary to critically reflect on power relations in the research process at different levels, if power differentials cannot be avoided. It has become standard procedure for social constructionist researchers to acknowledge their own subjectivity and to disclose those aspects of their own social location and identity, which could have impacted on the research process. It needs to be emphasized that this kind of reflexivity has also been central in the methodology of the study (see Furphy, 2012), but space constraints do not allow for elaboration here. It must suffice to mention only a few of the many possible interviewer effects that may have been at play here. First, the interviewees may have wanted to portray themselves in more positive ways to the interviewers; due to the differences between themselves and the interviewers, they may have felt more self-conscious and less free to expand spontaneously on their responses to questions and prompts; and they may have felt inhibited to talk about sex in their relationships.

Interviews

In-depth, audio-recorded interviews were conducted in five waves with the 20 participants individually, in their home language (Afrikaans), in private rooms at the school that participants attended. In accordance with the process of theoretical sampling, the research began with broad questions reflecting the aims of the study (Charmaz, 2006). In the first wave, the primary researcher interviewed 3 participants in three first and one follow-up interview to test the interview schedule and to become familiar with the interview challenges in order to train the other interviewers. Participants were asked to describe how they felt about their partners and about their relationship with their partners, give specific examples of certain experiences and to describe how they felt at the time of the experience, give examples of a time or situation when a participant felt close to his or her partner, describe aspects of themselves or their life that they would find difficult to tell their partner, a time when they felt special and important to their partner, what they do to make their partner feel special and important, what sorts of things they do when they are with their partners; and also what they talk about when they are together. When we reviewed this interview material, we concluded that we needed to add more questions that enquired directly about participants’ beliefs about an intimate relationship, if their current romantic relationship was like their conception of an intimate relationship, and how it is the same or different.

In the second wave, 9 new participants were interviewed by three White, postgraduate psychology students with the adjusted interview schedule. After reviewing this interview material, we decided to make a small adjustment to the schedule to provide a more conversational and narrative tone to the interviews. The interview schedule now began by asking participants to tell the story of their relationships—how their relationships began, why they started, and how they changed and developed, followed by the interview schedule as implemented in Wave 2. The adjusted interview schedule was used by the same interviewers with 3 new participants in the third wave of interviews.

Participants were asked how they experienced the interviews. All of them said that they felt comfortable and found it interesting and enjoyable to talk about their relationships in this way. They reported, however, that they found it difficult to answer some of the questions because they have never before thought or talked about their relationships in terms of the questions we asked. Despite the feedback that the participants were comfortable with the interviewers, we felt compelled to explore the possibility that the cultural and socioeconomic differences between the interviewers and participants may have silenced the participants in crucial ways. We therefore made a concerted effort to recruit and train interviewers who were more congruent with the participants. We did not succeed in recruiting any male interviewers, but located two Coloured undergraduate Psychology students who came from similar communities as the participants, and we proceeded with the fourth wave of interviews with 4 new participants. Listening to and analyzing these interviews, we concluded that the content and quality of these interviews were similar to the previous interviews.

The fifth wave of interviews was conducted, using the same interview schedule as in the fourth wave, with 4 new participants by a White, postgraduate psychology student. The purpose of this last wave of interviews was to see if new information emerged and patterns were recurring (Fossey et al., 2002). After transcribing and coding these interviews, it was clear that no new themes were produced and data collection was therefore concluded.

Data Analysis

In accordance with grounded theory method, a line-by-line coding phase was implemented (Charmaz, 2006). Using the transcriptions of the interviews, the initial, line-by-line coding involved selecting and separating segments of data and then “defining what the data are about” by attaching a label to each segment of data, which summarized and categorized each segment according to the processes, actions, assumptions and consequences contained in the segment (Charmaz, 2006, p. 43). Coding for actions rather than topics and applying labels that denote these actions was used as a strategy to lessen the likelihood of the analyst superimposing preconceived ideas onto the data or making conceptual leaps (Charmaz, 2006), thus bolstering the validity of the codes.

In the focused coding phase of analysis, the initial codes were synthesized and integrated using the constant comparison method in which analytic distinctions as well as patterns in the most frequently occurring or significant initial codes were identified (Charmaz, 2006). The constant comparison method was again used to identify relationships among focused codes. The codes that made the most analytic sense were used to frame the data in four conceptual categories, namely, compliance with dominant romantic discourses, adhering to traditional gender roles, “do”-ing intimacy by being together and alone, and implicit sexual discourses, which were developed based on concepts arising from theoretical knowledge (Kelle, 2007). These categories were related to each other and to extant theory to construct the core category, which reflected an understanding of the studied phenomenon: Reproducing dominant discourses.

Findings

The conceptual categories are presented below.

Conceptual Category 1: Compliance With Dominant Romantic Discourses

The compliance with such dominant discourses was evident in the following:

Clichéd expressions

Participants’ often used words and phrases to describe their relationships and their feelings about their partners that have appeared so frequently in romantic discourse so as to become clichéd. Zane (age 16) described how he felt about his girlfriend as “We are almost like one. She is the half of me . . . Like I already feel, like for me it’s, she’s my soul mate.” Damian (age 17) said of his girlfriend that “. . . she means the world to me.” When asked what attracted her to her boyfriend, Elishia (age 17) replied that “It was just chemistry.” Of their feelings for their partners, Malory (age 18) and Brandon (age 17) said “. . . he is the one for me . . . he’s really the reason that I get out of bed in the morning actually,” and “I’ll do anything for her. I am willing to endure any struggle with her.”

The use of clichéd phrases was more characteristic of those participants who had relationships of shorter duration. This may reflect an association between relationship inexperience and idealized constructions of romantic relationships. The use of clichéd expressions without conveying a sense of personal meaning may indicate that these participants had not yet had the opportunity to become aware of and develop an understanding of the personal meanings of relationship experiences. Donovan’s (age 16) response illustrates this: “Like I say, we trust each other. I can’t say, it’s just, I don’t know how it happens because this is the first relationship I’ve been in that’s been like this.”

Scripted romantic behavior accounts

Participants’ description of behaviors with their romantic partners appeared scripted in that they resembled behavior prescribed by popular romantic discourse. For example, several participants indicated that they show their love and caring for their partners by buying them gifts like chocolates, teddy bears, and roses. Clifford (age 17) said that he felt special and important to his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day when they “made cards” and “I bought her roses.” Elishia (age 18) said that she feels special to her partner when “He buys me chocolate and says he loves me.”

Minimizing conflict in relationships

Participants tended to minimize conflict in their relationships and we got the impression that they thought that partners in an ideal love relationship should not have serious conflicts. As Sergio (age 16) said,

Sometimes when we, we don’t really argue, but we play as we argue . . . We don’t really get angry with each other. We might argue, but then we’re fine again.

Interviewer:

What do you do when you argue?

Participant:

We scream at each other.

Although many participants matter-of-factly related shouting or screaming at each other, physically violent behavior in romantic relationships was only mentioned by two young women. Stressing that her boyfriend did not hit her, Zenobia (age 18) implied that hitting would be considered unacceptable behavior, while grabbing and shaking appear to fall in a lesser category, and shouting seems to be considered quite normal:

He grabs me, then I know he’s getting angry. Or he says “No man, you know I don’t like that.” And then he shakes me. Then I say “You’re hurting me”, and then he leaves me. But we, he never hits me, he doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t hit me . . . We never argue. I shout at him. We shout at each other about funny things. Then we talk again. Then we shout. Then we talk again.

Elishia’s (age 17) response indicates that her past boyfriend hit her and that her current boyfriend condones physical violence to control a girl’s “cheekiness”:

If I tell him that I was in an abusive relationship, that’s why I’m like this, I defend myself at all times. I was raised to stand up for myself. Then he’ll say that it’s because of my cheekiness that that guy hit me.

The absence of violence in most participants’ responses may of course be a result of the participants presenting their relationships in a positive way to strangers. It is, however, also possible that most of these aspiring young people who live in a community where intimate partner violence is common are resisting such practices.

Conceptual Category 2: Adherence to Traditional Gender Roles

The notion of boys as formal initiators of romantic relationships seemed implicit in participants’ accounts of the beginnings of their relationships. It appeared as if participants believed that a romantic relationship only began officially once a boy has directly approached a girl in a face-to-face interaction and asked the girl to have a romantic relationship with him. For example, in the first quote below, it seemed that although the girl’s long-standing interest in the boy was public knowledge, she did not approach him first and directly to declare her romantic interest. Despite that the quote suggests that she was quite active in pursuing him by utilizing friends as emissaries to convey her interest to the boy, she still waited for him to come to her and ask to have a romantic relationship with him. In the second quote, the female participant also indicated that it was the boy who first declared his feelings and asked her to have a romantic relationship. According to Morr Serewicz & Gale (2008), the expectation that boys should initiate relationships, even when girls are equally interested in pursuing a romantic relationship, indicates engagement in what is regarded as the traditional and normative script for heterosexual dating.

When I got to this school, it was last year, my friends told me about this girl that likes me and so, but I just ignored them. Then later on some of her friends came themselves to tell me that she has her eye on me, so then I went to her myself to ask her . . . Then I went to her and popped the question. Then she said yes, she’d been waiting a long time for this. (Damian, age 17)

. . . And at that time he told me how he feels about me and he asked me if we could start a relationship and we were together from then. (Melodi, age 16)

There also seemed to be traditional gender differences in the way that boys and girls showed their partners that they love and care for them. Male participants indicated that care (showing a partner that he or she is special and important to the other partner), love, and feelings of closeness are associated with giving gifts or taking a partner out, which invariably involved spending money. For example, Dean (age 17) indicated that “I do it often, buy her something that makes her feel special . . . If I have money then I think of something then I buy her something, which I won’t even do for my mother.” Zane (age 16) said, “If I buy myself airtime, it can be R50 [$6], then I phone her. I phone it all up on her, then we’ll talk everything out. Then she says, she tells me she’s going to miss me so much.” Malory (age 18) reported that “Like for my birthday he said he’s going to buy me ear rings. Then I said ‘Wow! It’s ok, a rose is also ok.’”

Spending money on a partner can be a reflection of care and love and elicit feelings of closeness because to these participants with limited financial means it may demonstrate the lengths a partner will go to for the other. Girls indicated that they express their love and care for their partners (and their partners feel loved and cared for) by making their partners feel good. This could be seen as doing emotion work, which involves “helping others to feel special by letting them know that you care for them and admire them in order to help them feel good and being careful with their feelings to avoid their feeling bad” (Burns, 2002, p. 155). For example,

When she tells me I’m well built, now I feel good. She says “I have a good looking man . . .” That makes me feel special . . . Look most people say “My friends are more important to me than my girlfriend.” But with her it’s the other way around, almost like I am more important than them. That makes me feel good. (Zane, age 16)

When asked if she has done anything to make her partner feel special and important, Elishia (age 17) said “I sat on his lap and kissed him and I said ‘Of all the girls sitting here, I am the prettiest.’ So he must feel good. Then he said ‘The prettiest girl is sitting with me.’” When asked how his girlfriend makes him feel special, Damian (age 17) replied, “She looks at me almost like I’m a prince, or I am, one can say, I’m her man . . . That’s what makes me happy in a way.”

Men were also seen as the sexual agents who want and initiate sexual activity as the following two responses illustrate: Jasmine (age 17) said that what she liked most about her boyfriend is that “he will respect me and not force me to do things that I don’t want to do . . . And that he hasn’t, like in, asked me to have sex with him yet.” As part of her account of what makes a relationship ideal, Melodi (age 16) said of her boyfriend,

. . . he said to me “Don’t think that I want to sleep with you or anything, because for me, I have to finish school and studies and then I’ll only think about sex and things like that.” And that was like wow to me . . .

Conceptual Category 3: “Do”-ing Intimacy by Being Together and Alone

Experiencing intimacy through being together

This focused code describes participants’ emphasis on being together and their association of being together with feeling close to a partner. Being together was a way of engaging with a romantic partner, which involved both spending time with a partner, that is, being in close physical proximity to a partner, and talking with a partner. One participant said,

I don’t actually spend a lot of time with her at school, when I do spend time with her at school she says that that makes her feel special. Or say she’s amongst her friends and I come and fetch her, then I make her feel special. (Brandon, age 17)

For the participants in this study, seeing each other often was highly valued and sought after. As Damian (age 17) said of his relationship with his girlfriend, “I don’t want to, I can’t, not even over weekends, I can’t stay away . . . My relationship with Jolene is like, I can’t go a day without her.” Marjory (age 18) reported, “Say I phone him during the week and he can’t come and then for me it’s like he doesn’t care about me anymore.” Zane (age 16) said, “say now she’s absent from school that day or I’m not at school, then my whole day is spoiled.”

The role that togetherness played in the dissolution of romantic relationships reflects the importance of these behaviors to participants. Melodi (age 16) said about breaking up with her previous boyfriend, “We are not at one school. We never see each other. So I said to him that he can go on with his life and I will go on with mine.”

Being together was associated with intimacy and feelings of closeness. When asked what an intimate relationship looked like, Anastacia (age 17) answered “Spending time together.” Zane (age 16) stated that “it’s when we’re together that we’re close. We’re almost like one.”

Being together alone

Participants most liked to be together alone so that they could talk freely and engage in self-disclosure. Zane (age 16) said that “When we’re alone it’s so nice to talk, to make jokes, . . . When we’re alone we talk mostly about the difficult things. Maybe about her history or my history.” Jasmine (age 17) reported that

We want to be alone together more, away from everyone . . . When we’re alone then we talk more about our relationship, how we handle it, handle problems . . . I’ll say when we’re alone, that’s when I feel closer to him.

Settings and opportunities where young couples can be private and alone together, are however limited in this low-income community. Houses are often small and crowded, bedrooms and beds are shared by family members, curtains often separate living and sleeping areas, and recreational facilities, parks, and other settings where couples could be both public and private, are very scarce. Furthermore, adolescents’ financial resources are too limited to travel to town to obtain privacy in, for example a restaurant (De Jager, 2011; Lesch & Engelbrecht, 2011). As indicated in the quotes below, participants therefore seemed to find opportunities to be alone and private at the boys’ homes in a bedroom, or when the other house inhabitants were away:

Brandon (age 17) indicated that he felt close to his girlfriend when “She was at my house, we lay in my room and talked about life, what she thinks about life, what I think about life.”

When asked to give an example of a time when he felt close to his girlfriend, Brandon replied, “Me and her were alone at home, we talked and talked . . . then I felt very close to her.”

Since being together alone was so valued, participants tried to be together in this way as often as possible. However, they rarely had that opportunity: Zane (age 16) said that he and his girlfriend “are mostly among people, seldom alone. For me it feels like I always want to be alone.”

The above clearly indicates that the participants experienced closeness in being together alone and that they valued the self-disclosure that was often associated with such occasions.

Conceptual Category 4: Implicit Sexual Discourses

It is striking that participants’ accounts of being together alone did not include references to physical intimacy or sexual encounters. Perhaps, the fact that they so much valued alone and private times implies that physical closeness was involved. It must also be kept in mind here that as our aim was not to pursue preconceived notions of intimacy, interviewers did not ask participants about sexual interactions if the participants did not offer such information themselves. In retrospect, this could be seen as an oversight with these specific participants who may have felt uncomfortable speaking about their sexual activities of their own accord. However, although sexual activity was not mentioned, specific unprompted mention was made by 6 participants of their sexual abstinence when participants were asked if they had anything to add at the end of an interview or when asked what they liked most about their partners or relationships. Zane (age 16) indicated that his girlfriend sometimes sleeps over at his house but that he insists that they do not sleep in the same room: “I say to her ‘I sleep in my bed where I sleep, you sleep there with my mother’ . . . We will wait until we get married . . . My mother raised me like that.” As part of her account of what makes a relationship ideal, participant Melodi (age 16) said, “Most of the time we hold each other but we are not sexually active, we are not like that yet.”

Mothers’ voices were apparent in the participants’ motivations for sexual abstinence:

If the time could just pass. If I could just be finished with school and be finished with my studies, and the two of us together, I’d like to marry her. I told my mother as well. Then my mother said there’s no problem with that, she’ll help me and everything, but then I must be able to show her that that I can finish my studies. ’Cause why my brother was in matric, he was near the final exams and then he made a child. (Damian, age 17)

It seems that participants received messages from adults in their community to keep sex for marriage and that adolescent sex is equated with unwanted pregnancy, thereby endangering their future and academic prospects. It may be that this specific group of volunteer participants, who had aspirations of careers, had strong motivation to practice abstinence if they believed that sexual abstinence was essential for achieving these life goals. It is, however, also possible that they may have thought that admitting to sexual activity may tarnish their image as good, hardworking achievers and leaders. Furthermore, as the participants reported being Christian and attending church regularly, it may be that they felt that engaging in sex out of wedlock conflicts with the teachings of their Christian faith. They could therefore not talk about engaging in sexual activity or associate sex between unmarried people with positive experiences such as intimacy, without being “bad” Christians or contradicting their Christian beliefs. These different possible explanations, however, do not change the apparent dominance in these participants’ accounts of discourses of adolescent sex as dangerous and ruining advancement in life, and sexual abstinence as “good.” The dominance of these discourses very likely indicate the lack of alternate discourses that construct teenage sex and sexuality as being positive, “normal,” beautiful, compatible with academic and career achievement, and being good sons and daughters.

Some participants mentioned that they thought that sexual activity among their peers was quite common. They were at pains to point out that they were different, which could be viewed as reproducing explicit dominant community discourses (do not have sex). For example, Zane (age 16) said,

Lots of people in relationships have sex in their relationships. What for me, what for me is so nice in our relationship, we have not even once thought about something like that. And lots of people say ‘you are having sex, you are sleeping together’ but it is not so at all.

Jasmine (age 17) stated,

Most people think that because we have been together for so many months we are having sex and things like that. And my mother asked me why the people are saying that, (she asked me) is it true? So then my mother and I fought about that again. So I told her she can trust me. I won’t do things like that that have consequences.

Jasmine was also fearful about being alone with her partner because of her friend’s experience with sex and pregnancy:

I spoke a lot to my friend . . . she’s pregnant now by this guy . . . she said no, but um, they were alone and kissing in the house . . . It just happened. That’s why I don’t want to be alone in the house and kissing, then I know. My friend told me it just happened. Now I don’t even want to be alone in the house.

The remaining participants did not speak about sex at all. Their profound silence may indicate that these young people did not have a sexual discourse that they felt would be acceptable to White, older, middle-class interviewers.

Discussion

One of the ways in which we can understand our participants’ reproduction of dominant discourses is in terms of their age, developmental stage, and associated limited relationship experience. Participants in our study indicated that the romantic relationship they were in at the time of the interview was their first or one of their first. According to Williams and Hickle (2010) there is an association between romantic relationship inexperience and idealized constructions of romantic relationships. They found that adolescents who have had more experience with romantic relationships are more likely than less experienced adolescents to view their relationships as imperfect or not featuring “real love” (Williams & Hickle, 2010). It is thus possible that in the absence of the more personalized constructions that come with romantic relationship experience, romantically inexperienced adolescents use available dominant discourses to articulate and make sense of their relationships and experiences.

By having to rely on dominant romantic discourses, romantically inexperienced participants may not fully explore their own experiences and develop their own values and beliefs about romantic relationships and themselves as romantic partners in their first relationships (Connolly & Goldberg, 1999; Furman & Simon, 1999). Reliance on dominant discourses may inhibit inexperienced adolescents’ ability to act and express themselves in a manner consistent with their inwardly experienced desires, values, and emotions (Tolman, Impett, Tracy, & Michael, 2006), which could impact negatively on emotional and sexual agency in first romantic relationships (Lesch & Kruger, 2004). It therefore seems important for adolescents to have opportunities to explore their own experiences of romantic relationships and to develop personalized vocabulary, constructions, and expectations of romantic relationships.

Studies have found evidence of considerable support for romantic scripts that prescribe conventional (or mainstream) norms for behavior by people on the margins of society, such as those living in poor or rural communities (Harding, 2007). According to Burr (1995) there is a possibility of agency and subjectivity in a reality constructed by available discourse and by identifying with mainstream, idealized romantic discourses. People whose community discourses of relationships generally involve negative constructions of relationships, may therefore use mainstream conventions for relationships to reorganize the meaning of their own relationship experience in a more positive way. In the same way, our group of aspiring participants—who live in a community where intimate partner violence, teenage pregnancies, absent fathers, and single mothers are common—may also strive toward idealized romantic discourses to have futures different to many of the people in their community.

Our respondents’ constructions of intimacy adhered in important ways to Western mainstream adult discourses of intimacy that emphasize mutual self-disclosure (Prager & Roberts, 2004). However, our participants stressed the moments of intimacy and intimate behaviors, and not emotional and abstract experiences (e.g., validation and understanding) as products of intimate interactions that are often highlighted in adult discourses of intimacy. They emphasized doing intimacy. They valued and sought out opportunities to be alone together and to talk about themselves and their relationships, and they said that these opportunities gave them a strong mutual sense of closeness. For them, being together, while perhaps representing more abstract experiences, involved the physical activities of spending time together, preferably alone, and talking—not necessarily deep, self-disclosing conversations.

Prager’s (1995; Prager & Roberts, 2004) conceptualization of intimate interaction as consisting of both intimate behavior and intimate experience may help to make sense of this phenomenon. According to them, intimate behavior occurs when partners share that which is personal and private, while intimate experience is the positive affect and perceived understanding that partners experience in conjunction with intimate behavior or as a result thereof (Prager, 1995; Prager & Roberts, 2004). Our romantically inexperienced participants, who also said that their participation in our interviews was the first time that they were asked to think about and articulate their relationships experiences in terms of the questions that we asked, may therefore not yet have had the language to articulate more abstract and emotional experiences (Shaughnessy & Shakesby, 1992) and found it easier to articulate intimate behaviors. This finding again points to the importance of creating opportunities for adolescents to reflect on and articulate their romantic relationship experiences.

Our participants felt that they very seldom had opportunities to talk privately and intimately, and to get to know each other. We also mentioned earlier that this low-income community offers few opportunities and settings for adolescent couples to be alone together. It is therefore important for adults to take note of how important opportunities to talk privately are to developing intimacy in any relationship—also young people’s relationships. In our experience, however, parents and teachers tend to prevent such opportunities and advocate for adolescents to be supervised and interact as a couple within a group. It is often assumed that adolescents cannot manage their own sexual behavior and if they are left alone they will likely engage in sex. Given the importance of opportunities to be alone and to talk privately, parents and teachers should perhaps consider the need to allow or create more of these settings and opportunities for adolescents in poorer communities who have fewer opportunities for privacy.

Our participants had access to limited and limiting sexual discourses in their community: for example, adolescents should not have sex, abstain from sex till marriage, men initiate sex, sex will lead to pregnancy and ruin chances for a better life. It is understandable that parents and teachers would want to prevent adolescents falling pregnant in this community in which teenage pregnancies are prevalent and pursuit of further education is uncommon. Mothers (who are mainly responsible for sex education of children in this community and who often have been adolescent mothers themselves) are especially keen on preventing their daughters following in their footsteps. Their sexuality education, however, tends to consist of warnings about the dire consequences of sex, and leaves their adolescent children without knowledge and realistic guidelines that would enable them to manage their own sexual health (Lesch & Anthony, 2007; Lesch & Kruger, 2005). Other authors also emphasize that abstinence-only sex education often fails to provide adolescents with comprehensive sexual health information and that adolescents who have received such an education often do not use condoms or contraception when they do have sex (e.g., Bruckner & Bearman, 2005). It is therefore critical that the development of alternative positive sexual discourses, specifically discourses that include contraception and protection against sexually transmitted diseases, are encouraged in this particular community.

In contrast to discourses of men as perpetrators of violence and abuse that have been found in other South African studies, the young men in this study were portrayed as caring partners who took responsibility for sexual abstinence in their romantic relationships. Only 2 female participants mentioned male violence. This corresponds with other research findings that men and boys, while performing hegemonic masculinities as they are reproduced and reinforced by cultural discourses of traditional masculinity, also resist behaving as powerful in relation to women (Luyt, 2003; Pattman, 2002, 2005). In line with Bhana and Pattman’s (2009) argument that South African females exercise far more agency in their relationships with men than research has indicated, two of our respondents’ recounted how they resisted violence in their romantic relationships. We find it worrisome, however, that these respondents did not sound particularly agentic and powerful in their resistance and that our participants in general accepted screaming and shouting at each other as normal and acceptable behavior.

In conclusion, we believe that our research has shown the importance of studying adolescent romantic relationships in the specific social contexts in which they occur. We indicated that our participants’ community context did appear to play an important role in their constructions and how they reproduced dominant discourses. Our study has, however, been limited in a number of ways that have already been referred to throughout the study. An important limitation that we have not mentioned previously, is that we would have liked to but could not use couples (due to the unavailability of partners for various reasons) as research units in our study. It is important for future intimacy studies not to rely on individual partners’ constructions of intimacy but to explore how couples co-construct intimacy in their relationships.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

This research was supported by the South African Netherlands Research Program on Alternatives in Development (SANPAD; Grant No. 06/09) and the National Research Foundation (Grant No. 61830).

Author Biographies

Elmien Lesch is a senior lecturer in the Psychology Department, Stellenbosch University. She has an interest in the psychology of close/intimate relationships in different communities in South Africa with the view to develop community-appropriate relationship interventions. She is the project leader of a SANPAD and NRF–funded project: Exploring close relationships in low-income Western Cape communities.

Claire Furphy completed the research requirement for the master’s degree in psychology in this project.

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