“Hold My Hand When No One’s Looking”: Transforming Love Concepts During Marriage and Divorce

Love is a concept that is experienced and expressed differently across sociocultural contexts. Its experience also changes over the life time, during life events such as marriage, relationships, and divorce and in specific social and cultural contexts. This study explores love and how it changes during socioculturally influenced selected life events from the perspective of three Gen X South African Indian women. Using a qualitative research methodology, the study gives a voice to these women by presenting vignettes of their experiences of love, marriage, and divorce during their lives. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed through thematic analysis. Qualitative quality criteria were applied. Findings show that love concepts transform over the lifetime, being strongly influenced by life events such as arranged and love marriages, new relationships, and divorce, but also by individual developments and transformations within and beyond sociocultural boundaries. Conclusions are drawn and recommendations for future research and practice are given.