Love From Afar: Transcending Distance and Difference in Age-Dissimilar Couplings?

Abstract

When undertaking research into heterosexual, age-dissimilar relationships in Australia, I was surprised by the high proportion of couples who had begun or developed their relationships from a distance, or were living in distance relationships. These couples’ circumstances varied: some were in inter-cultural couplings, often involving older, white Australian men and younger, Southeast Asian women; some had met while travelling overseas; and others lived in different locations across Australia. Based on interviews, this paper explores couples’ shared understandings of their relationships, focusing on the dimensions of age, nation, and distance. Interviewees spoke of their relationships as transcending—as well as simultaneously constructing—distance and (age and national) difference. Yet while anthropological analyses of cosmopolitanism have frequently explored distance and difference, the notion of transcendence has received little attention. I argue that transcendence is and should be considered central to analyses of cosmopolitan coupledom, as well as to the anthropology of love.