Love stories: a narrative look at how couples jointly construct love in romantic relationships

The goal of this thesis was to understand how love in romantic relationships is constituted through the stories couples tell. Two research questions were asked: How do couples co-construct love? And, how do couples narratively define love? The stories were collected through open-ended dyadic interviews with 15 heterosexual couples. Couples ranged in ages and relationship length and some were dating, some were married. Narrative theory was used to understand how couples make sense of their love through the stories they told together.