Transformations in Feminine Experience of Love and Marriage: An Ethnographic Study on Urban Educated Employed Women in Tehran

This article tries to understand the impacts of love on marriage. The method of the study was ethnography. Data was collected in 11 years (2004-2015) based on unstructured interviews and obserwation (with cooperation of 46 volunteer women) was collected. Sampling was purposive based on age, education, employment and etc. The research findings showed that love is a serious demand among younger women, but in older women love was not a goal but marriage had a very important situation. Based on existence of love between couples, we can distinguish three kinds of marriage including 1- Traditional marriage, 2-Selective rational marriage and 3- Romantic marriage. There are three kinds of dual concepts which bring thension in romantic marrage. These concepts are traditional love vs modern relationshipsm, lover vs husband, beloved women vs wife and beloved woman vs woman as lover. Love after marriage had not observed as a critical aspect of traditional marriage and selective rational marriage. Selective and arranged marriage nesserily have not produced love after marriage.