The present study aims to identify and analyze the interpretative repertoires on love and intimate relationships used by wife batterers, exploring how the repertoires may influence the development and experience of violent intimate relationships, and how this is linked to the identity issues. Twelve wife batterers participated in the study, answering to an individual interview on their lives’ love story. Through a discourse analysis of the data, five distinct interpretative repertoires were identified—romantic, companion, passionate, pragmatic and game-playing love—and their meaning construction was analyzed. It is discussed what repertoires reveal about gender roles prescribed by the model of masculinity, and how these gender roles constrain the construction of the identity, the personal growth and the self-actualization of the batterers.
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