Manifesting maturity: Gendered sexual intimacy and becoming an adult

Abstract

In this article, I explore how 28 class-advantaged, young “emerging” adult women and men in the USA utilize understandings of their own intimate lives to make sense of themselves as adults in progress. Young adults who envision normative relationship futures (monogamous marriage) use a cultural story of coming to realize the importance of emotional monogamy over sex in order to make sense of themselves as becoming mature (getting closer to marriage). However, women’s accounts reveal difficulty in the implementation of this dominant understanding in their own lives. Since women are always expected to be naturally emotional, regardless of age or personal preferences, realizing the importance of emotions in relationships does not apply well to their experiences. In an attempt to reconcile the conflict between gender and the dominant cultural story, women simultaneously police other women’s sexual activity and frame their own casual sex experiences in emotional terms. Dominant understandings of coming to maturity through realizing the importance of emotions work best for men only, leaving questions as to how women might make sense of themselves as mature (or not) through their relationships.