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Katie and her boyfriend Alex had been together for eight months to the day when I first interviewed her. Katie was vivacious, smiley and forthcoming. She said that Alex would be talking to me, but would be coming with a friend because “he doesn't like talking about his feelings […] typical boys!” I interviewed Alex a few weeks later with his friend Steve. He was, indeed, less forthcoming than she (and than Steve). Alex was witty and laconic. As we saw in the previous chapter, both Katie and Alex placed themselves as somewhere in the second circle when it came to “popularity” at school. Like Christina and Matt, they were drawn on by other participants as an exemplar of a close relationship.

The two had been friends before starting the relationship. Alex’s account of why he was attracted to Katie, tempered initially by some laughter and awkwardness

155 between him, Steve and myself, spoke to the regard he showed for her – “She’s quite good- looking. We get on really well, she’s really smart, really funny, it’s never awkward”. Katie’s account of the start of their relationship echoed some of the themes that Christina talked about, with similar ambivalence and uncertainty:

Katie: we were at a party, and I hadn't seen him all week cos he'd been, he was really upset with me because he'd <mock-serious tone> proclaimed his love to me, and I'd completely knocked him down and said oh no, I don't want to, but anyway a week later I'd really missed him cos he hadn't talked to me all week and he, not answered my calls and I said, I'm really sorry, I think I'm ready to have a relationship.

Several girls seemed to display a caution and hesitation when it came to entering into relationships, mediated by an uncertainty about their own attractions to men before they discovered the men’s attractions to them. As I argued above, this hesitation and ambivalence is particularly important to take into account when understanding young women's relationships to their own bodies and sexualities, and it relates to wider theorization of girls' and women's hesitant relationship with their own bodies, as discussed in chapter two (Young 1980).

In the joint interview, however, the relationship's origin story was expanded upon and told slightly differently, in a way that highlighted Katie’s assertiveness within the relationship.

Katie: and it was awkward but then we got over that after Christmas really, when you plucked up the courage to ask me out, well I rang him up and was like “Ask me out, now!”

The discrepancy between these two accounts is interesting, as Katie foregrounds her hesitation and uncertainty in the individual interview account, as against her active assertion of her wishes in the couple interview account. The narrative she and he constructed together of their relationship was one whereby she was the active decisionmaker, planner and motivator of the pair, and the account in the couple interview of their beginning helps to build this up. As we shall see later in this chapter and through the next, though, this narrative obscured some of the power that Alex's emotions and desires held over the relationship and Katie's actions. Katie and

156 Alex were very close, but again, negotiated various problems and anxieties. Perhaps the most significant coalesced around Alex’s relationship with a female friend.

“She obviously thinks she owns him”: jealousy and rivalry

We met Natalie in the last chapter: blonde, self-assured, attractive and popular. She had been very good friends with Alex for a long time, and their families were close. Katie was extremely unhappy with Alex’s intimate friendship with Natalie. Natalie and Rachel (who was Katie’s best friend) talked fairly extensively about Katie and Alex, some of which I go into further below. But in keeping with the ostentatious performance of “niceness” that Natalie displayed throughout her interview – often backtracking after making seemingly- negative comments about anybody – she maintained that Katie was “generally like a really lovely person”, despite some comments which might be read as critical and undermining of Katie and Alex’s relationships (of course, I could not say how she would have spoken if I had not been interviewing her with Katie’s best friend). In contrast, Katie was very outspoken about how much she disliked Natalie. She tempered her outspoken hostility to some extent when I later talked to her and Alex together, but still made her feelings clear. Katie’s jealousy of Natalie and her relationship with Alex had many facets. She described Natalie as possessing many of the prizes of successful heterofemininity: “she's very very rich”, “she’s very pretty, she’s a model”, “she's very good- looking, she's perfect, skinny”. These all intertwined with her close relationship with Alex’s family, and related to Katie’s own subject positions. Alex, discussing Katie’s feelings about Natalie in his interview with Steve, played up the bodily aspect of Katie’s insecurity, referring to a recent incident where he had lifted Natalie up onto his shoulders:

Alex: I’ve got this friend who’s really little […] I put her on my shoulders, and Katie was upset cos she thinks, like, she’s too big.

Katie only mentioned Natalie’s size once, although as quoted above, it did appear in the context of an explanation of why she was “perfect”. This could indicate that Alex was choosing to focus on the aspects of Katie’s jealousy that could be easily

157 attributed to her individualised (and archetypally feminine) insecurities, as opposed to the relationship between himself and Natalie. Of course, it could also suggest that Katie was unwilling to talk about her bodily anxieties to me, or merely that the recent incident in question had spotlighted this particular aspect.

Natalie’s attractiveness, then, worried Katie: she felt that the relationship between her and Alex was precariously close. She said that Natalie maintained they were only friends, and like brother and sister, but that this was disingenuous, because of the “sexual” way that she acted with him.

Katie: I know what Natalie’s like, she's very – sexual

[later in the interview:] She's a very hard person to get on with when you're a boy [NH: really?] cos she'll be all over you, like I've been there when she's just put his hands, her hands up his top, and just started feeling him, like been 'Oh, muscles!' and she'll be like 'oh lovely'

Katie viewed Natalie’s sexuality as dangerous, deceitful and manipulative, and the vast majority of her talk about Natalie’s relationship with Alex revolved around Natalie’s actions and attitudes. This is understandable in the context of a

relationship, where she wants to believe in and argue for Alex's propriety and loyalty to her. However, it also resonates with a wider tendency for hostility towards girls and women, rather than boys and men, in situations of “inappropriate” sexual relations, and the double standard of denigrating women for their “excessive ” sexuality, as discussed in the previous chapter (Chambers et al. 2004a).

The shape of her jealousy spoke to a view of Alex’s masculinity as helpless in the face of feminine sexual power:

Katie: um, I don't think that he can reaaally resist to be honest, when she, you know…

This representation resonates with the discourse of the male sex drive as irrepressible (Hollway 1984a), as I discussed in chapter two, and will go into further in chapter six. Natalie had once kissed Alex at a party and invited him to have a threesome in a shed with another girl, “and I was standing there like, I know we've only been going

158 out two months, but –”. She said, though, that Alex dismissed her worries about this – “cos he says that it’s only a joke, it’s only funny”. This was spoken in a weary tone of resignation – indeed, she seemed resigned to the problems in general, not

expecting Alex to do anything to assuage her feelings. As she said after trying to articulate all the reasons she shouldn’t be worried:

Katie: I don't really, I can't really have that much of a problem about it because it's fine

Her re- framing of “don’t” to “can’t” seems to reflect her subjective experience of being immobilised, unable to change anything about the situation.

Katie’s feelings about Natalie, and about her relationship with Alex and his family, also played into anxieties around class fractions, which I discuss in detail in chapter seven. Natalie and Alex's families were close, which was a source of discomfort for Katie. Natalie, her mother, Alex’s mother and several of Alex’s (step)sisters were portrayed as being close friends, passing gossip and rumours between them – and in this way transgressions that would normally be kept within the younger generation and the school social circle could spill out to wider audiences. Katie viewed these other women in Alex’s life as causes of many of the problems between them, and as a very significant factor keeping Alex from breaking away from his friendship with Natalie.

NH: So I mean he's obviously not willing to, give [Katie: no] to change anything about his relationship with [Natalie]

Katie: Er, she's a very scary girl, she gets very angry, she is very bitchy, she can really hurt somebody and she would definitely hurt Alex, because Texas, who's Alex’s big sister [NH: right], the druggie, the one who's living with her boyfriend in the house, um, is also Natalie’s good friend, they would both turn against Alex, and both hurt, like really abuse him about stuff like me and say horrible things about me, they have done before, um, and then he, so he can't be in a fight with her, he's got to keep her on his good side, that's what he's said to me.

Here again we see Katie downplaying Alex’s capacity for choice in this web of relationships, positioning him as a victim and as constrained by circumstance. In this case, though, she also sees acquiescence to the status quo as necessary for her own

159 self-preservation: Natalie and Texas would not only hurt Alex, but hurt Katie by extension. In both her interview and Alex’s, it seemed that this was not an

unreasonable assumption to make. Although Natalie and Katie were superficially reconciled at the time we spoke, Katie said that when they were fighting, Natalie had been very vicious:

Katie: she'd, people would mention me in a class and she'd say 'what a dog' and 'she's such a slag, she's such a bitch, [NH: yeah] she's messing Alex about'.

Alex was more circumspect in his interview with Steve, presenting the two as fairly reconciled and downplaying the conflict a little, although he recognised their lack of mutual admiration:

Alex: They're alright like, they're quite good friends but I think it's mostly fake, I don't think they really like each other that much

He admitted that sometimes Natalie could be hostile, saying “Sometimes Natalie does say stuff that's really against Katie and I will stick up for her, say you can't say that, but she's alright most of the time”. In my interview with both of them, they told stories together about Natalie, although Katie took the lead. Alex sometimes

demurred from her assertions, but also put forth his own points criticising Natalie: “I think she just makes up a lot of stuff before she tells it to Texas”. Having something in common with Christina’s portrayal of Matt, Alex seemed often to work to avoid conflict (this was true in both his own and Katie’s individual accounts, and

observable in the paired interview).

This section, then, has served as a detailed illustration of how one intimate

relationship intersected with other networks and people “outside” the relationship. While Alex's close relationship with Natalie, and/or Katie's jealousy, could be regarded as obstacles to the smooth running of the relationship, they are evidence of how young partners' heterosexual subjectivities were negotiated not within the intimate relationship, but were constructed in relation to others, and intertwined with other relationships. The strength and intensity of Katie's emotion towards Natalie is

160 also notable: acute feelings of homosocial enmity seem more speakable than acute feelings of heterosexual intimacy.

“He doesn’t like talking, it’s hard for him”: conflict and control

Alex and Katie had a close, open and comfortable relationship. Interviewing them together, they were at ease in conversation and physically, sitting close to each other on one sofa, sometimes touching, but casually. They spoke of their relationship as mature and positive.

Alex: I think that we’re, like, we’re sort of better than every other couple – well, it’s true! It’s just it’s never awkward, there’s always something to talk about even if there isn’t, we don’t need to talk, we don’t feel the need to fill that gap of silence

They often teased each other during the interview and spoke about this teasing as a staple of their relationship, which for the most part was enjoyable although

occasionally caused misunderstandings, usually when Katie thought Alex was being serious. Within the relationship, she spoke of herself as someone who was very open and honest and wanted to air problems when they arose (consonant with the image of their relationship set out above in relation to their origin). In contrast, she felt that Alex was unwilling to engage in arguments. This, she said, often led to arguments that were “one-sided”:

Alex: You always do that after arguments – Katie: – We’d just had a massive argument –

Alex: <mimics Katie> So, what are you thinking, Lexy? <they laugh> Katie: well, it’s because -

Alex: <stubborn tone> Well I’m watching Friends, so I’m thinking about Friends

Katie: Well, we weren’t watching Friends at that point earlier, I said, what are you thinking and you were like, “Nothing”, cos I always think, I say I talk about what’s upsetting me, and then he ’ll not say anything, and then I’m like, I don’t know what to say, it really annoys me cos I really wish you could say what you’re thinking, you must be thinking something, you’re just not very good at telling me

These arguments, then, could progress from being less about the issues they began with, which would begin with Katie raising something, and become more about the

161 state of communication between them. She found it especially irritating that Alex usually refused to apologise or engage, and often dismissed issues that she raised as being jokes: “and I get really angry, cos he says he’s joking, but I say well that’s just not funny” (couple interview), and this often resulted in her “giving up ” arguing although she felt the issue had not been resolved. But, she said, there were other times that the arguments lasted longer: “You never really get angry with me – oh no, you do. Those arguments have lasted overnight.”

In narrating the relationship, they spoke of Katie as the one who got angry and Alex as the one who was more at ease with situations. Clearly, though, there were times when Alex did get angry. In contrast to the light- hearted discussion around Katie’s issues, in which they seemed to work together on reproducing the mythology of their relationship, talk of these past events brought up some tension in the interview. In relation to “those arguments” referenced above:

Alex: Yeah, those arguments, yeah. But they’re – Katie: – they’re what?

Alex: They’re proper arguments […]

Katie: wait, so what, you’re saying the things that I get upset about are pointless, but the things that you get upset about –

Alex: I don’t really get upset about stuff. <Pause>

Katie: Really? Alex: Not really. Katie: I think you do. <Pause>

Katie: Okay! You get upset about stuff. Alex: I do kinda.

Katie here is not happy that Alex elevates “his” arguments above “hers”, and tries to put them on a more equal footing, but Alex tries to maintain the roles that they play, arguing that he doesn’t “get upset”. Katie inhabits the emotio nal role, and so, if he does not take her problems seriously, he is unwilling to inhabit a similar role, which would imply that the issues which cause “proper arguments” are, similarly, a product of his emotional (over)reactions. When Alex is “upset” (a term he never wholly accepts, but one which Katie imposes on him), he “just hides it and goes all funny and silent”.

162 These less-spoken tensions between them influenced aspects of Katie’s life that she did not talk about in the paired interview, but did in her (earlier) individual

interview. Given the oft-rehearsed narrative of their roles, whereby she was emotional and he was not, his anger was disruptive and frightening:

Katie: Yeah, but when he is angry that’s the scariest bit, cos he’s never angry, he's always, everything’s always a little bit of a joke [NH: OK] and he's always making the jokes – even when I'm upset, he'll make jokes and er and that'll make me more angry, but when he is angry, that’s a really scary time, when he's, when I've managed to make him that angry.

The locus of responsibility shifts in her description; she seems uncomfortable with placing the responsibility for her fear solely on him, so she shifts from talking just about his anger to recalling that she “made him” angry. This is reminiscent of the emotion work we explored in relation to Christina's case; Katie is taking on responsibility for Alex's anger.

His anger usually focussed on other boys. When he was away on holiday, she said, “I'll go with my friends to parties [NH: yeah] and that's when he gets annoyed because I'm with other boys ”. She said she knew she had to remain faithful to Alex, so she didn’t drink too much, and when I asked if she thought she would remain faithful even if she was drinking, she told me about a time that a “really close friend ” of hers had kissed her when she was asleep:

Katie: Yeah I think guys get quite confident when they’re drunk so, I have actually, when I’ve been with Alex I’ve been kissed by somebody [NH: really?] and um, I was actually asleep at the time

But this non-consensual encounter had led to serious repercussions within her relationship.

Katie: I had to tell Alex, I can’t lie to him [NH: sure] but he was – very upset, but I convinced him I didn’t cheat on him [NH: yeah] and that he'd rather know than not know, and I said that it would never happen again, I guess I’ll just have to be quite careful not to fall asleep near any guys! [NH: yeah! Absolutely] And, but obviously he will use that against me now, every argument [NH: really?] we ha ve he’ll be like, but you cheated on me, even though I didn’t, I fell asleep on the floor […] not provocative at all

163 While she was clearly angry and distressed that her friend had done this to her, and