The end or the revival of love?

Drawing on ethnographic methods, this paper investigates the cultural and emotional dynamics of contemporary Consensual Non-Monogamy (CNM) in relation to late-modern conditions of “the end of love”. It establishes a dialogue between the two fields of sociology of love and non-monogamies studies by asking whether emerging CNM represents the dissolution of romantic commitment in late modernity or an attempt to revive or reanimate love by seeking more of it. Based on multimethod ethnographic research, including interviews, participant observations, focus group discussions and on-line data analysis conducted in Belgium and the Netherlands, it argues that CNM narratives of freedom, sexual desire, consent, care and love simultaneously reflect, facilitate and remedy late-modern precarity and break down of social bonds.