‘I feel like I’m yours, but I’m not yours’: Three accounts to interpret an idiosyncratic form of dating and romantic relationship among young female college students in South Korea

This article examines how young female college students interpret their practice of sseom – a stage that precedes a committed romantic relationship – which remains indefinite and idiosyncratic for themselves and others. I analyze 40 in-depth interviews with female college students about their narrations of such romantic relationships, to identify account strategies that young individuals use to explain their participation in the practice. I found three account frames, guardedness, compatibility, and euphoria, that young individuals employ for explaining their engagement in relationships to others. By identifying female students’ accounts of sseom, this study aims to inquire how women talk about their unique period of dating relationships in the uncertainties of a neoliberal economy as well as the expectation to cultivate a distinct sense of self and individual preferences. Moreover, through the contextualization of the Korean case of neoliberal economic restructuring, my categorization of these accounts contributes to bringing social interactionist and cultural sociological insight into the literature on dating and romantic relationships and demonstrates its utility in various realms of social relationships and unpredictable social interactions in the rapidly changing societies.