Phenomenological study of Marital Love before Marriage (Lived Experience of newly married individuals of Isfahan from Encounter to Wedding Moment)

Love has been important as a basis of marriage and mate selection in today’s Iranian society. Therefore this study tries to understand lived experience of marital love before wedding from the perspective of newly married actors by using phenomenological approach. Research subjects include married citizens of Isfahan who are in their early years of common life. Through purposive sampling and in-depth interviews with twenty-four actors data were collected and by using eight stages of phenomenological analysis, based on Butler-Kisber the interviews were analyzed. Data Analysis shows that the lived experience of love before wedding up to exactly the wedding moment, is constructed by a contrast between reason and emotion in three phases including the contrast between “Romanticism” and “realism” before the encounter, and “liking”, “realism” and “sparking moments” after the encounter, which can be generally identified with the theme of “confusion between fear and hope”. The moment of wedding, besides having such a contrast, is also a pivotal moment in the consciousness of actors, and functions as the end point of the confusion; since after the wedding moment their uncertainty reduces to zero and they experience a kind of “emotional transformation”. Therefore the wedding moment signify in change of the lived experience of marital love before marriage.