Viewpoints Regarding Marital Relationships among Middle Class Married Women Living in Tehran (2018-2019)

In the current historical period, understanding sexual relationships is not possible, unless they are contemplated upon through the history of  the formation of modern society, the alteration of the concept of love, relationship and intimacy. Thus, the present paper seeks to answer the following question: how do Tehran middle class women as modern women understand their sexual relationship with their spouses, and how do they define it? The concepts of Giddens’ pure relationship, Bauman’s liquid love, and Foucault’s sexuality history were used to explain the data. In-depth interviews were conducted with 28 middle class women of Tehran in 2018-2019, and the requirements were the age limit of 45 and having been married for at least five years. The results showed that the women define the sexual relationship with their husbands as female marital duties, dealing with spouses, an opportunity to control their spouses, a way to secure marital life, and mutual intimacy and pleasure. The constrains of meeting this desire were male sexual dysfunctions, the husbands’ lack of knowledge regarding proper sexual relationships, feeling frustrated in the relationship due to early marriages, lack of verbal communication, and the husbands’ extramarital relationships. Women’s compensation mechanisms include financial compensation, and extra-marital relations.