Love from afar: transcending distance and difference in age-dissimilar couplings?

Anthropological examinations of romantic love often describe it as immaterial and transcendent, yet simultaneously anchored in materiality. In this paper, I uncover how the concept of transcendence can elucidate studies of cosmopolitanism. Based on interviews with heterosexual, age-dissimilar couples in Australia, I explore shared understandings of relationships, focusing on the dimensions of age, nation, and distance. Interviewees spoke of their relationships as transcending – as well as simultaneously constructing – distance and (age and national) difference. I consider four examples that illuminate these dimensions, interrogating how these are thought to be transcended (or not) by Australian couples. Situating these cases in relation to existing cosmopolitan analyses, and to the anthropology of love, I conclude that further consideration of the notion of transcendence could extend and strengthen research in this field.