LGBTIQ+ break-up assemblages: At the end of the rainbow

Abstract

This article explores Finnish LGBTIQ+ people’s break-ups. The long battle for equal rights has placed LGBTIQ+ people’s relationships under pressure to succeed. Previous studies argue that partners in LGBTIQ+ relationships try to appear as ordinary and happy as possible, and remain silent about the challenges they face in their relationships. Consequently, they may miss out on opportunities to receive institutional and familial support. This study aims to move beyond recurrent frameworks that take the similarity or difference between LGBTIQ+ relationships/break-ups and mixed-sex relationships as a predefined point of departure. The analysis draws on ethnographic observations of relationship seminars for the recently separated, an online counselling site for LGBTIQ+ people, survey data, and interviews with LGBTIQ+ people who have experienced recent break-ups. It employs the Deleuzo-Guattarian concept of assemblages in order to show how different components and manifold power relations come to matter in different ways in the course of the open-ended becomings of relationship break-ups.