Sociology’s interest in emotions dates back to the earliest days of the discipline (Cuin 2001; Roux 2016). However, since the 1980s, how individuals express emotions has been considered from a more personal perspective, with a greater focus on the relationship between emotions and gender in particular. Arlie Hochschild, known for her theorization of “emotional labor” (1983), helped pioneer this interest in emotions and how they affect intimacy. Her concept is defined as the way individuals work on their emotions to ensure they correspond to those expected from them in a particular social situation. Hochschild’s work, like that of most of the male and female researchers who came after her, focused on how a capitalist system (especially in a climate of economic tertiarization) implies, and therefore expects, such emotional labor from employees—particularly women. Her work paved the way for later study (Wharton 2011). In France, the notion of “emotional labor” has been used primarily since the end of the 2000s to further knowledge of professions as diverse as receptionists (Schütz 2018), police officers (Mainsant 2021), telemedicine assistants (Mathieu-Fritz 2021), undertakers (Bernard 2008), and hairdressers (Desprat 2015).
However, little research has been conducted into how emotions are mobilized, organized, and shaped in a private context, and even less consideration has been given to intimate settings such as “ordinary,” “commonplace” sexual activity. These terms should not be seen as pejorative, suggesting a lack of originality…