WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A FEMINIST FALLS IN LOVE? ROMANTIC IDEALS AND FEMINIST IDENTITY.

This study sought to discover if feminists have different romantic relationship ideals than women who choose not to assume such an identity. Downing and Roush’s (1985) feminist identity model and the Feminist Identity Composite created by Fisher et al. (2000) were used to determine the identity of each woman. After determining the females ’ identity placement, the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) was used to discover the romantic relationship ideals of each group of women, which ultimately lead to the creation of a concept map utilized to compare the groups. The similarities and differences concerning the romantic relationship ideals of each group of women were reviewed from the perspectives of both Fitzpatrick’s typologies and relational dialectics. The participants ’ views on romantic relationship ideals through the lens of Fitzpatrick’s typologies found feminists most like independents, and non-feminists most like Fitzpatrick’s independents. The dialectics of autonomy-connectedness, predictability-novelty, openness-closeness are discussed for each group