The study of the history of sexuality is dominated currently by a powerful teleology first bestowed by the Victorians and subsequently reinforced by those who would see the past as a singular, unilinear progression from tradition to modernity. All that does not fit neatly into this concept of change is defined as either deviant or anachronistic, in any case of lesser interest because it does not lead to the prescribed future. In this sexual telos the eighteenth century has come to occupy a special place, for it is seen as a turning point, the moment when, to use Lawrence Stone's term, a new “affective individualism” finally pushed aside the ancient obligations to kin and community, permitting men and women for the first time to construct relationships on the basis of personal likes and dislikes. The eighteenth century is perceived as the moment when traditonal arranged marriage gave way to the modern love match, when sexuality was finally domesticated, and when the nuclear family based on companionate marriage became the central focus of social and emotional life.

This conception of the past does not give sufficient recognition to regional and class variations, to the dialectical, as opposed to the evolutionary, features of change. What is more, it attributes too much to the eighteenth century itself. The notion that personal relations in earlier centuries were uniformly cold and calculating has been challenged by numerous recent studies.