Two heart-shaped pebbles in the sand Copyrighted imageCredit: Andrea Haase | istockphoto.com Looking for more on Enduring Love?

OpenLearn is the home of free learning from The Open University - a place to explore, a place to try and - if you like what you find - a first step towards studying.

Explore

Join us as we explore everything from Asteroids to Zoology on the UK's biggest free learning website. Choose a subject from the left-hand menu - languages, perhaps; natural history or maybe the law and discover insights from our experts - and guest contributors.

Or if you just want to sit back, why not check the details of the latest Open University programmes on TV and radio?

Try

The LearningSpace contains materials from Open University courses. These are materials from the same courses our registered students take – but online and free to the world! With over 500 study units, spread across 12 subject areas, we hope you'll find something that interests you.

Study units can take anything from 1-50 hours to work through and are available from introductory to postgraduate level. Each has clear learning outcomes, and many have activities and sample answers to help you assess your progress. If you don't want to study alone, there are plenty of opportunities to connect with other learners online. Find out more in our Quickstart Guides.

Study

The Open University offers over 570 courses to choose from at many different levels from short and introductory courses, certificates and diplomas to undergraduate, postgraduate and research degrees.

If you want to reap the benefits of being a student at The Open University – including tutorial support and the opportunity to gain a qualification – you can find more information on the Study at the OU website.

Join more than 2 million people, who over the past 40 years, have been inspired to achieve their ambitions and follow their passions with the Open University. We're open to everyone and strive to be accessible to all, whatever your circumstance or ability.

You can study in a flexible way that is designed around you and our innovative learning materials bring learning to life. And what's more, you'll get unrivalled support from your tutor and join our vibrant student community.

Enduring Love

Two heart-shaped pebbles in the sand Copyrighted imageCredit: Andrea Haase | istockphoto.com The Enduring Love? research project is an exciting development in the study of personal and family lives in contemporary Britain. Much recent policy, academic and professional research has focused on the causes and effects of relationship breakdown, but many heterosexual and same sex couples also remain together for significant periods of time. In some ways, then, these couples appear to sit outside a growing tendency towards serial or transitory relationships. To understand more about couples who stay together, our research will focus on the meanings and everyday experiences of long-term relationships. However we will not be presupposing that such relationships are uniformly loving or straightforwardly associated with contentment. The project will rather be concerned with what helps people sustain relationships and how cultural myths, such as finding "the one" and living "happily-ever-after", are understood and reconciled by adult couples whose own relationships may fall short of these romantic ideals.