This article examines how work towards the promise of love marriage comes to be exhausted. It focuses on young urban women living in Yaoundé, Cameroon, trying to ‘catch’ a husband using digital technologies in which photographs figure prominently. Focusing on the visual production of dating profiles, I show how mobile phones place young women at the centre of their own husband‐catching pursuits. Through digital actions, these young women produce the promise of love marriage, but at the same time their actions require increased volumes of emotional work. As phones constantly compel young women to intensify their husband‐catching efforts and amplify the promise of love marriage, they rarely bring the desired results. Thus, young women, burdened by the emotional work necessary to sustain this promise, experience a form of love burnout, suspend their actions, and delay marriage. In highlighting the emotional laboriousness of intimate relations in technologically mediated worlds, this article draws out the limitations of the way in which the promise of love marriage is circulated and points to how neoliberal economies of affect may be temporarily suspended.

中文翻译：

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爱情倦怠：喀麦隆雅温得的年轻女性、手机和晚婚

本文探讨了实现爱情婚姻承诺的努力是如何耗尽的。它的重点是生活在喀麦隆雅温得的年轻城市女性，她们试图利用以照片为主的数字技术来“抓住”丈夫。我重点关注约会档案的视觉制作，展示了手机如何将年轻女性置于她们追求丈夫的中心。通过数字行动，这些年轻女性做出了爱情婚姻的承诺，但与此同时，她们的行动需要更多的情感工作。由于手机不断迫使年轻女性加大追夫力度，放大爱情婚姻的承诺，但她们很少能带来预期的结果。因此，年轻女性背负着维持这一承诺所必需的情感工作，经历了某种形式的爱情倦怠，暂停了自己的行动，并推迟了婚姻。在强调技术介导的世界中亲密关系的情感费力时，本文指出了爱情婚姻承诺传播方式的局限性，并指出了新自由主义的情感经济如何可能暂时中止。