Patterns of recreation, dress, and taste in matters such as music or food characterized young people more or less independently of ethnic or class background. Certainly we have some evidence that that is the case. We might consider the lifestyle enclave an appropriate form of collective support in an otherwise radically individualizing society. Or, to put it somewhat differently, since the purpose of individuation has always been linked to the ability to find others who reflect and affirm one's selfhood, perhaps the lifestyle enclave is the necessary social form of private life in a society such as ours. Although lifestyle enclaves may be most obvious in large cities, where groups of people have little in common except the way they spend their leisure time, many aspects of American life today can be viewed as incipient lifestyle enclaves.
Romantic love is a quintessential form of expressive individualism.
When it becomes not only the basis for the choice of a life partner but the condition for the continuation of a marriage, it tends to make of marriage itself a lifestyle enclave. The civic tradition also has provided important resources for thinking about human relationships in the United States. The very status of citizen provides a concept of rights and duties, of mutual respect and obligation, that in a variety of contexts has been decisive for how Americans relate to one another. They value the associations and friendships that flow from these activities, but they do not understand the moral meaning that was once given to such relationships very well today. Friends must enjoy one another's company, they must be useful to one another, and they must share a common commitment to the good.