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THE MOBILE PHONE IN COUPLE'S LIVES Marking out a personal territory or maintaining the link? Is the mobile phone - an object with a high technological value - sufficiently imposing for its uses to be known simply by considering the device itself? Contrary to arguments against new technologies, individuals have resources, including reflexive ones, to use this tool as they wish. This was the hypothesis on which we based our questionnaire survey on adult couples. The results confirm it: the portable phone has a wide variety of uses and functions. Some individuals use it to maintain a strong and virtually constant link with their partner, while others use it to have their own world, outside of the couple. A second hypothesis structured our investigation: the existence of a correlation between the degree of individualized use of the mobile phone and the degree of individualization of each partner in the couple. Data show that couples whose lifestyles and conception of life with a partner are individualistic, are those who use their mobile phones in a highly individual way. Conversely, couples in which the partners are more intensely bound to each other use it as a tool to maintain and reinforce the link. Yet this correlation is not clear-cut, for certain individuals living with a partner have a community-oriented life yet an individualized use of their mobile phone. This article is an attempt to grasp the specific social and cultural characteristics of these different configurations.