Chapter 1

The Nature of Intimacy

• Intimate partners possess in-depth personal and confidential knowledge about each other
• Intimate partners share histories, desires, and feelings not revealed to most
• The lives of intimate partners are intertwined
• Actions of one partner affect the other's desires and actions
• Interdependence is the degree of influence and need intimate partners have on each other. This is frequent, strong, diverse and enduring
• Qualities that make close ties tolerable include caring, trust and responsiveness
• Feeling that a partner recognizes, understands, and supports is a core ingredient for the best relationships
• Close ties have mutuality with partners recognizing their connection, thinking of themselves as "us"
• Intimate partners are committed with an expectation for the partnership to continue indefinitely
• Intimate partners invest time, effort, and resources needed to achieve their goals

Inclusion of Others in the Self (IOS) Scale

• IOS is a psychological scale measuring perceived closeness between individuals
• Typically used in the context of relationships
• The scale quantifies how people perceive their relationships with significant others like romantic partners, friends, and family
• The IOS scale helps to investigate relationship closeness, intimacy, and relationship quality impact on psychological outcomes
• The scale has Venn-like diagrams of pairs of circles with varying degrees of overlap
• An individual chooses the diagram representing their relationship with another person
• One circle in the diagram represents the self
• The other circle represents the significant other
• Greater circle overlap signifies a greater sense of inclusion and connection

The Need to Belong

• Humans need to belong in close relationships
• Problems arise if this need is unmet
• A drive exists to establish and maintain close relationships with interaction and communication with those that care
• Quality is more important than quantity in relationships
• People in close connection with others are generally live happier, healthier, and longer lives
• Holding a partner's hand reduces the brain's alarm in threatening situations
• Pain reduces when looking at pictures of a partner
• Wounds heal faster when support from others is received
• Those without intimacy have higher risks of health problems, weaker immune systems and psychological problems
• Elderly people have higher mortality rates after the loss of a spouse
• Divorce increases the risk of early death
• Fulfilling the need to belong is a matter of life and death
• Well-being depends on satisfying the need to belong
• Close connection with others is vital to survival

Heart Failure Study

• Coyne et al. conducted a Heart-Failure study on male heart attack patients
• The study explored marriage quality and its affects on recovery
• The study tracked patient survival rates over a four-year period
• Results showed 70% survival rate for men in happy marriages
• Results showed 45% survival rate for men in unhappy marriages
• Marriage happiness correlates to health outcomes and recovery

Evolutionary Basis

• The need to belong originated in early humans
• Loners were less likely to reproduce in a difficult environment
• The tendency to form connections was evolutionary adaptive
• Stable and affectionate connections increased the likelihood of children surviving and thriving
• Human beings need social connections like oxygen, food, and water

Bowlby's Attachment Theory

• Bowlby's Theory explains how early caregiver relationships shape lifelong emotional and relational patterns
• Attachment styles reflect how people connect with others, especially in intimate relationships

Secure Attachment

• Secure attachment means comfort with intimacy, trusting others, with dependency
• Confident in relationships, can seek and provide support

Ambivalent/Anxious Attachment

• Ambivalent/anxious attachment involves fear of abandonment, high insecurity, and need for reassurance
• Behavior includes clinging, being overly dependent, and anxieties about the stability of the relationship for constant attention

Avoidant Attachment

• Avoidant attachment includes difficulty with intimacy, self-reliance, and emotional distance
• Behavior is avoiding closeness, suppressing feelings, and difficulty trusting or depending on others
• These styles influence how individuals manage emotional connections and relationship dynamics
• Kim Bartholomew proposed four attachment styles in adults

Secure Style (Adults)

• It's easy to become emotionally close, comfortable with depending on others, and can be independent

Preoccupied Style (Adults)

• Characterized by a desire for complete emotional intimacy, yet finding others reluctant to get as close
• Uncomfortable without close relationships but worries about not being valued

Fearful Style (Adults)

• People that avoid intimacy due to fears of rejection
• Uncomfortable with closeness, finds it hard to trust others, and dependent due to fear of being hurt

Dismissing Style (Adults)

• Thinks intimacy is not worth the trouble
• Important to feel independent and self-sufficient, prefers not to depend on others

Attachment Themes

• Underlying themes include avoidance of intimacy and anxiety about abandonment
• These themes and attachment styles exist on a continuum, changing over time based on interpersonal experiences

Self-Esteem

• Self-esteem comes from self-evaluation
• Favorable judgements result in high self-esteem
• Doubting oneself results in low self-esteem
• Those with higher self-esteem are happier

Sociometer Theory

• Self-esteem is a subjective gauge of relationship quality with others
• Self-esteem acts like an internal monitor measuring how valued and accepted one feels by others
• High self-esteem is related to stronger relationships and feeling accepted
• Low self-esteem comes from perceived rejection or social exclusion
• Social connections and status influence self-worth

Self-Esteem in Social Context

• The sociometer serves the need to belong
• Self-esteem tracks how well one is doing socially
• Low self-esteem makes one find it hard to believe they are loved, undermining optimism about the relationship
• Relationship sabotage may occur when the the partners' love is underestimated
• Those with low self-esteem tend to overreact
• High self-esteem results in feeling confident about partner's love and regard
• Those with low self-esteem withdraw to protect themselves when things go wrong

Sexual Selection, Reproductiveness, and Adaptive Value

• Natural selection is when traits improve survival and reproduction in a specific environment
• Sexual selection, coined by Charles Darwin, happens when traits increase chances of attracting a mate/reproducing
• Traits for success with sexual selection are not always beneficial for survival

Intersexual Selection

• Intersexual selection is when one sex displays preferences for certain traits in the opposite sex
• This can involve colorful plumage, shows of strength, good genes, and suitability as a mate

Intrasexual Selection

• Intrasexual selection happens when there is competition among individuals of the same sex for access to mates
• Physical contests, dominance, or other behaviors are used to outcompete rivals

Evolution

• The key to evolution is reproduction and not survival of the fittest.
• Adaptive value is a trait that increases an organism’s chances of surviving and reproducing in its specific environment
• Traits with a high adaptive value are more likely to be passed on
• Survival and reproduction improve an organism's fitness
• Evolutionary psychology suggests that men and women differ according to reproductive dilemmas faced
• A man can have sex with 100 different women and create 100 children, whilst, women has one child.
• Parental investment is the time, energy, and resources one must provide to one's offspring to reproduce
• Women choosing mates selectively can reproduce successfully
• Men having more sex may reproduce more successfully
• Women choose sexual partners carefully, choosing smarter, prestigious and more stable partners
• Women are less interested than men in casual, uncommitted sex
• Men have paternity uncertainty, and cannot be certain children are their own
• Women know for sure if a child is theirs
• Men are more preoccupied with their partner's infidelity than women.
• Evolutionary perspective distinguishes between long and short-term mating strategies
• Men prefer brief affairs; ready to have sex sooner
• Men value physically attractive, young women for long-term
• Women focus more on parental investment for long-term, sexy and alpha for short-term
• We are social species that need each other
• Relationships are complex and essential

Main Points

• Intimate relationships involve: knowledge, interdependence, caring, trust, responsiveness, mutuality, and commitment
• Humans maintain regular interaction with intimate partners and suffer the consequences when this need is not fulfilled
• Cultural norms around relationships, economics, individualism all influence relationships
• Children's interactions with their caregivers produce secure, preoccupied, fearful, which influence relationships throughout life
• Men are dominant, women expressive, but a third are androgynous
• Individual differences are usually subtle
• Stable traits are openness, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness
• Self-esteem comes from interactions with others that shapes intimacy
• Lesbians and gays often experience more equality, and better communication in intimacy
• Cultural norms influence inherited habits