Understanding Intimacy: Relationships and Development

• Intimacy is a close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with another person or group.
• It is a psychological concept describing feelings from the quality, frequency, or exposure to a physical or emotional relationship with oneself, places, things, and people.
• Intimacy includes sexual relationships with and without emotional closeness.
• Commitment (e.g., marriage) can develop from intimacy, or intimacy may grow out of commitment.
• Commitment can be personal/private, legally recognized (marriage), religious, or linked to expectations/ideals.

Development of Intimacy

• Establishing intimacy is the most important developmental task in young adulthood.
• It involves the ability and freedom to disclose one's innermost self to another.
• Building a relationship foundation is the second developmental task.

Types of Intimate Relationships

• Romantic relationships
• Casual, short-term relationships
• "Hooking up"
• "Friends with benefits"
• Courtship: dating to find a long-term partner
• Cohabitation: alternative to living alone, precursor to marriage, or alternative to marriage
• Marriage
• Relationships can be monogamous, or one/both partners may be polygamous.
• Monogamous: having one mate.
• Polygamous: having more than one mate.
• Polyamorous: having more than one loving, intimate relationship at a time with full consent of everyone involved.
• Polyandrous: more than one husband.
• Polygyny: more than one wife.
• Platonic: intimate and affectionate but not sexual.
• Examples include friendship, siblings, and parent-child relationships.
• Single: celibate, dating and/or sexually active.
• The relationship with yourself is the most exciting, challenging, and significant.

Singlehood

• 26.8% of all households (2006 Census) are single-person households.
• Singlehood can be viewed negatively, e.g. selfish, lonely, immature, unfulfilled.
• Ideologies of marriage and family assume romantic relationships are always beneficial.
• Single lives may offer autonomy, fulfilling career goals, building friendships, and self-development.
• Perceptions of being single may differ by gender and age.

Dating

• In the 19th century, dating was supervised and expected to lead to marriage.
• Today, dating is more common among young people without the assumption of marriage.
• Dating or courtship is still the most common way of beginning a romantic relationship in Canada.

Marital Satisfaction

• Marital satisfaction typically follows a U-shaped trajectory over time.
• Satisfaction tends to decline with the birth of the first child and through the child's development stages.

Gottman's Findings

• Conflict is inevitable in a relationship.
• How couples fight contributes to relationship dissolution.
• Positive affect is the only predictor of marital stability and happiness among stable couples.
• Anger is not necessarily the destructive emotion in marriages.
• Never having fights is not beneficial to a relationship.
• Happy couples have 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative interaction.

Four "Horsemen of Negativity"

• Criticism
• Defensiveness
• Contempt
• Stonewalling (uncooperative; unwilling to discuss or acknowledge something)

Sexuality

• Puritanical: sex only in marriage, to produce children.
• Double standard: men allowed more sexual freedom than women.
• Sex-with-affection: acceptable within committed relationships.
• Sex-for-pleasure: more egalitarian.
• Attitudes toward premarital sex became more permissive from 1950s to 1980s.
• Recent stats suggest that by grade 11:
  • Over half have had oral sex
  • 40% of boys and 46% of girls have had sexual intercourse

Casual Relationships

• Approximately 64-75% of American adolescents have experienced "hooking up" – having sex outside of a dating relationship.
• There are different types of casual sex relationships, such as "friends with benefits".
• This involves an ongoing sexual relationship without romantic commitment.
• Research indicates both positive and negative experiences.

Infidelity

• Anywhere from 25-40% of relationships experience infidelity.
• Men are historically more likely to be unfaithful, but rates are becoming more alike.
• Gay men are more likely than lesbians to have relations outside their relationship.
• Infidelity decreases in long-term unions.
• Peaks for women at 7 years and men at 18 years.

Explore the concept of intimacy in relationships, including its psychological aspects and development. Learn about the various types of intimate relationships, such as romantic, casual, and friends with benefits. Understand the developmental tasks associated with establishing intimacy and building a relationship foundation.