Defining Intimacy

[differenceblog]

"Everyone knows" that men are either bad at intimacy (e.g. AZ Republic 2005), or define intimacy so much differently than women that it's not even the same concept (Elmore 2004). Salas and Ketzenberger (2004) found significant gender differences on average self-reported intimacy in same-sex relationships, but not in romantic relationships. Fehr (

Comments

[astrogeek01]

I don't usually think of friendships as "intimate" or about intimacy in friendships. Dunno why.

I find that right now I have more close women friends than I ever have had before. I think it's in part because my officemates are both women, plus I've got enough outside interests that draw the ones who care about things other than lookin' pretty (when you're sweating on the aikido mat, you don't look all that pretty. dangerous, maybe, but not pretty ;) that I tend to meet more women with my values/interests... up until now most (but not all of course) of my close friends have been men. Hmm, maybe I should plot #of close women friends as a function of time... lol. Of course as time goes on I collect more of them, right...so maybe it would have to be a ratio w/ the # of close men friends....

Or maybe I just need more sleep.

[differenceblog]

You're not alone in leaving the intimacy component out of friendships. The use of the word "intimacy" in discussing non-romantic relationships seems to be limited to papers in the last 10-15 years. In papers before 1970, the word was used strictly for a sexual euphemism, as far as I was able to tell.

[kbreen]

Although does that mean that things have changed in how psychology views friendships, or is it just how a word is used?

[differenceblog]

I'm not sure. I was hoping to find a pattern, but the change in terminology made that something that's going to take a longer investigation.

[7kim_moon]

"Everyone knows" that men are either bad at intimacy (e.g. AZ Republic 2005), or define intimacy so much differently than women that it's not even the same concept (Elmore 2004).If you define "aggression" in terms of physical confrontation, the conclusion is inevitable that men are far more aggressive than women are, but this begs the question: is "aggression" being defined in terms of masculine expressions of aggression? Certainly there are feminine expressions of aggression; anyone who has been through high school or college with eyes open knows how viciously and cruelly women can manipulate social networks and use malicious gossip, shunning, and belittlement to seek to hurt others. But the physical-confrontation sense overwhelms this more complete picture, and so we have a circularity: aggression is defined in terms of masculine expressions of aggression, and so the conclusion that men are more aggressive than women is inevitable

[differenceblog]

oh that's certainly an issue. See the posts on aggression for discussion of that definition.