Intimate relationship

Intimate relationships involve emotional or physical closeness.

"Intimacy" redirects here. For other uses, see Intimacy (disambiguation).

"Sexual relationship" redirects here. For sexual relationships between non-human animals, see Mating system.

An intimate relationship is an interpersonal relationship that involves emotional or physical closeness between people and may include sexual intimacy and feelings of romance or love. Intimate relationships are interdependent, and the members of the relationship mutually influence each other. The quality and nature of the relationship depends on the interactions between individuals, and is derived from the unique context and history that builds between people over time. Social and legal institutions such as marriage acknowledge and uphold intimate relationships between people. However, intimate relationships are not necessarily monogamous or sexual, and there is wide social and cultural variability in the norms and practices of intimacy between people. The course of an intimate relationship includes a formation period prompted by interpersonal attraction and a growing sense of closeness and familiarity. Intimate relationships evolve over time as they are maintained, and members of the relationship become more invested in and committed to the relationship. Healthy intimate relationships are beneficial for psychological and physical well-being and contribute to overall happiness in life. However, challenges including relationship conflict, external stressors, insecurity, and jealousy can disrupt the relationship and lead to distress and relationship dissolution.

Intimacy

Intimacy is the feeling of being in close, personal association with another person.Emotional intimacy is built through self-disclosure and responsive communication between people, and is critical for healthy psychological development and mental health. Emotional intimacy produces feelings reciprocal trust, validation, vulnerability, and closeness between individuals. Physical intimacy—including holding hands, hugging, kissing, and sex—promotes connection between people and is often a key component of romantic intimate relationships. Physical touch is correlated with relationship satisfaction and feelings of love. While many intimate relationships include a physical or sexual component, the potential to be sexual is not a requirement for the relationship to be intimate. For example, a queerplatonic relationship is a non-romantic intimate relationship that involves commitment and closeness beyond that of a friendship.

Among scholars, the definition of an intimate relationship is diverse and evolving. Some reserve the term for romantic relationships, while other scholars include friendship and familial relationships. In general, an intimate relationship is an interpersonal relationship in which physically or emotionally intimate experiences occur repeatedly over time.

Course of intimate relationships

Formation

Attraction

Interpersonal attraction is the foundation of first impressions between potential intimate partners. Relationship scientists suggest that the romantic spark, or "chemistry," that occurs between people is a combination of physical attraction, personal qualities, and a build-up of positive interactions between people. Researchers find physical attractiveness to be the largest predictor of initial attraction. From an evolutionary perspective, this may be because people search for a partner (or potential mate) who displays indicators of good physical health. Yet, there is also evidence that couples in committed intimate relationships tend to match each other in physical attractiveness, and are rated as similarly physically attractive by both the members of the couple and by outside observers. An individual's perception of their own attractiveness may therefore influence who they see as a realistic partner.

Beyond physical appearance, people report desirable qualities they look for in a partner such as trustworthiness, warmth, and loyalty. However, these romantic ideals are not necessarily good predictors of actual attraction or relationship success. Research has found little evidence for the success of matching potential partners based on personality traits, suggesting that romantic chemistry involves more than compatibility of traits. Rather, repeated positive interactions between people and reciprocity of romantic interest seem to be key components in attraction and relationship formation. Reciprocal liking is most meaningful when it is displayed by someone who is selective about who they show liking to.

Initiation strategies

When potential intimate partners are getting to know each other, they employ a variety of strategies to increase closeness and gain information about whether the other person is a desirable partner. Self-disclosure, the process of revealing information about yourself, is a crucial aspect of building intimacy between people. Feelings of intimacy increase when a conversation partner is perceived as responsive and reciprocates self-disclosure, and people tend to like others who disclose emotional information to them. Other strategies used in the relationship formation stage include humor, initiating physical touch, and signaling availability and interest through eye contact, flirtatious body language, or playful interactions. Engaging in dating, courtship, or hookup culture as part of the relationship formation period allows individuals to explore different interpersonal connections before further investing in an intimate relationship.

Context

The internet has become a popular avenue for meeting an intimate partner.

Context, timing, and external circumstances influence attraction and whether an individual is receptive to beginning an intimate relationship. Individuals vary across the lifespan in feeling ready for a relationship, and other external pressures including family expectations, peers being in committed relationships, and cultural norms influence when people decide to pursue an intimate relationship.

Being in close physical proximity is a powerful facilitator for formation of relationships because it allows people to get to know each other through repeated interactions. Intimate partners commonly meet at college or school, as coworkers, as neighbors, at bars, or through religious community. Speed dating, matchmakers, and online dating services are more structured formats used to begin relationships. The internet in particular has significantly changed how intimate relationships begin as it allows people to access potential partners beyond their immediate proximity. In 2023, Pew Research Center found that 53% of people under 30 have used online dating, and one in ten adults in a committed relationship met their partner online. However, there remains skepticism about the effectiveness and safety of dating apps due to their potential to facilitate dating violence.

Maintenance

Once an intimate relationship has been initiated, the relationship changes and develops over time, and the members may engage in commitment agreements and maintenance behaviors. In an ongoing relationship, couples must navigate protecting their own self-interest alongside the interest of maintaining the relationship. This necessitates compromise, sacrifice, and communication. In general, feelings of intimacy and commitment increase as a relationship progresses, while passion plateaus following the excitement of the early stages of the relationship.

Engaging in ongoing positive shared communication and activities is important for strengthening the relationship and increasing commitment and liking between partners. These maintenance behaviors can include providing assurances about commitment to the relationship, engaging in shared activities, openly disclosing thoughts and feelings, spending time with mutual friends, and contributing to shared responsibilities. Physical intimacy including sexual behavior also increases feelings of closeness and satisfaction with the relationship. However, sexual desire is often greatest early in a relationship, and may wax and wane as the relationship evolves. Significant life events such as the birth of a child can drastically change the relationship and necessitate adaptation and new approaches to maintaining intimacy. The transition to parenthood can be a stressful period that is generally associated with a temporary decrease in healthy relationship functioning and a decline in sexual intimacy.

Commitment

Marriage is a form of relationship maintenance that signals commitment between partners.

As a relationship develops, intimate partners often engage in commitment agreements, ceremonies, and behaviors to signal their intention to remain in the relationship. This might include moving in together, sharing responsibilities or property, and getting married. These commitment markers increase relationship stability because they create physical, financial, and symbolic barriers and consequences to dissolving the relationship. In general, increases in relationship satisfaction and investment are associated with increased commitment.

Evaluating the relationship

Individuals in intimate relationships evaluate the relative personal benefits and costs of being in the relationship, and this contributes to the decision to stay or leave. The investment model of commitment is a theoretical framework that suggests that an evaluation of relationship satisfaction, relationship investment, and the quality of alternatives to the relationship impact whether an individual remains in a relationship.

Because relationships are rewarding and evolutionarily necessary, and rejection is a stressful process, people are generally biased toward making decisions that uphold and further facilitate intimate relationships. These biases can lead to distortions in the evaluation of a relationship. For instance, people in committed relationships tend to dismiss and derogate attractive alternative partners, thereby validating the decision to remain with their more attractive partner.

Dissolution

The decision to leave a relationship often involves an evaluation of levels of satisfaction and commitment in the relationship. Relationship factors such as increased commitment and feelings of love are associated with lower chances of breakup, while feeling ambivalent about the relationship and perceiving many alternatives to the current relationship are associated with increased chances of dissolution.

Predictors of dissolution

Specific individual characteristics and traits put people at greater risk for experiencing relationship dissolution. Individuals high in neuroticism (the tendency to experience negative emotions) are more prone to relationship dissolution, and research also shows small effects of attachment avoidance and anxiety in predicting breakup. Being married at a younger age, having lower income, lower educational attainment, and cohabiting before marriage are also associated with risk of divorce and relationship dissolution. These characteristics are not necessarily the inherent causes of dissolution. Rather, they are traits that impact the resources that individuals are able to draw upon to work on their relationships as well as reflections of social and cultural attitudes toward relationship institutions and divorce.

Strategies and consequences

Common strategies for ending a relationship include justifying the decision, apologizing, avoiding contact (ghosting), or suggesting a "break" period before revisiting the decision. The dissolution of an intimate relationship is a stressful event that can have a negative impact on well-being, and the rejection can elicit strong feelings of embarrassment, sadness, and anger. Following a relationship breakup, individuals are at risk for anxiety, depressive symptoms, problematic substance use, and low self-esteem. However, the period following a break-up can also promote personal growth, particularly if the previous relationship was not fulfilling.

Benefits

Psychological well-being

Intimate relationships impact well-being.

Intimate relationships impact happiness and satisfaction with life. While people with better mental health are more likely to enter intimate relationships, the relationships themselves also have a positive impact on mental health even after controlling for the selection effect. In general, marriage and other types of committed intimate relationships are consistently linked to increases in happiness. Furthermore, due to the interdependent nature of relationships, one partner's life satisfaction influences and predicts change in the other person's life satisfaction even after controlling for relationship quality.

Social support

Social support from an intimate partner is beneficial for coping with stress and significant life events. Having a close relationship with someone who is perceived as responsive and validating helps to alleviate the negative impact of stress, and shared activities with an intimate partner aids in regulating emotions associated with stressful experiences. Support for positive experiences can also improve relationship quality and increase shared positive emotions between people. When a person responds actively and constructively to their partner sharing good news (a process called "capitalization"), well-being for both individuals increases.

Sexual intimacy

In intimate relationships that are sexual, sexual satisfaction is closely tied to overall relationship satisfaction. Sex promotes intimacy, increases happiness, provides pleasure, and reduces stress. Studies show that couples who have sex at least once per week report greater well-being than those who have sex less than once per week. Research in human sexuality finds that the ingredients of high quality sex include feeling connected to your partner, good communication, vulnerability, and feeling present in the moment. High quality sex in intimate relationships can strengthen both the relationship and improve well-being for each individual involved.

Physical health

High quality intimate relationships have a positive impact on physical health, and associations between close relationships and health outcomes involving the cardiovascular, immune, and endocrine systems have been consistently identified in the scientific literature. Better relationship quality is associated lower risk of mortality and relationship quality impacts inflammatory responses such as cytokine expression and intracellular signaling. Furthermore, intimate partners are an important source of social support for encouraging healthy behaviors such as increasing physical activity and quitting smoking. Sexual activity and other forms of physical intimacy also contribute positively to physical health, while conflict between intimate partners negatively impacts the immune and endocrine systems and can increase blood pressure.

Laboratory experiments show evidence for the association between support from intimate partners and physical health. In a study assessing recovery from wounds and inflammation, individuals in relationships high in conflict and hostility recovered from wounds more slowly than people in low-hostility relationships. The presence or imagined presence of an intimate partner can even impact perceived pain. In fMRI studies, participants who view an image of their intimate partner report less pain in response to a stimulus compared to participants who view the photo of a stranger. In another laboratory study, women who received a text message from their partner showed reduced cardiovascular response to the Trier Social Stress Test, a stress-inducing paradigm.

Other studies

Personal intimate relationships may be crowned with marriage.

The study of intimate relationships uses participants from diverse groups and examines topics that include family relations, friendships, and romantic relationships, usually over a long period. Studies include both positive and negative or unpleasant aspects of relationships.

John Gottman and his colleagues invited married couples into a pleasant setting, and asked them to revisit the disagreement that caused their last argument. Although the participants were aware that they were being videotaped, they soon become so absorbed in their own interaction that they forgot they were being recorded. With the second-by-second analysis of observable reactions as well as emotional ones, Gottman can predict with 93% accuracy the fate of the couples' relationship.

Terri Orbuch and Joseph Veroff monitored newlywed couples using self-reports over a long period (a longitudinal study). Participants were required to provide extensive reports about the natures and the statuses of their relationships. Although many of the marriages ended since the beginning of the study, this type of relationship study allows researchers to track marriages from start to finish by conducting follow-up interviews with the participants in order to determine which factors are associated with marriages that last and which with those that do not. Though the field of relationship science is still relatively young, research conducted by researchers from different disciplines continues to broaden the field.

Evidence points to contextual factors that can impact intimate relationships. In a study on the impact of Hurricane Katrina on marital and partner relationships, researchers found that while many reported negative changes in their relationships, a number also experienced positive changes. Environmental stressors (for example, unemployment, prolonged separation) negatively impacted intimate relationships for many couples, though other couples' relationships grew stronger as a result of new employment opportunities, a greater sense of perspective, and higher levels of communication and support. As a result, environmental factors are understood to contribute to the strength of intimate relationships.

A Northwestern University research team summarized the literature in 2013, finding that "negative-affect reciprocity" – retaliatory negativity between partners during a conflict – is arguably the most robust predictor of poor marital quality. However, this degradation can be softened (according to their 120 heterosexual couple Chicago sample) by undertaking a reappraisal writing task every four months.

One study suggests that married straight couples and cohabiting gay and lesbian couples in long-term intimate relationships may pick up each other's unhealthy habits. The study reports three distinct findings showing how unhealthy habits are promoted in long-term intimate relationships: through the direct bad influence of one partner, through synchronicity of health habits, and through the notion of personal responsibility.

Men kissing intimately.

Some research indicates that pornography is a possible source of education about sex and relationships. In the absence of inclusive same-sex relationship education in traditional sources (i.e., schools, parents, friends, and mainstream media), gay pornography may be used by men who have sex with men as a source of information about intimacy, while serving its main purpose as a masturbatory aid. A 2020 study indicated that gay pornography depicts both physical (kissing, cuddling, affectionate touch, and genital touch before and after sex) and verbal intimacy (compliments, personal disclosure, and expressions of care). Most forms of physical and verbal intimacy occurred before or during sex, with intimacy being least evident post-sex.

History

Ancient philosophers: Aristotle

Over 2,300 years ago, Aristotle examined interpersonal relationships. He wrote: "One person is a friend to another if he is friendly to the other and the other is friendly to him in return" Aristotle believed that by nature humans are social beings. He proposed that there are three varieties of relationships: those based on utility, on pleasure, and on virtue. People are attracted to relationships that provide utility because of the assistance and sense of belonging that they provide. In relationships based on pleasure, people are attracted to the feelings of pleasantness when the parties engage. However, relationships based on utility and pleasure may be short-lived if the benefits provided by one of the partners are not reciprocated. Relationships based on virtue are built on an attraction to each other's virtuous character.

Aristotle also suggested that relationships based on virtue would be the longest lasting and that virtue-based relationships were the only type of relationship in which each partner was liked for themselves. The philosophical analysis used by Aristotle dominated the analysis of intimate relationships until the late 1880s.

1880s to early 1900s

Emperor Pedro II of Brazil and his wife Teresa Cristina in Petrópolis, 1887

Modern psychology and sociology began to emerge in the late 19th century. During this time theorists often examined relationships in the course of their research. Freud wrote about parent–child relationships and their effect on personality development. He proposed that people's childhood experiences are transferred or passed on into adult relationships by means of feelings and expectations. Freud also founded the idea that individuals usually seek out marital partners who are similar to their opposite-sex parent.

In 1891, William James wrote that a person's self-concept is defined by the relationships endured with others. In 1897, Émile Durkheim's interest in social organization led to the examination of social isolation and alienation. Durkheim argued that being socially isolated was a key antecedent of suicide. The darker side of relationships and the negative consequences associated with social isolation were what Durkheim labeled as anomie. Georg Simmel wrote about dyads, or partnerships with two people. He suggested that dyads require consent and engagement of both partners to maintain the relationship but noted that the relationship can be ended by the initiation of only one partner. Although the theorists mentioned above sought support for their theories, their primary contributions to the study of intimate relationships were conceptual and not empirically grounded.

1960s and 1970s

An important shift took place in the field of social psychology that influenced the research of intimate relationships. Until the late 1950s, the majority of studies were non-experimental. By the end of the 1960s more than half of the articles published involved some sort of experimental study. The 1960s were also a time when there was a shift in methodology within the psychological discipline. Participants consisted mostly of college students, experimental methods and research were being conducted in laboratories, and the experimental method was the dominant methodology in social psychology. Experimental manipulation within the research of intimate relationships demonstrated that relationships could be studied scientifically. This shift brought relationship science to the attention of scholars in other disciplines and resulted in the study of intimate relationships being an international multidiscipline.

1980s to 2000s

In the early 1980s the first conference of the International Network of Personal Relationships (INPR) was held. Approximately 300 researchers from all over the world attended the conference. In March 1984, the first Journal of Social and Personal Relationships was published. In the early 1990s the INPR split off into two groups; in April 2004 the two organizations rejoined and became the International Association for Relationship Research (IARR).

Donald Nathanson, a psychiatrist who built his study of human interactions off of the work of Silvan Tomkins, argues that an intimate relationship between two individuals is best when the couple agrees to maximize positive affect, minimize negative affect and allow for the free expression of affect. These findings were based on Tomkin's blueprint for emotional health, which also emphasizes doing as much of the maximizing, minimizing, and expressing as possible.

In 1993, Match.com was the first dating-facilitation website to launch. A high correlation existed between those that are computer literate and a tendency to attempt online dating, due to the new development of the internet. In 2004, Guinness World Records called Match.com the largest dating site in the world, citing more than 42 million people having signed up for its services.

2010s to 2020s

In 2016, there were an estimated 240 million dating app users; as of 2021 that number rose to around 323 million users worldwide, with the Covid 19 pandemic as a contributor. Even though there has been rapid growth of users, there have been many reports of negative effects of dating apps. The intention of dating app usage varies between each individual. For example, a study of Grindr users detected their reasons for using that dating site. The final report concluded that 67.2% of users were interested in finding a dating companion while 62.1% of users desired casual sex. The risk for sexually transmitted disease increases significantly for individuals who participate in casual sex. A sexual assault researcher from the Associate Dean of Brigham Young University College of Nursing notes that there were around 2,000 reported sexual assaults from dating apps over the course of three years. Many of those cases were due to catfishing, which is when one party pretends to be someone else. Studies to determine the effects of online dating on mental health found that there is an increase of depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem in users. Regardless of the negative outcomes, the convenience of dating apps suggests that they are here to stay.

See also

• Affection
• Dating
• Free union
• Human sexuality
• Limerence
• Love
• Loving kindness
• Marriage
• Monogamy
• Outline of relationships
• Parenting
• Polyamory
• Polygamy
• Power and control in abusive intimate relationships
• Relationship status
• Romantic friendship
• Social connection

Terms for members of intimate relationships

• Back-up partner (Hanzi:備胎對象)
• Boyfriend / Girlfriend
• Companion
• Concubine
• Confidant or confidante
• Life partner
• Lover
• Mistress
• Partner
• Sexual partner
• Significant other
• Spouse

External links

• International Association for Relationship Research
• Process of Adaption in Intimate Relationships