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Intimacy
William Jankowiak
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, United States
Intimacy is a universal experience that is shaped by
cultural expectations of appropriateness concern-
ing when, where, and with whom. It is c­ haracterized
by feelings of trust, emotional closeness, vulner-
ability, and an emphasis on a solidarity in the
absence of material exchange (Parrenas 2011:9).
Intimate bonds between individuals or within
small groups are present in all cultures, though
not all forms of intimacy are sanctioned.
Cross-cultural research on the social condi-
tions that promote a stronger, more intense
intimacy, found that female social status is a criti-
cal factor. The more egalitarian the relationship
the more likely individuals would desire and
expect romantic love to be part of the relationship
(De  Munck and Korotayev 1999). The research
found a positive relationship between spousal
intimacy and the degree of leisure time available
to participate in shared couple activities such as
attending the birth of a child and eating together.
The research also found a strong correlation
between the degree of parental warmth experi-
ence in childhood, especially between mother
and son (but not necessarily mother-daughter),
and an increase in husband-wife intimacy. Since
agrarian societies follow a patrilocal residence
custom whereby daughters married out and, thus,
into a different village, her future husband’s
­willingness to become emotionally involved and,
thus, tacitly reduced his emotional dependency
on his mother is a deciding factor is determining
the overall emotional quality of his marriage.
Finally, De Munck and Korotayev (2007) identi-
fied a positive and inverse relationship between
family size and the strength of spousal intimacy.
The larger the  household the less opportunity
couples have to  focus on each other. This prag-
matic reality, ­overtime, tends to dilute the quality
of the conjugal love bond.
The International Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality, First Edition. Edited by Patricia Whelehan and Anne Bolin.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Love bond and intimacy
For many the most intimate of social dyads is most
vividly, if not memorably, manifested in the love
bond. In every love relationship, Jan Collins and
Tom Gregor (1995) point out, its boundaries are
defined through the way it allows individuals
to  transcend those boundaries and create a
­relationship or miniature culture that has its own
history, style or communication, and emotional
resilience. What is most remarkable is the forma-
tion of intimate love bonds in societies that do
not  value, approve, or sanction its expression.
Although romantic love is found in some form in
every society, it is often in a muted form. Recent
research conducted in societies that value the pair
bond find that couples who are the most generous,
that is, give good things to one’s spouse freely and
abundantly like offering a glass of water in the
evening or commenting upon their clothes or
­hairstyle are most content and satisfied in their
marriages. Among twentieth-century Japanese
intellectuals the establishment of intimate love
bonds was seen as essential for self-development
and personal growth. Here the love bond was con-
sidered to be a fusion between spirituality and
sexual love (Suzuki 2010:13). More recently, The
2006 Chinese General Social Survey (18–60 year
olds of 10,000 plus total sample) defined emotional
intimacy as communication of emotions including
positive and negative feelings between marital
partners. The survey found Chinese couples hold
modern views of marriage, such as ­prioritizing
spousal relationships, treasuring individual auton-
omy, and accepting cohabitation.
In late-twentieth-century East Asian culture’s
junior generation adopted the notion of love and
made it a prerequisite for marriage. There is now
a well-developed love marriage ideology—one
that is based on higher self-development ideal
along with the notion that an equalitarian rela-
tionship between male-females forms the new
ideal. This twenty-first-century ideal mirrors
what was happening in Japan in the 1920s when
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love was seen as a way to merge individuals
together into a perfect union of spirituality and
sexuality. Here marriage does not destroy love but
deepens it: marriage is based on the idea that hus-
band and wife are equal and thus are individuals
with their own ability to make choices. Suzuki’s
(2010:72) research found that the value placed on
individual progress seen in such ideas as cul-
ture, self-cultivation, and character particularly
encouraged a view of love marriage as a site for
mutual self-improvement and personal growth.
Sex differences in expression
of intimate thoughts
Research has found among Euro-American cultures
a sex difference in the expression of intimacy. Most
males obtain a sense of intimacy through talking
about sports, politics, world affairs and business,
while females experience intimacy when more per-
sonal subjects that reveal emotional states are dis-
cussed (Fisher 2004). The sex difference in
state-level societies often results in personal frustra-
tion: Women want an increase in emotional com-
munication, while men want a “life in common
with their wives, a home life, a physical and psy-
chological foundation, and somewhere to return
to” (Duncombe and Marsden 1993:223–224).
Some writers have criticized men’s inability to
engage in more fruitful emotional talk (Hochschild
1983), other writers have suggested that women
are being unfair in overstressing emotional
expressions of love and, thus, undervalue men’s
contributions (Cancian 1987; Tannen 1990).
Whenever a culture comes to value the quali-
ties that define an intimate love bond, there is a
call to outlaw or socially marginalize sex work.
This is because it is thought that sex work trans-
forms an idealized spiritual state and, thus, for
most, an intensely intimate act into a material
exchange based on calculation and efficiency
(Parrenas 2011:9). The public’s negative reaction
to prostitution arises more out of a moral reaction
than any pragmatic consideration.
Intimacy and same-sex friendship
The triumph of companionship love marriage as
a desirable cultural ideal not only changed the
relationship between European and East Asian
husbands and wives, but also transformed the
­status of unmarried people. The belief that love
was necessary for marriage resulted in making
those who refuse to wed without love appear spir-
itually superior (Marcus 2007:211). In this milieu,
same-sex friendships were seen as the better
arena for the development of intimate love bonds.
Not all societies idealize pair bond intimacy.
In  these societies intimate bonds are thought
to be more typical of same-sex friendship or the
mother–child relationship. A same-sex friend-
ship is characterized by altruism, generosity,
mutual indebtedness, and a perfect balance of
power (Marcus 2007:4). It is often found in state-
level societies and, as such, provides a psychologi-
cal flexibility to some of society’s more formal
conventions. For example, in Imperial China men
often relied on the language of brotherhood to
establish ties to men who were not relatives.
These bands of “brothers” identity were sealed
with a blood oath or a solemn initiation ceremony
that is clandestine and utilizes specific rituals,
codes, and symbols to create feelings of social clo-
sure (McIsaac 2001:1641–1642). Research in con-
temporary south China has found friendship
bonds have an expressive style that differs from
modern Euro-American ideology of friendship
(Santos 2008:536). These bonds are organized
around a fictive kinship metaphor—such as
“same-year brother or same-year sister”—that
emphasizes blood (or agnatic) siblingship. Like
earlier Chinese and African sworn brotherhoods,
the south China bond is institutionalized via
­special ritual procedure that involves feasting and
the  use of terms that highlight kinship ties
(Santos  2008:543–544). Here, Goncalo Santos is
in disagreement with Francis Hsu (1972) who
argued that Chinese society makes it structurally
unlikely for individuals to cultivate mutual feel-
ings. Hsu argues that this orientation arises from
Chinese patriarchal ideology with its preference
for asymmetrical relationships that made it diffi-
cult, especially for men, to express intimate feel-
ings either toward a particular woman or to other
men. For Hsu, intimacy or the emphasis on the
value of a heightened sense of reflective thought
is a Euro-American idea that is absent in East
Asia’s more collectivistic cultures. In contrast,
Santos argues that south China’s “same-year sib-
lingship” should be seen as an extreme form of
intimate friendship that shares characteristic with
pair bond intimacy (2008:548). These friendships

are motived less by a need to find allies and estab-
lish alliances in order to obtain material and
social benefits. Instead, Santos believes they arise
more out of a compelling desire to create and
form egalitarian bonds of mutual compatibility.
In effect, the Chinese subjective shares much in
common with cultures around the world.
In European and Chinese society throughout
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries rela-
tionships with a cross-gender female who behaved
stereotypically masculine were seen as a threat to
the family, the social order, and the nation.
However, unlike sexual relationships between two
men, which are deemed immensely inappropriate,
the establishment of intimate friendship that was
emotionally and erotically charged between two
women was considered more than tolerable. In
Imperial China (Sommer 1997) and Victorian
England (Marcus 2007), same-sex feminine loves
were acceptable as it was thought that friendship
and family life were complimentary. In this
­context, special female friendship trained women
to  be transformable into more marriageable
women  though experimenting and developing
their f­ emininity by entering into an erotic and love
bond with someone of the same sex. In some sub-
Saharan African cultures, it was common for an
older woman to create a “mother-daughter” erotic
love bond with a younger women who she taught
how to be a proper lover and an effective wife.
These bonds were intensely intimate and lasted a
long time, even though the younger wife may have
had many pregnancies.
Because trust is essential for establishing a
meaningful and emotionally salient relationship,
a “leap of faith” is required. Both parties whether
in a love or friendship or business arrangement
have to suspend their desire to maintain a criti-
cal reservation and believe or trust that the per-
son is being authentic. The ability to enter into a
potentially emotional vulnerable relationship is
another attribute of the intimate social bond. In
these situations individuals strive to develop
close personal feelings with another in order to
guarantee the fulfillment of a contract or to buy
quality goods or obtain favorable service. In
China people use intimacy to create rapport
and  develop feelings of concern or intimacy
between themselves and customers (Osburg 2013).
Another example of the potential vulnerability
implicit within wanting to establish an intimate
love bond comes from the work of Sandya
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Hewamanne (2008:168) who conducted research
among Sri Lanka female factory workers. She
observed that the youngest boss often flirted and
tried to create intimate feelings of specialness in
order to get young unmarried women to work
harder and more efficiently. The women were
surprised and disappointed to learn that this was
less than an authentic performance and thus had
no special meaning. In this way, the desire to
establish a dyadic intensely intimate bond can
be one sided.
Parent–child intimate bonds
Attachment theory pointed out that the quality
of  maternal sensitivity determines the security
of  infant–mother attachment and thus later
psychological adjustment (Lamb and Lewis
2013:101). Building upon this insight, Barry
Hewlett (1992; Hewlett and MacFarlan, 2004)
found the quality of father–child intimacy was
shaped by the degree of social egalitarianism. The
less differentiation there is on the basis of age,
gender, wealth, or status, the more frequent
father–child interaction. In effect, men in a more
egalitarian setting become more loving parents.
Research is finding that the quality of parent–
child bond impacts: the child’s sociability with
strangers (Lamb and Lewis 2013); better school
performance (Hoffman and Youngblade 1999);
an increase in maternal satisfaction with her lover
(Brennan et al. 2001); and the degree of emo-
tional attachment or intimacy between a teenage
girl and her father is strongly correlated in later
life with increased marital satisfaction (Flouri
and Buchanan 2002). Finally, Sears et al. (1957)
pointed out long ago that “the children of warm,
affectionate fathers, and boys with warm mothers
and less stressful childhood years were more
likely to be well adjusted adults who were capable
of coping with life and thus had more satisfying
marriages” (Lamb and Lewis 2013:225). Clearly,
an adult’s capacity for intimacy is shaped by cul-
tural ideology, historical habit, and early child-
hood experience.
SEE ALSO: Biparental Care; Desire, Sexual;
Homosexuality Cross-Culturally; Kissing; Love;
Love and Sex after 50; Marriage; Passionate Love
and Sexual Desire; Prostitution and Sexology;
Same-Sex Couples
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Human Sexual Behavior. Cambridge: Harvard
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Aldine.
Jankowiak, William. 2008. Intimacies: Between Love
and Sex. New York: Columbia University Press.
Yan, Yuxiang. 2003. Private Life under Socialism:
Love, Intimacy and family Change in a Chinese
Village, 1949–1999. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.