19.2 Intimacy

In Erikson’s theory, after achieving identity, people experience the crisis of intimacy versus isolation. This crisis arises from the powerful desire to share one’s personal life with someone else. Without intimacy, adults suffer from loneliness. Erikson explains:

As will be explained in Chapter 22, other theorists have different words for the same human need: affiliation, affection, interdependence, communion, belonging, love. All agree that adults seek to become friends, lovers, companions, and partners, with the “significant sacrifices and compromises” that entails. The urge for social connection is a powerful human impulse, one reason our species has thrived.

All intimate relationships have much in common—not only in the psychic needs they satisfy but also in the behaviors they require. Intimacy progresses from attraction, to close connection, to ongoing commitment. Each relationship demands some personal sacrifice, including vulnerability that brings deeper self-understanding and shatters the isolation of too much self-protection. To establish intimacy, the young adult must

Friendship

According to a more recent theory, an important aspect of close human connections is self-expansion—that each of us enlarges our understanding, experiences, and resources through our intimate friends and lovers (Aron et al., 2005).

Whether or not friends expand our minds, it is certain that friends strengthen our mental and physical health (Seyfarth & Cheney, 2012). Unlike relatives, friends are chosen (not inherited). Friends seek understanding, tolerance, loyalty, affection, humor from one another—all qualities that make friends trustworthy, supportive, and enjoyable.

Friendships “reach their peak of functional significance during emerging adulthood” (Tanner & Arnett, 2011, p. 27). Since fewer emerging adults have the family obligations that come with spouses, children, or frail parents, their friends provide needed companionship and critical support.

Friends comfort each other when romance turns sour, and they share experiences and information about everything from what college to attend to what socks to wear. One crucial question for emerging adults is what and how to tell parents news that might upset them: Friends help with that, too.

People tend to make more friends during emerging adulthood than at any later period, and they rely on them. They often use social media to extend and deepen friendships that begin face to face, becoming more aware of the day-to-day tribulations of their friends (Burstein, 2013). Fears that increasing Internet use would diminish the number or quality of friendships have been proven to be false. If anything, heavy Internet users tend to have more face-to-face friends than do nonusers (Wang & Wellman, 2010).

Not Unisex Sex roles are less rigid worldwide: College men have close male friends and college women play basketball. Noticing such changes makes it harder to see gender differences that remain. Imagine eight women playing pick-up basketball, as these Maryland men do, or four men sharing a secret as these Jordanian women do.

JONATHAN NEWTON/THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
JODI COBB/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC/GETTY IMAGES

It is a mistake to imagine that men and women have opposite friendship needs. All humans seek intimacy, throughout their lives. Claiming that men are from Mars and women are from Venus ignores reality: People are from Earth (Hyde, 2007).

Nonetheless, for cultural and biological reasons, some sex differences can be found. Men tend to share activities and interests, and they talk about external matters—sports, work, politics, cars. They are less likely to tell other men of their failures, emotional problems, and relationship dilemmas; if they do, they expect practical advice, not sympathy.

A meta-analysis of 37 studies found some sex differences in friendship (Hall, 2011). Women’s friendships are typically more intimate and emotional. Women expect to share secrets with their friends and engage in self-disclosing talk, including difficulties with their health, romances, and relatives. Women reveal their weaknesses and problems and receive an attentive and sympathetic ear, a shoulder to cry on.

By contrast, men are less likely to touch each other except in aggressive activities, such as competitive athletics or military combat. The butt-slapping or body-slamming immediately after a sports victory, or the sobbing in a buddy’s arms in the aftermath of a battlefield loss, are less likely in everyday life. By contrast, many women routinely hug friends in greeting or farewell.

Lest this discussion seem to imply that female friendships are better because they are closer, research finds that men are more tolerant; they demand less from their friendships than women do, and thus they have more friends (Benenson et al., 2011). One specific detail from college dormitories is revealing: When strangers of the same sex are assigned as roommates (as occurs for first-year students at residential colleges), more women than men request a change (Benenson et al., 2009).

As already noted, these gender differences may be cultural, not biological, and are changing. One sign of such changes is the frequency of male–female friendships—they are no longer rare (Lewis et al., 2011).

Cross-sex friendships are not usually preludes to romance. In fact, physical attraction to one’s other-sex friend is more often considered a problem than an asset (Bleske-Rechek et al., 2011). Male–female friendships are less common for people at the extremes of gender identity (the very feminine girl or super-masculine boy), perhaps because it is more difficult for them to keep the relationship platonic (Lenton & Webber, 2006). When women want advice about a dating relationship, they are more likely to turn to a male friend, especially a gay man, than they are to another woman or to a straight man (Russell et al., 2013).

Problems arise if outsiders assume that every male–female relationship is sexual. For this reason, when heterosexual couples are romantically committed to each other, they tend to have fewer cross-sex friendships in order to avoid partner jealousy (S. Williams, 2005). Keeping a relationship “just friendly” may be difficult, and, if it becomes sexual, romance with a third person is almost impossible to sustain (Bleske-Rechek et al., 2012).

Humans apparently find it difficult to sustain more than one sexual/romantic relationship at a time. Indeed, even in nations where polygamy is accepted, 90 percent of husbands have only one wife (Georgas et al., 2006). A study of couples in Kenya, where polygamy is legal, found that actual or suspected sexual infidelity was the most common reason for breaking up (Clark et al., 2010), and a study in the United States found that emerging adults thought sexual fidelity was crucial for a good, enduring relationship (Meier et al., 2009).

The Dimensions of Love

“Love” itself has many manifestations. In a classic analysis, Robert Sternberg (1988) described three distinct aspects of love: passion, intimacy, and commitment. The presence or absence of these three gives rise to seven different forms of love (see Table 19.3).

Early in a relationship, passion is evident in “falling in love,” an intense physical, cognitive, and emotional onslaught characterized by excitement, ecstasy, and euphoria. The entire body and mind, hormones and neurons, are activated (Aron, 2010). Such moonstruck joy can become bittersweet as intimacy and commitment increase. As one observer explains, “Falling in love is absolutely no way of getting to know someone” (Sullivan, 1999, p. 225).

Intimacy is knowing someone well, sharing secrets as well as sex. This aspect of a romance is reciprocal, with each partner gradually revealing more of himself or herself as well as accepting more of the other’s revelations.

The research is not clear about the best schedule for passion and intimacy, whether they should progress slowly or quickly, for instance. According to some research, they are not always connected, as lust arises from a different part of the brain than affection (Langeslag et al., 2013).

Commitment takes time and effort, at least for those who follow the current Western pattern of love and marriage. It grows through decisions to be together, mutual caregiving, shared possessions, and forgiveness (Schoebi et al., 2012). Social forces strengthen or undermine commitment; that’s why in-laws are often the topic of jokes and arguments, and why a spouse might be unhappy with their mate’s close friends.

Commitment is also affected by the culture. In fact, when cultures endorse arranged marriages, commitment occurs early on, before passion or intimacy (Georgas et al., 2006). Having friends and acquaintances who do, or do not, endorse the value of committed relationship affects each couple.

For example, in Sweden couples who lived in detached houses (with yards between them) broke up more often than did couples living in attached dwellings (such as apartments). Perhaps “single-family housing might have deleterious effects on couple stability due to the isolating lack of social support for couples staying together” (Lauster, 2008, p. 901). In other words, suburban couples may be too far from their neighbors to receive helpful advice when conflicts arise.

When children are born, passion seems to fade for both partners, but commitment increases. This may be one reason why most sexually active young adults try to avoid pregnancy unless they believe their partner is a lifelong mate. [Lifespan Link: The relationship of parenthood to marital satisfaction is discussed in Chapter 22.]

In Europe in the Middle Ages, love, passion, and marriage were considered to be distinct phenomena, with “courtly love” disconnected from romance, which was also distinct from lifelong commitment (Singer, 2009). Currently, however, the Western ideal of consummate love includes all three components: passion, intimacy, and commitment.

For developmental reasons, this ideal is difficult to achieve. Passion seems to be sparked by unfamiliarity, uncertainty, and risk, all of which are diminished by the familiarity and security that contribute to intimacy and by the time needed for commitment.

In short, with time, passion may fade, intimacy may grow and stabilize, and commitment may develop. This pattern occurs for all types of couples—married, unmarried, and remarried; gay, lesbian, and straight; young, middle-aged, and old; in arranged, guided, and self-initiated relationships.

Emerging adults refer to “friends with benefits,” implying that sexual passion is less significant (an extra benefit, not the core attraction) than the friendship. As with other friendships, shared confidences and loyalty are the important parts of the relationship, with sexual interactions almost an afterthought. To use Sternberg’s triadic theory, the relationship is intimate but not passionate.

However, if a friendship becomes sexual, complications arise (Owen & Fincham, 2011). Once the hormones of sexual intimacy are activated, people may become more emotionally involved than they expected. Such involvement may be more welcomed than feared. Young adults who add sex to a friendship may hope for romance (Mongeau et al., 2011).

A sexual relationship that is not intended to become a romance, with no true intimacy or commitment, is a hookup. When this relationship occurred in prior generations, it was either prostitution or illicit, as in a “fling” or a “dirty secret.” No longer. It is estimated that about half of all emerging adults have hooked up. Hookups often involve intercourse but not necessarily: The crucial factor is that sexual interaction of some sort occurs between partners who do not know each other well, perhaps having met just a few hours before.

Hookups are more common among first-year college students than among those about to graduate, perhaps because older students want partners, and, as one put it, “if you hook up with someone it probably is just a hookup and nothing is going to come of it” (quoted in Bogle, 2008, p. 38). People who are lonely are more likely to hook up, which may be more common for students new to a college (Owen et al., 2011).

The desire for physical intimacy without emotional commitment is stronger in young men than in young women, either for hormonal (testosterone) or cultural (women want committed fathers if children are born) reasons. One sociologist writes:

As contraception, employment, and college education have changed women’s lives, this “guy” pattern includes more females. Nonetheless, by age 25, more women than men have married (44 percent compared to 31 percent) (Copen et al., 2012). Interestingly, emerging adults of both sexes who want a serious relationship with someone state that they are less likely to hook up with them, preferring to get to know them first.

One major innovation of the current cohort of emerging adults is the use of social networks, as the online connections between dozens or hundreds of people are called. Almost all (83 percent) U.S. 18- to 29-year-olds use social networking sites to keep in contact (Duggan, Maeve, & Brenner, 2013). Such sites often indicate whether an individual is, or is not, in a committed relationship.

Many young adults seeking romance join one or more matchmaking Web sites that provide dozens of potential partners to meet and evaluate. A problem with such matches is that passion is hard to assess without meeting in person. As one journalist puts it, many people face “profound disappointment when the process ends in a face-to-face meeting with an actual, flawed human being who doesn’t look like a JPEG or talk like an email message” (D. Jones, 2006, p. 13).

Emerging adults overcome this problem by filtering their online connections, meeting only those who seem promising, and then arranging a second meeting with only a few. Often physical attraction is the gateway to a relationship, but intimacy and then commitment require much more. When online connections lead to face-to-face interactions and then to marriage (true for about one-third of all marriages in the U.S. between 2008 and 2012), the likelihood of happy marriages is as high as or higher than when the first contact was made in person (Cacioppo et al., 2013).

The large number of possible partners young adults find—the thousands of fellow students at most colleges or the hundreds of suggestions that some matchmaking sites provide—cause a potential problem, choice overload, when too many options are available. Choice overload makes some people unable to choose and increases second thoughts after a selection is made (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000; Reutskaja & Hogarth, 2009).

Modern Match-ups These couples stare into each other’s eyes as part of a singles meeting in Manhattan. Maybe some of them will end up like couples gaze into Alex and Sarah (right) who met online and are now among the 2 million US residents who met online and married in 2011.

STAN HONDA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
EVY MAGES/THE WASHINGTON POST/GETTY IMAGES

Choice overload occurs with many consumer goods—jams, chocolates, pens, restaurants—but it may apply to mate selection as well. Having many complex options that require weighing present and future advantages and disadvantages (trade-offs are inevitable in partner selection) may be overwhelming (Scheibehenne et al., 2010). That may contribute to divorce rates, which are higher for first marriages between young adults (who have more choices) than for those over age 30. Too many choices slows down analysis; when people feel rushed, they tend to have later regrets (Inbar et al., 2011).

A second major innovation among emerging adults is cohabitation, the term for living together in a romantic partnership without being married. Cohabitation was relatively unusual 40 years ago: In the United States, less than 1 percent of all households were comprised of a cohabiting man and woman (see Figure 19.3). Between 2008 and 2012, 60 percent of all adults cohabited before they married, and another 11 percent continued to cohabit, perhaps never to marry (Copen et al., 2013).

More Together, Fewer Married As you see, the number of cohabiting male–female households in the United States has increased dramatically over the past decades. These numbers are an underestimate: Couples who do not tell the U.S. Census takers that they are living together, or who cohabit within their parents’ households, or who are same-sex couples (not tallied until 2000) are not included here. In addition, most emerging adults who are not now cohabiting may begin to do so within a few years.

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2011, and earlier years.

Probably Married This couple with two young children could be cohabiting or married, but probably the latter—because this is Germany, where two-thirds of the children are born to married parents. If they were in France, they would probably be cohabiting, since more than half of French newborns have unmarried parents.

© RAINER HACKENBERG/VISUM/THE IMAGE WORKS

Not Married Andrew and Jessica decided to raise their daughter together but not to marry. They live in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, a relatively conservative area, but cohabiting couples are increasingly common everywhere.

RICHARD TSONG-TAATARII/MCT/NEWSCOM

Cohabitation rates vary from nation to nation: It is the norm in the United States, Canada, northern Europe, England, and Australia but not in other nations—including Japan, Ireland, Italy and Spain. However, that is changing rapidly. One-third of all Spanish couples now live together before they marry, a pattern that is not only accepted but also preferred (Dominguez-Folgueras & Castro-Martin, 2013).

Variation is also apparent in the purpose of cohabitation (Jose et al., 2010). About half of all cohabiting couples in the United States consider living together a prelude to marrying, which they expect to do when they are financially and emotionally ready. Many reach that point within three years. To be specific, a U.S. survey from 2006 to 2010 found that 40 percent of women in a first premarital cohabitation transitioned to marriage within three years, 32 percent were still cohabiting, and 27 percent had separated.

Overall, the quality of adult romantic relationships reflects early attachment styles, both anxious (too clingy and jealous) and avoidant (too distancing and secretive) (Collins & Gillath, 2012; Li & Chan, 2012). Adults who were securely attached infants are more likely to have secure relationships with their spouses as well as with their own children. Of course, plasticity is evident lifelong; early attachment affects adult relationships, but it does not determine them.

OPPOSING PERSPECTIVES

Cohabitation

Many emerging adults consider cohabitation to be a wise prelude to marriage, a way for people to make sure they are compatible before tying the knot and thus reducing the chance of divorce. However, research suggests the opposite.

Contrary to widespread belief, living together before marriage does not prevent problems that might arise after a wedding. In a meta-analysis, a team of researchers examined the results of 26 scientific studies of the consequences of cohabitation for the subsequent stability and quality of marriages and found that those who had lived together were more likely to divorce (Jose et al., 2010).

Another study looked at the effects of dating, cohabitation, and marriage on happiness, as assessed by participants’ answers to four questions (rated on a scale of 1 to 7) about how “ideal,” “excellent,” “satisfying,” and “accomplished” their life was (Soons et al., 2009). At the start of any romantic relationship—dating, cohabiting, or marriage—happiness on all four indicators increased; at the end of any of these, happiness decreased. Compared to cohabitation, happiness of married couples increased more in the beginning and decreased more at separation. This suggests that cohabitation is neither the ideal nor the marriage equivalent that many emerging adults believe.

Love You, Love You Not In a random sample of unmarried emerging adults (half men, half from two-parent homes, two-thirds European American, all from Toledo, Ohio) who had had a serious dating or cohabiting relationship in the past 2 years, some (15 percent) had broken up and not reunited, some (41 percent) had been together without breaking up, and some (44 percent) were churners, defined as having broken up and gotten together again with their partner. As you see, young adult relationships are often problematic, but churning correlates with the stormiest relationships, with half of churners fighting both physically and verbally.

Source: Halpern-Meekin et al., 2013.

Particularly problematic is churning, when couples live together, then break up, then come back together. Churning relationships have high rates of verbal and physical abuse (Halpern-Meekin et al., 2013) (see Figure 19.4, p. 558). Cohabitation is fertile ground for churning because the couple are not as committed to each other as they would be in marriage, but they cannot slow down their relationship as easily as dating couples can.

Although the research suggests many problems with cohabitation, most emerging adults engage in this lifestyle. Of course, humans tend to justify whatever they do. In this case, cohabiting adults typically think they have found intimacy without the restrictions of marriage, but they may be fooling themselves.

However, most published research on the long-term effects of cohabitation are based on people who cohabited 10 or 20 years ago. They might have been more rebellious and less religious than today’s cohabitants; that might explain why they were less happy in their eventual marriages compared to people who did not cohabit.

More-current research suggests the effects of cohabitation are less negative (Copen et al., 2013). Perhaps fewer cohabitants who marry will divorce than did a decade ago.

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Of course, cohabitation has one decided advantage: People save money by living together. Since the economic downtown has affected emerging adults more than older adults, this may be one reason for the current popularity of cohabitation.

National culture matters as well. Research in 30 nations finds that acceptance of cohabitation within the nation affects the happiness of those who cohabit. Within each of those 30 nations, demographic differences (such as education, income, age, and religion among the married and cohabitants) affect the happiness gap between cohabitation and marriage (Soons & Kalmijn, 2009). Another international study found that in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, New Zealand, Poland, Germany, and Norway, cohabitants were happier than married people (Lee & Ono, 2012).

All this suggests caution—neither the popularity of cohabitation nor the immediate happiness of those who move in together proves that cohabitation is beneficial over the long term. Yet in 2012, more than 16 million U.S. residents (7,845 couples) were in cohabiting relationships (United States Census, 2013).

Those 16 million chose a living arrangement other than the one that most research considers best. Do they know something that past research has not yet discovered?

Love, romance, and lasting commitment are all of primary importance for emerging adults, although many specifics have changed. As already mentioned, a defining characteristic of emerging adults is that they marry later: In the United States the average age at first marriage was 29 for men and 27 for women in 2012. This was three years later than in 2000 and six years later than in 1950.

Marriage is not what it once was—a legal and religious arrangement that couples sought as the exclusive avenue for sexual expression, the only legitimate prelude to childbearing, and a lifelong source of intimacy and support. The tie between marriage and childbearing is loosening. As many babies are born to unmarried as to married couples in many nations. Most emerging adults (52 percent in 2011) think “being a good parent” is one of the most important things in life; less than one-third (30 percent) say the same about a good marriage (Wang & Taylor, 2011).

Further evidence is found in U.S. statistics (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2013):

• Only half of all adults are married, living with their spouse.
• Only 12 percent of all emerging adults, ages 18–25, are married.
• The divorce rate is about half the marriage rate, not because more people are divorcing but because fewer people are marrying.
• Women having their first baby under age 30, are more often unmarried than married.

Such statistics make some fear that marriage is a dying institution. However, few developmentalists agree with that assessment, partly because emerging adults may be postponing, not abandoning, marriage. In fact, it seems that they have higher expectations for marriage than previous cohorts did, and they still see marriage as a marker of maturity and success (Cherlin, 2009). The efforts gay and lesbian couples have made to achieve marriage equality, and the backlash in “defense of marriage,” suggest the power of the institution (Obocock, 2013).

What does seem to have occurred, however, is a change in the relationship between love and marriage. Three distinct patterns were evident in the twentieth century.

In about one-third of the world’s families, love did not lead to marriage because parents arranged marriages that joined two families together. In roughly another one-third of families, adolescents met only a select group (single-sex schools keep them from unsuitable mates). Some then decided to marry, and young men asked the young women’s fathers for “her hand in marriage.” Parents supervised interactions and then bestowed their blessing. (When parents disapproved, young people separated or eloped—neither of which occurs often today.)

The “one-third” suggested for each of these two types is a rough approximation. In former times, nearly all marriages were of the first type, and the rest were of the second type; young people almost never met and married people unknown to their parents (Apostolou, 2007).

Currently, the practice in developing nations often blends these two types. For example, in modern India most brides believe they have a choice, but many meet their future husbands a few days before the wedding via parental arrangement. Typically, the man has more say in the union than the woman. The woman can refuse the match, but that is unusual (Desai & Andrist, 2010).

The final pattern is relatively new, although familiar to most readers of this book, and is becoming the most common one. Young people socialize with hundreds of others and are expected to fall in love but not marry until they are able to be independent, both financially and emotionally. Their choices tilt toward personal qualities observable at the moment—appearance, hygiene, sexuality, a sense of humor—and not to qualities that parents value, such as similar religion, ethnicity, and evidence of long-term stability.

For instance, a person who has been married and divorced is seen much more negatively by parents than by unpartnered adults (Buunk et al., 2008). In parts of India, love marriages have become more popular than arranged marriages, but marrying someone of a higher or lower caste is still much more troubling to the parents than to the emerging adults (Allendorf, 2013).

For Western emerging adults, love is considered a prerequisite for marriage, according to a survey of 14,121 individuals of many ethnic groups and sexual orientations (Meier et al., 2009). They were asked to rate from 1 to 10 the importance of money, same racial background, long-term commitment, love, and faithfulness for a successful marriage or a serious, committed relationship. Faithfulness was the most important of all (rated 10 by 89 percent) and love was almost as high (rated 10 by 86 percent). By contrast, most thought being the same race was not important (57 percent rated it 1, 2, or 3).

This survey was conducted in North America, but emerging adults worldwide share similar values. Halfway around the world, emerging adults in Kenya also reported that love was the main reason for couples to form and endure; money was less important (Clark et al., 2010). Elsewhere in Africa, although parental approval is more important than in the U.S., love between the couple is nonetheless crucial (Cole & Thomas, 2009).

What Makes Relationships Succeed?

As already stated, friendships and romances have much in common. They satisfy the need for intimacy. Friends and mates are selected in similar ways, with mutual commitments gradually increasing until someone becomes a lifelong best friend or a chosen partner. Best friends sometimes part, and long-term marriages may end in divorce, but that is neither the plan nor the usual sequence.

Another similarity is that close friendships and happy marriages aid self-esteem over the decades while providing practical support, including health benefits. Most of the research has focused on marriage, so that is what is reported here. However, similar findings apply to other intimate relationships as well.

From a developmental perspective, note that marriages evolve over time, sometimes getting better and sometimes worse. Among the factors that lead to i mprovement are good communication, financial security (more income or new employment), and the end of addiction or illness. Children are an added stress, with adolescents particularly trying for both parents (Cui & Donnellan, 2009).

Another developmental factor is maturity. In general, the younger the partners, the more likely they are to fight and separate, perhaps because, as Erikson recognized, intimacy is elusive before identity is achieved. An emerging adult who finally achieves identity might think, “I finally know who I am, and the person I am does not belong with the person you are.”

Similarity tends to solidify commitment, probably because similar people are likely to understand each other. Anthropologists distinguish between homogamy, or marriage within the same tribe or ethnic group, and heterogamy, marriage outside the group.

Traditionally, homogamy meant marriage between people of the same cohort, religion, SES, and ethnicity. For contemporary partners, homogamy and heterogamy also refer to similarity in interests, attitudes, and goals. Educational and economic similarity are becoming increasingly important, and ethnic similarity less so (Clark et al., 2010; Hamplova, 2009; Schoen & Cheng, 2006).

The data are clear on this issue. One in seven current marriages in the United States is officially counted as interethnic (Wang, 2012). Very broad ethnic categories are used. For example, Black people from Africa, the Caribbean, and America were considered one ethnic group; Asians from more than a dozen nations were another ethnicity; European ancestry was a third category, lumping eastern, western, northern, and southern Europe together.

Thus, a marriage between a Pakistani and a Chinese person would not be categorized as interethnic. Nor would a marriage between a person of Greek heritage and one of Norwegian ancestry, even though the couple might be well aware of ethnic differences. Given the reality of cultural differences, perhaps most marriages in the U.S. are not homogamous.

One thorny issue that arises among couples who live together involves the allocation of domestic work, which varies dramatically by culture. In some cultures and in the United States in earlier decades, if the husband had a good job and the wife kept the household running smoothly, each partner was content. This is no longer the case.

Many twenty-first century U. S. wives work outside the home and want their husbands to do much more housework than the men would prefer. On the other hand, many fathers want to be actively involved in child rearing, something women once assumed was their domain.

Today, partners expect each other to be friends, lovers, and confidants as well as wage earners and caregivers, with both partners cooking, cleaning, and caring for children—a worldwide trend, with notable cultural differences (Wong & Goodwin, 2009). Happier relationships are those in which both partners are hardworking as well as adept at emotional perception and expression.

As women earn more money and men do more housework, increased shared responsibilities may increase marital satisfaction. Although many aspects of marriage have changed over the decades (some increasing happiness, some not), in general, couples seem as happy with their relationship as they ever were (Amato et al., 2003). Indeed, the U.S. divorce rate for first marriages seems to have decreased since 2000.

Conflict

Every intimate relationship has the potential to be destructive. The most extreme example comes from homicide statistics: When a civilian person is killed, the perpetrator is usually a friend, an acquaintance, or a relative—especially a husband or wife (see Figure 19.5). Of course, that level of violence is rare; usually friends who seriously disagree go their separate ways.

Fair Fight? Close relationships include passion and intimacy, which almost always leads to conflict at some point. Ideally, arguments should be dealt with using humor and love, yet if a woman is murdered, most likely her lover/husband is the killer.

Source: Maguire, 2010.

Amicable distancing is less acceptable and more painful for married couples. We focus here on factors that make typical couples less happy than they might be and then on intimate partner violence. Some conclusions apply to friendships as well.

No relationship is always smooth; each individual has unique preferences and habits. I know this personally. My husband was much more bothered by disorganization than I was, something we had not realized when we were dating. But early in our marriage, he bought a plastic container that fit in a drawer in the top of our kitchen cabinet, and organized all the silverware, separating salad and dinner forks, soup and table spoons, and so on. I was furious; I liked my way, resented his actions, and blurted out half a dozen reasons why he was wrong and I was right. Fortunately, we figured out what was beneath my anger, and that fight became a joke in later decades.

If a couple “fights fair,” using humor and attending to each other’s emotions as they disagree, conflict can contribute to commitment and intimacy (Gottman et al., 2002). According to John Gottman, who has videotaped and studied thousands of couples, conflict is less predictive of separation than disgust because disgust closes down intimacy.

Not every researcher agrees. Some studies of young couples (dating, cohabiting, and married) report that conflict undermines the relationship. However, every social scientist agrees that communication skills are crucial (Wadsworth & Markman, 2012). Much depends on how the conflict ends—with better understanding, with resentment, or, worst of all, with a breakup that neither partner wanted (Halpern-Meeken et al., 2013).

One particularly destructive pattern is called demand/withdraw interaction— when one partner insists and the other retreats (e.g., “We need to talk about this” is met with “No—I’m too busy”). This pattern is part of a downward spiral, as increased demanding leads to slammed doors and angry exits (Merrill & Afifi, 2012).

An international study of young adults in romantic relationships (again, some dating, some cohabiting, some married) in Brazil, Italy, Taiwan, and the United States found that women were more likely demand and men withdraw, although even when sex roles were reversed, the pattern was harmful. The authors explain:

An unmet demand may cause domestic abuse, which obviously is far worse than mere “damage to relationship satisfaction.” In some abusive relationships, constructive communication is impossible; in others, mediation can teach both partners how to improve their relationship.

Young couples especially need such help because emerging adults are more likely to be victims and perpetrators of domestic abuse than people of any other age. For example, a large longitudinal study (Add Health) that began with a cross section of thousands of adolescents in the United States, most of them not in serious romantic relationships. In their early 20s, many were dating, cohabiting, or married, They were asked if there was verbal (“You’re ugly”; “You’re stupid”) or physical (slapping, beating, kicking) abuse. Close to half (41 percent) said yes. Because this study is large and prospective, that 41 percent is probably accurate.

Surveys from other nations report even higher rates of serious abuse. In China, 14 percent of women experienced “severe physical abuse” (hitting, kicking, beating, strangling, choking, burning, or use of a weapon) in their lifetime, with 6 percent reporting such abuse in the past year (almost always at the hands of their husbands) (Xu et al., 2005). In Iran, women reported widespread abuse by their husbands, including physical abuse (44 percent), sexual abuse (31 percent), and psychological abuse (83 percent) (Vakili et al., 2010). When verbal abuse was included (hostile or insulting comments) a study of a New Zealand cohort of 25-year-olds found that 70 percent of those in relationships (married or not) experienced abuse (Fergusson et al., 2005).

It is difficult to compare rates among nations, or even cohorts, since much depends on the survey questions, how they are asked, and to whom. For example, some studies of intimate partner violence among Hispanics in the U.S. report higher rates than among European Americans; other studies report lower rates (Cunradi, 2009). Both results are plausible. However, everyone agrees that the rates everywhere are much too high, that spouse abuse is almost the norm in some cultures, and that alcohol and drugs make violence more severe.

Traditionally, women, not men, were asked if they experienced domestic abuse because it was assumed that women were victims and men were abusers. It is true that more women are seriously injured or killed by male lovers than vice versa, evident in every hospital emergency room or police summary. However, when the definition of abuse includes threats, insults, and slaps as well as physical battering, some studies find more abusive women than men (Archer, 2000; Fergusson et al., 2005; Swan et al., 2008).

Context Changes Shirley Hendricks signs documents sealing the deal on her new life. A former drug addict, victim, and perpetrator of couple violence, Shirley is now safe from abuse—much to the joy of her parole officer (in back). She has a new job and she and her son now have a new home.

LEZLIE STERLING/THE SACRAMENTO BEE/ZUMA PRESS

The original, mistaken male-abuser/female-victim assumption occurred because abusive men are physically stronger, thus causing more injury. Moreover men are reluctant to admit that they are victims, and outsiders are less likely to believe them. Likewise, same-sex couples hesitate to publicly acknowledge conflict, although in domestic violence and most other aspects of relationships, they are very similar to heterosexual couples (Kurdek, 2006; Langhinrichsen-Rohling, 2009).

Social scientists have identified numerous causes of domestic violence, including youth, poverty, personality (such as poor impulse control), mental illness (such as antisocial disorders), and drug or alcohol addiction. Developmentalists note that many children who are harshly punished, sexually abused, or witness domestic assault grow up to become abusers or victims themselves. Neighborhood chaos is also a factor, as is the cultural acceptance of violence (Olsen et al., 2010).

Knowing these causes points toward prevention. Halting child maltreatment, for instance, averts some later abuse. It is also useful to learn more about each abusive relationship. Researchers differentiate two forms of partner abuse:

1. situational couple violence
2. intimate terrorism

Each of these has distinct causes, patterns, and means of prevention (M. P. Johnson, 2008; M. P. Johnson & Ferraro, 2000; Swan et al., 2008).

Situational couple violence occurs when both partners fight—with words, slaps, and exclusion (leaving home, refusing sex, and so on)—and yet both partners are sometimes caring and affectionate. The situation brings out the anger, and then the partners abuse each other. This is the most common form of domestic conflict, with women at least as active in situational violence as men.

Situational couple violence can be reduced with maturation and counseling; both partners need to learn how to interact without violence. Often the roots are in the culture, not primarily in the individuals, which makes it possible for adults who love each other to learn how to overcome the culture of violence (Olsen et al., 2010).

Intimate terrorism is more violent, more demeaning, and more likely to lead to serious harm. Usually intimate terrorism involves a male abuser and female victim, although the sex roles can be reversed (Dutton, 2012). Terrorism is dangerous to the victim and to anyone who intervenes. It is also difficult to treat because the terrorist gets some satisfaction from abuse, and the victim often submits and apologizes. Social isolation makes it hard for outsiders to know what is happening, much less to stop it. With intimate terrorism, the victim needs to be immediately separated from the abuser, relocated in a safe place, and given help to restore independence.