What is intimacy and how is it expressed

“Intimacy is a feeling or a connection that exists between intimate interpersonal relationships between people”. Intimacy is of two type i.e. emotional intimacy and physical intimacy. In physical intimacy the physical body is involved and some sexual activity takes place whereas emotional intimacy is based on feelings. Intimacy is a natural feeling that exists in living beings, it is important for human being to have an intimate relationship in order to spend a normal life.

The concept of “domesticated eroticism”, explains intimacy in a unique way. According to which love and sex do not have same boundary. Intimacy for some people is described as sex while others consider feeling of love and emotion as intimacy.

In the research by Monney-Somers and Usshers (2010) “hegemonic truth” was explained, where sex was centered on the physical body and had more relation with relational and emotional feelings. The distinction between love and sex may be especially relevant among men conforming to historically transmit hegemonic scripts or a ‘heterosexual sensibility’ that naturalizes men’s bodily desire for women. Intimacy in different way and here emotions like feeling attached to someone are like a feudal economic arrangement than ‘the institution of romantic love, fidelity and ‘‘pure’’ commitment’ of late modernity. The men’s view on viewing sex as an endpoint to viewing sex as a component of emotional intimacy’.

In literature intimacy is shown to have double standards, intimacy is viewed differently by both genders. “Young women are more permissive” as they value virginity and predicate sexual activity on love and committed romantic relationships. On the other hand “young men express disdain for virginity”, and they engage in sexual activity majorly due to curiosity and desire for physical pleasure, and welcome opportunities for casual sex’. This concept of sexual legitimates is linked with sexual freedom. Furthermore the concept of intimacy is different for both genders, men consider sex as intimate experience while women consider love as intimate experience. In the same way theoretically, male sexuality is ‘naturally driven’ and is taken-for-granted. The research papers considered for this assignment surveyed various theoretical and empirical writings. The writings were ranging from abstract ‘broad brush’ theorizations to ‘the masculinization of intimacy in men’s magazines’.

It is evident from the literature that there are many kinds of love, just as there are many objects and spaces of love such as: love between a parent and child; love of a sibling or friend; love of an animal or pet; a spiritual relationship; love of a particular object or activity; love groups (which are often about hate); and love of one’s country, kin or place. These types of love are distinctive in character, politicized in that some ‘loves’ are deemed to be ‘in place’ while others are ‘out of place’, and performed in a variety of ways and spaces. Expressions of love beyond the heteronormative are also intimately bound to our subjectivities, but are sometimes seen as less important or legitimate than romantic love. Certainly, such forms of love are marginalized, even stigmatized, in popular culture.

Generally geographers have not written about feelings affects, places and spaces of love, this article discusses intimacy in various geographical boundaries. As relationships and intimacy are the main themes of many movies, television magazines, songs and advertisements, its importance is indicated.  The literature indicates that “Love is an emotion” and affect that constrains and frees us on a daily basis. The literature further argue that research on love can offer new and exciting possibilities in the fields of social, cultural, feminist, queer, embodied, humanist, phenomenological, non-representational, and emotional.

Intimacy is a feeling and can be extreme in certain cases. There are many incidences of intimacy where the partner murder there intimate partners. The literature about men who use violence against women stresses the frequency with which they deny the violence, minimize its severity, and use various justifications and excuses, including blaming the victim for their use of violence and deflecting responsibility onto such things as alcohol. Although minimization of the violence, denial of responsibility, and blaming the victim are common among those who commit all types of violence, for these men they appear to be normative and deeply enmeshed in their personal views about women in general and about intimate partners in particular. These orientations justify the use of violence and negate responsibility for its use. Many partners later felt sorry for the act but in many cases intimacy can sometimes be extreme and create issues for people.  Theoretically cognitions of intimate partner murderers and is based on the reports of various professionals included in the casefiles of 104 men convicted of murdering an intimate partner. The results parallel and extend the findings of existing research about intimate partner violence and explanations about how violent offenders view their behavior. These results indicate that the majority of the men who murdered an intimate partner had problems in intimate relationships and a history of serious, repeat violent abuse of the woman they kill.

In many intimate relationships even after negative circumstances some women decide to stay with the partner. Women’s moral reasoning throughout this decision-making process was illustrated in the examples of the role of children and the role of financial dependence. The presence of children proved to be a salient factor that guided the moral reasoning of most women with dependent children. While the presence of children encouraged some women to leave eventually, it first and foremost informed the decision to stay in an attempt to minimize perceived risk and maximize perceived security for children. While the same women later felt that the benefits of staying no longer outweighed the risks of leaving, the decision was informed by the cost–benefit analysis around leaving an abusive partner who either used threats towards the children’s well-being to intimidate the victim or who at the same time of being an abusive partner also represented a father figure to the children and the breadwinner of the family. The most important is the financial dependence that forces women to stay even after some negative relationship. Some recent changes in theory indicated that now things are changing with time and now more gender equal relationships are being formed.

According to Maslows theory,” belief in the `naturalness’ of male dominance and female submission underlies Maslow’s needs hierarchy and his larger humanistic project”. There must be a gender difference in self-actualization, and the form that this difference should take, is clear from his portrayal of women’s sexuality. In the same way that biology ensures that male monkeys must be dominant and female monkeys must be subordinate, men must be dominant, and women must be subordinate. Not only is this natural, but it is desirable: women want to be dominated. For Maslow, while both men and women could and should strive for self-actualization, `true self-actualization for the female accepts; the primacy of the family’. Moreover, Maslow’s statement that `the pursuit and gratification of the higher needs lead to greater, stronger and truer individualism’ is an expression of the autonomous self, the male self that denies relatedness and thinks in terms of hierarchy rather than webs.

Intimate relationships appear in men’s lifestyle magazines to be saturated by the general ethos of social ambiguity within which they are formulated. The idea of a sexual mode of production eliminates some of the sense of risk accompanying the status of relationships as an essential investment in the project of self; however, it also seems to have very little to say about closeness andcommitment in sexually intimate relationships. The “management” slant on relationships presents intimacy as undermining sexual efficiency, and the science of sex presents rituals of intimacy as incompatible with a natural male sexuality. Further, the themes of work, manufacturing, and science are clearly at odds with the status of sex as fun, pleasurable, and instantly satisfying. While the sexual mode of production constructs good sex as something to be valued independently of the relational meaning of intimacy, the relationship utopia discourse reconciles sexual pleasure with intimacy by constructing a certain complementarity between these aspects of a relationship. This theme reconciles sexual pleasure with intimacy by constructing intimacy as a deep and powerful bond, characterized by trust and commitment; the pleasure of sexual relations both enhances and is enhanced by this bond.

Overall intimacy is a natural feeling that exists from time immemorial, it is required for normal functioning of body. Literatures expresses intimacy in various forms and explains various relationships between organisms. Generally intimacy is viewed differently by different genders, as indicated men and women consider intimacy differently. Similarly the feeling varies from people to people, some people are extreme and hence indicate different level of intimacy. In certain extreme cases as indicated by literature the intimacy can be extreme and some partners murdered their intimae partners. In conclusion intimacy is an emotional connection that is required for normal functioning of human life.

 

References

Anna, R., Chaos to Control Men’s Magazines and the Mastering of Intimacy

Carey-Ann, M.,  Lynda, J., & Robyn, L., (2012). Critical geographies of love as spatial, relational and political

Dallas, C. &Lise, G., (2002). From Orgasms to Organizations: Maslow, Women’s Sexuality and the Gendered Foundations of the Needs Hierarchy. Gender work and organization.

Lee, F., & Steve, R., (2012). Embodied Heterosexual Masculinities, Part 1: Confluent Intimacies, Emotions and Health

Emerson, D., & Russell, P., (2011). What Were They Thinking? Men Who Murder an Intimate Partner. Violence against women.

Silke, M., (2012). Why women stay: A theoretical examination of rational choice and moral reasoning in the context of intimate partner violence. Journal of Criminology

Thomas, J., (2011). Fatherhood in Transition: Paternity Leave and Changing Masculinities. Journal of Family Communication, 11: 165–180