intimacy

Sociology

(noun)

Feeling or atmosphere of closeness and openness towards someone else, not necessarily involving sexuality.

Related Terms

  • courtship
  • courtly love
Psychology

(noun)

A feeling or atmosphere of closeness and openness towards someone else, not necessarily involving sexuality.

Related Terms

  • mid-life crisis

Examples of intimacy in the following topics:

  • Effects of Group Size on Stability and Intimacy

    • As people have more and more online friends, how does this effect group stability and intimacy?
  • Attraction: Loving

    • Psychologist Robert Sternberg views love as a triangle whose three sides consist of passion, intimacy, and commitment.
    • Companionate love, on the other hand, is best defined as passionate love that has settled to a warm enduring love between partners in a relationship; in Sternberg's terms, it is comprised of intimacy and commitment. 
    • Fatuous love is both passionate and committed, but lacks the stability that intimacy brings to relationships.
    • According to Sternberg, love consists of three components: passion (infatuation), commitment (companionship), and intimacy (liking).
  • The Challenges of Adulthood

    • Erik Erikson proposed that people in early and middle adulthood struggle with two particular crises: intimacy vs isolation and generativity vs. stagnation.
    • Intimacy vs. isolation (from around age 20 into 30's and beyond) marks the challenge of being alone versus being involved in meaningful relationships.
  • Romantic Love

    • During the initial stages of a romantic relationship, there is more often more emphasis on emotions—especially those of love, intimacy, compassion, appreciation, and affinity—rather than physical intimacy.
    • Within an established relationship, romantic love can be defined as a freeing or optimizing of intimacy in a particularly luxurious manner, or perhaps in greater spirituality, irony, or peril to the relationship.
  • The Development of Value-Driven Firms

  • Eye Contact

    • Eye contact can establish a sense of intimacy between two individuals, such as the gazes of lovers or the eye contact involved in flirting.
  • Social Interaction in Urban Areas

    • Contact with the hypothetical person that Georg Simmel calls "the stranger" changes the way urban dwellers think about intimacy, personal space, and casual interactions.
    • Contact with the hypothetical person that Georg Simmel calls "the stranger" changes the way urban dwellers think about intimacy, personal space, and casual interactions.
  • Socioemotional Development in Adulthood

    • These areas relate to the tasks that Erik Erikson referred to as generativity vs. stagnation and intimacy vs. isolation.
    • A lack of positive and meaningful relationships during adulthood can result in what Erikson termed the crisis of intimacy vs. isolation in his theory of psychosocial development.
  • Dimensions of Human Development

    • It may be hard to establish intimacy if one has not developed trust or a sense of identity.
  • Applied Body Language

    • Flirting usually involves speaking and behaving in a way that suggests a mildly greater level of intimacy than the actual relationship between parties would justify, though within the rules of social etiquette, which generally frown upon a direct expression of sexual interest.
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