Romantic Relationships 307Both females and males are likely to include
romance in their conceptions of an intimate
relationship (e.g., We would hold hands; think
of ourselves as a couple).
If men are more likely than women to de-
fine intimacy through sexuality, we would ex-
pect the most sexual behavior to occur among
two gay men and the least to occur among two
lesbians. This turns out to be true (Herek, 2006;
Peplau & Fingerhut, 2007). It is not clear why
lesbians have the least sex. It may be because
lesbians are less interested in sex, the traditional
concept of sex as intercourse does not apply, or
females have difficulty initiating sex. Like het-
erosexual males, the same level of intimacy is not
required for the development of passion among
gay men compared to women (Vohs & Bau-
meister, 2004). Gay men develop passion more
quickly than heterosexual females and lesbians.
If women’s friendships are closer than
those of men and women are more relation-
ship focused than men, it seems likely that a
romantic relationship between two women
will be closer or more intimate than a roman-
tic relationship that involves at least one man.
This turned out not to be the case in a com-
parison of the intimacy level of cohabiting
lesbians, cohabiting gay men, and heterosex-
ual married people (Kurdek, 1998). Instead,
lesbians and gay men reported greater in-
timacy than heterosexual married people.
Despite the higher intimacy, lesbians and gay
men also reported a greater sense of auton-
omy than heterosexual married couples (e.g.,
having separate friends from partner, making
decisions without checking with partner).Love
What is love? Many people have shared poetic
thoughts (“Beauty and Love Quotes,” 2000):“To love a thing means wanting it to live.”
(Confucius,Analects, 6th century b.c., 12.10,
translated by Ch’u Chai and Winberg Chai)and higher on traditional gender roles than
the European Canadians. And, traditional
gender roles accounted for part of the group
difference in self-disclosure and relationship
satisfaction.
The role of self-disclosure in intimacy
is evolving as our access to one another has
exponentially increased due to online com-
munications and technologies. For younger
people, disclosure increasingly takes place via
cell phone, via text, and via personal pages,
such as Facebook. A 2007 survey showed that
25% of teens communicate with a boyfriend
or girlfriend by cell phone or text message be-
tween midnight and 5 a.m. (Subrahmanyam &
Greenfield, 2008). Teens both initiate and
terminate relationships with these methods.
When my daughter started middle school in
sixth grade, I was amazed to learn that some of
her friends were “going out” with one another.
I naively asked exactly what this involved. It
typically involved a text-related initiation of a
relationship, a text-maintained relationship,
and a text-related breakup. I remember ago-
nizing for hours about how to break up with a
guy when I was 14 years old. If only text mes-
saging had been available! Another convenient
way to break up with someone today is to
change one’s status from “in a relationship” to
“single” on one’s Facebook page.
There is some evidence that the relation
between intimacy and sex differs for women
and men (Vohs & Baumeister, 2004). An in-
crease in intimacy is associated with a greater
increase in passion among males than females.
And, females seem to require greater intimacy
than males to develop passion. Expressing feel-
ings, such as saying “I love you,” prior to sex is
more strongly associated with positive feelings
about the relationship and about having had
sex among females than males (Metts, 2004).
Even among teens, males are more likely than
females to incorporate sex into their notions
of an intimate relationship (Cavanagh, 2007).M09_HELG0185_04_SE_C09.indd 307 6/21/11 12:40 PM