need a reading response. ( two pages, in 5 hours)

10/18/2017 Yuzu: Psychology of Gender: Fourth Edition

https://reader.yuzu.com/#/books/9781317345046/cfi/6/36!/4/2/2/2@0:0 1/2

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Gay men and lesbians are attracted to a similar set of characteristics in potential mates as heterosexuals. Gay men, like heterosexual men, are interested in a mate’s physical attractiveness-more than lesbians are. However, lesbians, unlike heterosexual women, are not attracted to a potential mate’s financial resources.

People make trade-offs when choosing mates. When trade-offs have to be made, sex differences are minimized, and women and men choose more similar mates. Sex differences in mate preferences can be explained by evolutionary theory, social role theory, and social construction theory. The weakness of evolutionary theory is that it cannot explain men’s preferences for women with domestic skills; the weakness of social role theory is that it cannot explain men’s preferences for attractive mates. Both theories, however, can explain why women prefer a mate with greater economic resources. Social construction theory of mate preferences is supported by cultural differences in mate preferences. Sex differences in mate preferences may be larger in more traditional cultures where men’s and women’s roles are distinct and women have less access to economic resources. Historically, and still today, society expects men to initiate romantic relationships. Despite this expectation, men may be relatively uncomfortable having this responsibility. First date scripts for relationship initiation among heterosexuals and homosexuals contain similar components. Just as heterosexual men take the proactive role in relationships more than heterosexual women, gay men are more proactive than lesbians. However, other aspects of the first date script are not divided by sex in homosexual relationships in the way that they are in heterosexual relationships.

THE NATURE OF ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS Romantic relationships are expected to provide closeness or intimacy, love, and sexual exclusivity. I examine each of these aspects of romantic relationships.

Intimacy I remember interviewing an elderly couple several months after the husband had suffered a heart attack. I spoke to the two individually. During the course of the separate conversations, I learned that each person had a different conceptualization of “closeness.” The wife told me of an occasion when the two of them were sitting together in the living room and watching television. She was not very interested in the television program and he was not talking to her. Because he wasn’t paying any attention to her, she went into the other room and called a friend. The husband told me about the same interaction, but it held a different meaning for him. He told me that the two of them were sitting comfortably together watching television, something he defined as a moment of closeness. Then, all of a sudden, she disrupted this moment by leaving the room and calling a friend. They were both upset by the sequence of events, but for different reasons. These two people had different definitions of intimacy. She defined intimacy by talking or self-disclosure; because the two of them were not talking, she didn’t consider the interaction very meaningful, so she called a friend. He defined intimacy more as a feeling of comfort in the other’s presence and physical proximity. She disrupted this connection by leaving the room.

Although my anecdote suggests differences in women’s and men’s conceptualizations of intimacy, empirical research has suggested that women’s and men’s overall conceptualizations are quite similar. One feature of intimacy that seems to be central to women’s and men’s definitions is self-disclosure. When European and Chinese Canadian dating couples were asked to describe intimacy, the most frequent response was self- disclosure (Marshall, 2008). The Chinese Canadians scored lower on selfdisclosure, lower on relationship satisfaction, 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 communications 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 between midnight and 5 A.M.

10/18/2017 Yuzu: Psychology of Gender: Fourth Edition

https://reader.yuzu.com/#/books/9781317345046/cfi/6/36!/4/2/2/2@0:0 2/2

(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 agonizing for hours about how to break up with a guy when I was 14 years old. If only text messaging 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 increase 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 feelings, 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). Both 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 define intimacy through sexuality, we would expect 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 heterosexual males, the same level of intimacy is not required for the development of passion among gay men compared to women (Vohs & Baumeister, 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 relationship focused than men, it seems likely that a romantic relationship between two women will be closer or more intimate than a romantic relationship that involves at least one man. This turned out not to be the case in a comparison of the intimacy level of cohabiting lesbians, cohabiting gay men, and heterosexual married people (Kurdek, 1998). Instead, lesbians and gay men reported greater intimacy than heterosexual married people. Despite the higher intimacy, lesbians and gay men also reported a greater sense of autonomy 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)