Importance of Intimacy in Friendship

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Breaking the Barrier: The Importance of Intimacy in Friendship The focus of my research is to uncover the importance of intimacy in friendship particularly between men. I will describe and compare comradeship, a non-intimate form of friendship, and intimate friendships. Secondly, I will discuss the obstacles of intimacy with a concentration on males in Western culture. Third, I will compare the different views of intimacy between men and women. Lastly, I will discuss Aristotle’s view of friendship and compare intimate friendships to what he calls “complete friendship”. Research finds that male students tended to report loving the same sex friends less than women did on a love and liking scale report in 1970. (Tognoli) Although the information met societal expectation, a poll-based data does not satisfy like experience-based data. In 1976, another research reported that all-male college groups were less intimate and open to each other compared to their women counterparts. The men shared less about their feelings or personal information compared to women. (Tognoli) The intimacy level, the strength and the context of the male bond is generally weaker than that of women’s friendship. According to JH Pleck, the “emotional relationships (men have) with other men are weak and often absent…” (Tognoli). In the 1970s men were faced with legal sanctions, this restriction in behavior of men greatly contributed to preventing intimacy. For example, the simple act of hand-holding, kissing and hugging between men in public could get a person arrested. (Tognili) These men who were trained to distance themselves from the opposite sex up until recently may find it difficult to transition to a more liberal way of life. This of course is a stricter comparison to today’s more liberal standards, but it shows how it was just up until recently when men were accepted, to a degree, to

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