Intimacy Among Friends and changing Concepts of Love and Companionship

1. Intimacy Among Friends and changing Concepts of Love and Companionship Gerontology 410 Feb 2008

2. Intimacy Patterns • Adults aged 70 plus when surveyed indicated that in the past two weeks prior to the survey 88% had contact with friends or neighbors, 64% had eaten out, 50% attended a religious service, 27% a movie, 16% had volunteered. Interactions with others can provide emotional/social support • Friends attend to each other’s needs. Those surveyed of both genders indicated 6 close friends and 11 casual friends and they had known them from 6-45 years.

3. Intimacy patterns • Half of all friends were of the same sex as respondents and 60% had the same marital status. 80% the same religious preference, 65% equal in power and status. Average contact was 6-12 times a year. Men had fewer friends than women and a large proportion were of the same gender. Friendship is cognitive, affective and behavioral. Three processes that form the concept of intimacy. Cognitive is “person perception” Affective is liking, feeling secure, enjoyment, love, trust, warmth, mutual respect, admiration.

4. Intimacy • Behavioral-topics discussed, correspondence, self-disclosure, respect for privacy, frequent contact and good communication. • Myths: Social contacts decrease with age, increasing age brings about a decline in sexual desire and interest. Older adults are physically unable to be intimate • Sex, love and romance is equated with youth and cultural expectations, considering ageing as a disease process, focusing on sickness and ill health rather than on more normative samples.

5. Intimacy • Sexual morality-sexual behavior is now considered a part of intimacy and the elderly do not lack capacity for sexual activity or sexual performance. Let us review some of the common myths that are held about the elderly and sexuality.

6. Concepts of Love and Companionship • Seidler maintains that men grow up without ever learning how to care for others. They expect women to care for them but do not understand the reciprocal needs. Women then may expect little emotional support from men. Intimacy and partner support may in fact be owed to men and used only so that they can compete successfully against other men. Task orientation may be easier than to enrich emotional and sexual relationships. Work may exhaust men for satisfying sexual relationships

7. Companionship • Education into masculinity may leave men emotionally underdeveloped and may be projected into a fear of intimacy, with excessive needs to be self-sufficient and independent. • Sexual identity may just be social and historical constructions and not based on the “emotional self” • Intimacy means commitment, vulnerability and closeness. Men can be sexual without being intimate • This may result in the male being the sexual aggressor, the need for the female to achieve orgasm

8. Companionship • And to treat sex as a commodity rather than in the context of relationship. To love and to need another cannot be seen in these terms. Love is has few control aspects and seeks more to nurture. Sex has to be negotiated and this means respect for each others needs and wants. This can mean being dependent and passive as well as active and independent. • Learning to voice these needs in a clear and open way is part of sexual communication.

9. Sexual Communication • What has to happen to engage in sexual communication at any age? • Identifying our needs, taking individual responsibility for our sexual lives, learning to voice our wants and desires, being open to discovery, learning to respond to our bodies as our needs and physical aging changes. • Sex must not be a matter of performance which in turn can damage individual egos, nor must it become a central factor in life to the exclusion of other areas

10. Sexual Communication • Women who have grown up in a society where men have power and privilege and relationships with men are based on sex-appeal, submissive sexuality, and intimacy only within the context of marriage, late life experience without men in a relationship may be unsettling. Men may have taken the role of leader, partner, companion. Extended life span may not be the same as extended health span. Older women have grown up as a non-dominant group and “within” relationships, often dependent and enmeshed

11. Sexual Communication • However, women seem to grow more autonomous with age and men more relational. Older people are faced with the issues of transformation and growth across the life cycle. • Since sexual attraction is tied in with body image, how to older people communicate their sexual attractiveness. The aging body may again present powerlessness and devaluation. Older women have also learned not to be the sexual aggressor or initiator of sexual relations

12. Sexual Communication • After children are raised and leave home, women are left with role loss, loss of intimacy and nurturing. • This requires new challenges to relate sexually and intimately with others. • How do we communicate? Body image, clothing, social activities, speech, touch. Expressive sexuality in terms of sensual pleasures-masturbation, massage, aromatherapy, remembering, same sex companionship, internet relationships, telephone sex, fantasies.