Emotional Intimacy Among Coupled Heterosexual and Gay/Bisexual Croatian Men: Assessing the Role of Minority Stress

Abstract

Emotional intimacy cuts across contexts as diverse as sexual motivation and satisfaction, psychological and physical health, and relational well-being. Although the experience of intimacy and its effects on sex life may be gender and sexual orientation-specific, the role of intimacy in personal and sexual relationships has been studied mostly among heterosexual individuals and couples. Using the minority stress framework (Meyer, 2003) to address this gap in knowledge, the present study comparatively explored levels and predictors/correlates of emotional intimacy, and its association with sexual satisfaction among coupled heterosexual and gay/bisexual men sampled online in a predominantly homonegative country (Croatia). Heterosexual participants (n = 860; M age = 36.4, SD = 9.09) were recruited in 2011 and gay/bisexual participants (n = 250; M age = 29.4, SD = 7.13) in 2013. Controlling for age and relationship duration, gay/bisexual men reported higher levels of emotional intimacy than heterosexual men. Suggesting that the role of emotional intimacy in sexual satisfaction is not sexual orientation-specific, the strength of the association between these two constructs was similar in both samples. However, internalized homonegativity, which was negatively associated with emotional intimacy in this study, remains a challenge to creating and maintaining intimacy in male same-sex relationships.

Revisión sistemática sobre la satisfacción sexual en parejas del mismo sexo

“…Este estigma afectaría, entre otras áreas, a la salud sexual y psicológica. En este sentido, juega un papel importante la homonegatividad interiorizada abordada en seis de los trabajos revisados (Dupras, 1994;Henderson et al, 2009;Kuyper y Vanwesenbeeck, 2011;Rosser et al, 1997;Šević et al, 2016;Zheng y Zheng, 2017). Según el Modelo de Estrés de Minorías de Meyer (2003), el estrés afecta al estado mental de la persona por percibirse estigmatizado a causa de prejuicios, estereotipos y discriminación.…”

“…Es decir, niveles bajos de homonegatividad interiorizada (Dupras, 1994;Henderson et al, 2009;Kuyper y Vanwesenbeeck, 2011;Rosser, Metz, Bockting y Buroker, 1997;Šević, Ivanković y Štulhofer, 2016; Zheng y Zheng, 2017) y una orientación sexual egosintónica (Rosser et al, 1997) se asocian positivamente con la satisfacción sexual.…”

“…En mujeres se encontró que las prácticas sexuales no orgásmicas se asociaron con mayor satisfacción sexual (Holmberg y Blair, 2009). También mayor satisfacción sexual se relacionó con la percepción de mayor intimidad emocional y sentimientos de cercanía (Carvalheira y Costab, 2015;Gamarel et al, 2014;Šević et al, 2016;Totenhagen et al, 2012), menor distanciamiento sexual (Deenen et al, 1994), mayor contingencia en la relación (Sánchez et al, 2011), menor incidencia de celos sexuales (Parsons, Starks, Gamarel y Grov, 2012), cohabitar con la pareja (Biss y Horne, 2005;Smith y Horne, 2008;Tracy y Junginer, 2007) y mayor satisfacción con el tipo de acuerdo sexual dentro de la relación de pareja (Carballo-Diéguez, Remien y Wagner, 2000;Hosking, 2014). Además, una alta satisfacción con la relación de pareja (Henderson et al, 2009;Holmberg et al, 2010;Rosser et al, 1997;Sánchez-Fuentes y Sierra, 2015;Tracy y Junginger, 2007) se asoció de manera positiva con la satisfacción sexual.…”

Sexually explicit media use and relationship satisfaction: a moderating role of emotional intimacy?

“…Accordingly, among men, SEM use may be understood as a coping mechanism used in relationships characterized by low or reduced emotional intimacy. As emotional intimacy may be related to both sexual desire and sexual satisfaction (Basson, 2001(Basson, , 2005Ferreira et al, 2014;Sevi c et al, 2015;Stulhofer et al, 2014), low levels of emotional intimacy may result in less frequent and less satisfying coupled sexual activity, leading to more frequent solitary sexual activities, such as masturbation, involving the use of SEM (Carvalheira, Traeen, & Stulhofer, 2014). Taking into account that SEM use is more integral to men's than to women's solitary sexual activities (Hald, 2006;Hald et al, 2014), the above-mentioned studies help to qualify our finding that the association between SEM use and relationship satisfaction was observed only among men with lower levels of emotional intimacy.…”

Male Body Image Self-Consciousness During Physical Intimacy (M-BISC): Validating the M-BISC With Gay Men

“…Moreover, gay men experienced the most body image concern during intimacy when compared to lesbian women and heterosexual men and women. Lastly, in a comparative study assessing SD in a sample of heterosexual and gay Croatian men, positive body image was inversely associated with self-reported SD for gay male participants, but not for heterosexual men [25]. Although the amount of research pertaining to gay men's SD and body image concerns is relatively small, the existing literature implies the two variables may be correlated.…”