If any area of research in love and intimacy has yielded conflicting findings, it is the question of gender differences. Research has found that women tend to give more importance to the future of intimate relationships than men do (Oner, 2001). Women think more about whether a romantic relationship will develop into a long-term committed relationship. However, Clark & Reis (1988) suggest that the subject remains murky because many other variables are at work.
Perhaps the most important factor is culturally transmitted gender roles. Men and women report equally desiring and valuing intimacy, some suggest, but men grow up with behavioral inhibitions to expressing intimacy. We are taught how to be male and female in society, and, from a very young age, boys are discouraged from displaying vulnerability or doubt about intimacy. As one man’s experience reveals in the accompanying Personal Voices, “In the Men’s Locker Room,” it is acceptable for men to talk about sex, but talk of intimacy is taboo. Although the author’s experience may have been extreme, exaggerated by the all-male atmosphere of the athletic team, such attitudes are communicated in subtle ways to most men. Therefore, men may remain unexpressive about intimacy, however strongly they may desire it. However, it could also be that men simply express intimacy differently; either they express intimacy more through action than words (Gilmore, 1990) or they use a language of intimacy that women do not always recognize (Tannen, 1990).
One study compared men and women who scored high on a scale of masculinity or femininity to those who scored high on both (androgyny; Coleman & Ganong, 1985). In Chapter 3 we discussed androgyny. Androgynous people have been found to be more aware of their love feelings, more expressive, and more tolerant of their partner’s faults than those who scored high only on the masculinity scale; they were also more cognitively aware, willing to express faults, and tolerant than those who scored high only on the femininity scale.
The importance of accepting traditional gender roles is also reflected in comparisons of homosexual and heterosexual men. Though homosexual and heterosexual men agree on the ideal characteristics of love partners and express the same amounts and kinds of love, gay men are more likely to believe that “you should share your most intimate thoughts and feelings with the person you love” (Engel & Saracino, 1986, p. 242). This may be because gay men tend to adopt fewer stereotyped beliefs about gender roles than heterosexual men.