Happiness and dimensions of relationship intimacy across gender, sex of partner, and cultures

Correlations between happiness and dimensions of intimacy were analyzed using data from an on-going cross-cultural study of intimate relationships in multiple languages at http://web.whittier.edu/chill/ir. The questionnaire asked about social background, attitudes and values, current intimate relationship (if any), and well-being. Students and non-students were recruited in countries in North America (United States, Canada, and Mexico), South America (Argentina and Colombia), and Europe (Spain, Italy, and Romania), plus others responded from 41 other countries. Among the 3048 respondents, 71% were women and 73% described a current relationship, of which 74% were opposite-sex and 26% were same-sex, including 11% opposite-sex marriages and 9% same-sex marriages. For both sexes, happiness was positively correlated with measures of love, self-disclosure, expressions of affection, certainty of partner's affection, parents and others knowing and approving of partner, relationship benefits, emotional closeness, sexual satisfaction, and overall relationship satisfaction. This was true for both married and unmarried opposite-sex samples, and for both married and unmarried same-sex samples, recruited in the USA, and for unmarried opposite-sex samples recruited in eight other countries, except for Mexico and Argentina that generally had lower intimacy ratings. In sum, links between intimacy and happiness are often similar in spite of differences in gender, sex of partner, and culture.