The Experience of Emotional Intimacy in African American Couples PDF Download

Author: Christina Nicole Clarke
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 292

View

Book Description
There is no clear definition of emotional intimacy in the literature (Yoo, Bartle-Haring, Day, and Gangamma, 2014). Furthermore, the specific area of African American relationships has received minimal attention and is typically deficit-based (Bryant, Wickrama, Bolland, Bryant, Cutrona, and Stanik, 2010). The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of married, African American couples, and the role of emotional intimacy in their relationships. The research questions are: How do African American couples in this study experience and describe emotional intimacy in their relationships? and How do African American couples in this study sustain emotional intimacy in their long-term relationships? This is a qualitative constructionist multiple case study (Yin, 2014) that is exploratory in nature with each couple being one case. Three couples were interviewed individually and conjointly. Braun and Clarke's (2006) thematic analysis was used to analyze within and across-cases. The cross-case themes identified across all three couples are separated into two sections based on the research questions. Section 1 provides themes on describing emotional intimacy. Two themes and one subtheme were yielded: (a) Vulnerability; (b) Connection, subtheme: More than roommates. Section 2 provides themes on sustaining emotional intimacy. Four themes were yielded: (a) embracing community strengths; (b) the couple as a haven; (c) increasing emotional expression through personal growth; (d) committing to the work. The four themes identified in the cross-case analysis provide the beginnings of a model on emotional intimacy and African American couples. This study was able to identify how couples experience and sustain emotional intimacy in the face of negative narratives named in the interviews. Those negative narratives undermine the vulnerability required to maintain emotional intimacy. However, the couples processed multiple ways in which they take measures to experience and sustain emotional intimacy.

Author: Katherine M. Helm
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136731083
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 322

View

Book Description
This exciting new text on counseling African American couples outlines critical components to providing culturally-sensitive treatment. Built around a framework that examines African American couples’ issues as well as the specific contextual factors that can negatively impact their relationships, it: • Addresses threats to love and intimacy for Black couples • Provides culturally relevant, strengths-based approaches and assessment practices • Includes interesting case studies at the conclusion of each chapter that illustrate important concepts. The chapters span the current state of couple relationships; readers will find information for working with lesbians and gays in relationships, pastoral counseling, and intercultural Black couples. There is also a chapter for non-Black therapists who work with Black clients. Dispersed throughout the book are interviews with prominent African American couples’ experts: Dr. Chalandra Bryant, relationship expert Audrey B. Chapman, Dr. Daryl Rowe and Dr. Sandra Lyons-Rowe, and Dr. Thomas Parham. They provide personal insight on issues such as the strengths African Americans bring to relationships, their skills and struggles, and gender and class considerations. This must-read book will significantly help you and your clients.

Author: M. Jeannelle Perkins-Muhammad
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
ISBN: 1632996510
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 154

View

Book Description
Couples seek real intimacy. Yet so few achieve it. The hurdles are especially high for Black couples. Intimacy is fundamental to sustaining a healthy romantic relationship. With true intimacy, partners allow themselves to be open and vulnerable; to discuss emotions, experiences, and needs freely. They rely on each other for safety, both physically and emotionally. In Into-Me-See, licensed therapist Dr. Jeannelle Perkins-Muhammad explores the cultural and personal factors that can make it challenging for Black couples to develop and maintain intimacy. The book’s title comes from a cultural idiom that describes the ability to look beyond the physical and look deeper to see the greater connection to another person. Unique among books on intimacy, Into-Me-See explores specific cultural issues affecting Black couples, including how a history of slavery and the ongoing racism in America have created relationship expectations that often work against intimacy. Other topics include— • The four different levels of intimacy—physical, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual—that must be addressed to deepen our intimate connections. • The importance of bringing mental and emotional challenges into the open, so that they can no longer sabotage efforts to become more intimate. Real-life stories from Dr. Perkins-Muhammad’s work show how Black couples have overcome the challenges they faced to find the deeply intimate and rewarding relationships we all seek. Whether you are in a brand-new relationship or have been with your partner for decades, Into-Me-See will show you how to take the first steps to a deeper, long-lasting intimate relationship.

Author: Patricia Dixon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135916748
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 301

View

Book Description
African American Relationships, Marriages, and Families is a historically and culturally centered text designed for relationship, marriage and family educators and therapists who work with African American singles and couples. Complete with numerous exercises, the book helps singles and couples increase their self-awareness, partner awareness and respect, and appreciation for difference. It also helps foster effective communication and conflict resolution skills, showing readers how to develop and maintain healthy relationships, marriages, and families. No ground is left uncovered in Dixon’s thoughtful and considered analysis.

Author: Jon Carlson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136976469
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 420

View

Book Description
The loss of intimacy is one of the most difficult—but also one of the most common—factors in the destruction of any relationship. Recovering Intimacy in Love Relationships lays out practical, evidence-based guidelines on which clinicians can depend as they wade through the intense emotions and fragile bonds of couples in crisis. With care and sensitivity, the book's authors analyze the increasingly complex context in which the cycle of intimacy develops, wanes, and recovers. The chapters delve into diverse populations' attitudes toward intimacy and provide an entire section on cultural, gender and religious issues. Clinicians looking for a research-based, practical take on the many facets of intimacy in the twenty-first century need look no further than this book.

Author: Latonya S. Stephens
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Blacks
Languages : en
Pages : 137

View

Book Description
There are many definitions and forms of intimacy. Emotional intimacy is not a common phrase used in everyday conversation, but for this study, it is a term that is explored and a growing concept to describe a human need that is expressed in close relationships and between married couples. Emotional intimacy is "the ability to share feelings and thoughts. It occurs when the communication and trust level is good enough to foster mutual sharing of each other's innermost selves" (Mayo Clinic Health Solutions, 2007, p. 5). Gaia (2002) defined emotional intimacy as "any reported experience of psychological intimacy within a close relationship" (p. 152). Emotional intimacy can manifest through intimate conversations, hugs, respect, attractiveness to spouse, honesty and openness, family commitment, and sexual fulfillment, contributing to satisfying marriages and a secure attachment bond (Harley, 1992; Parker & Scannell, 1998). The lack of emotional intimacy may manifest through demanding or withdrawing behaviors, such as retreating from conversations or "shutting down/stonewalling," defensiveness, stubbornness, blaming, or harsh criticism, contributing to a distressful marriage and insecure attachment (Gottman & Krokoff, 1989; Johnson, 2004; Johnson & Greenberg, 1985; Menking, 2010). Emotional intimacy may be a learned skill that affects marital stability (Boden, Fischer, & Niehuis, 2009). If emotional intimacy affects the stability of a marital relationship, the lack of emotional intimacy will affect marriages as well, increasing the number of divorces. This dissertation discusses the historical, theoretical and cultural affect of emotional intimacy between marital statuses, genders, as well as South Africa and the United States.

Author: Shea M. Dunham
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 163

View

Book Description
"The decline in African Americans choosing to marry and the increase in African Americans deciding to divorce (U.S. Census, 2003) are juxtaposed against a dearth of research on African American Marriage and marital intervention models specifically tested with African Americans. Cordova and his associates attempted to expand on the 'fuzziness' of definitions of intimacy in marital research with their behavioral theory of intimacy (Cordova & Scott, 2001). They expanded this view into a model, Emotional Skillfulness Theory, of how specific emotional skills, intimacy, and marital satisfaction are related (Cordova, Gee, & Warren, 2005). Cordova, Gee, and Warren's (2005) study exploring emotional skillfulness and subsequent studies supported the basics of this model. However, like much research in the marital field, these studies were done with a predominantly Caucasian sample. The current study examined emotional skillfulness theory and the possible impact emotional skillfulness may have on martial satisfaction and the intimacy process among African Americans. Emotional skills were defined by the ability to identify and communicate emotions. Specifically, the differences between husbands' and wives' scores on measures of emotional skills, the relationship between participants' self-perceived emotional skills and one's own intimate safety and marital satisfaction, and whether intimate safety mediates between emotional skills and marital satisfaction. Two hundred and sixty four participants (132 married couples) completed measures that assessed emotional skillfulness, marital satisfaction, and intimate safety. The results supported much of Emotional Skillfulness Theory with African American couples. No significant differences were found between husbands' and wives' scores on Difficulty Identifying Emotions and Difficulty Communicating Emotions. For both husbands and wives one's own Difficulty Identifying Emotions was negatively correlated with spouses' marital satisfaction and Intimate Safety. Husbands' Difficulty Communicating Emotions was also negatively correlated to wives' Marital Satisfaction and Intimate Safety; Wives' Difficulty Communicating Emotions was negatively correlated with husbands' marital satisfaction, but was not significantly associated with husbands' Intimate Safety. Finally, it was found that Intimate Safety mediated between emotional skills and marital satisfaction."--Abstract.

Author: Dr. Sametta Hill
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1546230211
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 82

View

Book Description
Most psychological research studies today account for the relational problems of African American heterosexual couples inability to stay together in terms of contemporary factors such as female-headed households, mass incarceration, racial achievement gap in academic performance, infidelity, etc. These factors are symptoms of a more foundational problem. The intergenerational traumatic impact of slavery and its aftermath (e.g., Jim Crow) is the source for these couples inability to stay together. This book will be restricted to historical traumas originating under slavery. The practices implemented during slavery disrupted bonding and secure attachment between adult heterosexual couples. A deeper psychohistorical understanding of this intergenerational disruption will help us understand current issues among African American men and women. The book will move beyond individual and couple dyad perspective and bring family system concepts to bear in understanding the transgenerational transmission of trauma and its contemporary manifestations in intimate relationships. The purpose is to answer this question: What are the psychohistorical effects of psychological slavery on attachment and trust in the intimate relationship among African American men and women? This book will utilize sociological and psychological theories drawn from functionalism, neofunctionalism, attachment theory, family systems, and other relevant literatures to develop a psychohistorical analysis of relational problems of heterosexual African American couples today having transgenerational roots in slavery. Attachment theory will be used to explain attachment and trust ruptures in contemporary intimate relationships and their psychohistorical roots. Emotionally focused therapy is the suggested treatment approach that may help the couple repair attachment ruptures.

Author: Paul T. Guillory
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000417492
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 212

View

Book Description
Emotionally Focused Therapy with African American Couples: Love Heals is an essential guide that integrates emotionally focused therapy (EFT) with cultural humility. It provides a pathbreaking, evidence-based model of couples work that reinforces the bond between partners in the face of race-based distress. Guillory explores and brings a deep understanding of the legacy of racial trauma, and the cultural strengths of African American couples by using real-life case studies. The chapters in the book focus on several key clinical issues in the field, such as communication problems, anxiety, infidelity, depression, and porn. Each case study is enhanced by a consultation with EFT master therapist Sue Johnson. The book is an essential text for students and mental health professionals looking to provide culturally competent therapeutic interventions. It will also appeal to psychologists, mental health workers, social workers, marriage and family therapists, and religious leaders.

Author: Anita Doreen Diggs
Publisher: Kensington Books
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 294

View

Book Description
In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Vera S. Paster, a marriage counselor and therapist, and Anita Doreen Diggs, author of The African American Resource Guide, help African American couples cope with all of the pressures on their marriage and guide them in re-discovering the joy, intimacy and passion of their relationship. Dr. Paster discusses the difficulties African American couples face, including white collar women marrying blue collar men; the problems of blended families; bringing aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents back into your life; the stereotype of black male as king; the heartbreak of depression, addiction, abuse and adultery; and many other important issues. In her warm, down-to-earth style, she reveals the steps that every couple must take to overcome these difficulties and put their marriage on solid footing. By showing black couples how to draw on the unique strengths of their forefathers, she gives husbands and wives the traditional tools they need to get through the tough times. In addition, she offers suggestions on what not to bring up in an argument, 50 ways to enhance your marriage, using community activism and church involvement to bring you closer together, and much more. A unique book that answers all of your questions and concerns, STAYING MARRIED is a wise voice to help you successfully build a loving relationship that will last a lifetime.