How to Make the 5 C’s of Intimacy Work for You

The ability to experience intimacy is fundamental to being able to reap the beneficial effects of close relationships. Clearly, relationship satisfaction is a function of the quality of two people’s interactions with each other.

However, even before a relationship begins, what will set it off in a favorable or unfavorable direction are the strengths and weaknesses that the individual partners bring to the table.

Think about the good relationships you’ve had throughout your life. Recall how your desire to remain with that partner depended (or depends) on their capacity to share, at a deep level, their feelings for you.

Now, contrast that with a relationship that you found unfulfilling due to your partner’s tendency to pull away from you. It’s likely that a big part of the failure of this relationship resulted from the other person’s constant pattern of remaining distant and uninvolved.

Relationships are, of course, two-way streets. As you think about the good and bad ones in your life, ask yourself how much your own willingness to reveal your innermost hopes and fears plays a part in keeping that partnership flourishing.

A new paper by the University of Pittsburgh’s Amanda Forest and colleagues (2023) suggests that it’s an individual’s self-esteem that can either make or break a good relationship. By examining self-esteem, Forest et al. provide a fresh approach to understanding what factors affect the course and longevity of two people’s connection with each other.

The Quality of Intimacy

Intimacy itself can be seen as an individual characteristic or a description of a couple’s relationship quality. Within the U. Pittsburgh model, intimacy takes the form of individual quality, one that affects how easily partners share their feelings with each other (self-disclosure) and react to their partner’s needs (responsiveness). These factors are important and, as you’ll see shortly, are sensitive to each partner’s self-esteem.

Beyond these two factors, however, are a broader set of abilities that form an individual’s capacity for healthy relationships. Based on Erik Erikson’s psychosocial development theory, the ability to experience true intimacy evolves out of prior benchmarks in life, typically when people are in their twenties.

Framed in terms of intimacy versus isolation, this period of growth is when individuals have gained a more or less solid view of their own identity and are now unafraid to share this identity with a partner.

Periods prior to the teens and twenties are also significant in contributing to intimacy, particularly the very earliest years of life in which infants attain a sense of trust (vs. mistrust). Much like the concept of attachment, trust is a quality that depends on the child’s feeling that they will be safe and cared for by those in their environment.

Intimacy’s 5 C’s

With this background, it’s time to take a look at this broader definition of intimacy as it incorporates these developmental features:

Closeness. The ability to reveal all parts of your identity requires that you feel confident enough about yourself to let both the good and bad show through.

Communication. It follows that those who have the ability for closeness should theoretically be willing to share their feelings with others.

However, communication is a separate quality because it requires that an individual is able to put those feelings into words.

Commitment. Erikson’s theory proposed that a key requirement for attaining intimacy is the ability to commit to a relationship.

However, as an individual quality, this refers to a potential state of readiness that at any given point in life may not be equivalent to being in a relationship.

Constructive Conflict Resolution. This quality contributes to two of the five “C’s,” and emerges not necessarily from Erikson’s theory but from relationship research more broadly. There is a vast literature on the importance of constructive conflict resolution in promoting a relationship’s health.

However, it can also be seen as an individual quality in that people low in identity may defensively fight to protect their shaky identities. Alternatively, if they are within the “isolate” end of the spectrum, they may flee from any conflict situation; avoidance is also an unhealthy method of conflict resolution.

As you read about these qualities, how do you think you rated them? Did you come to an understanding of how your own identity as an individual plays out in your ability to establish rewarding relationships? Next, you’ll focus on your self-esteem, a quality related to identity, to see what the Forest et al. study adds to the equation.

Self-esteem’s Relationship to Intimacy

Forest and her collaborators begin by focusing on the closeness and communication dimensions of intimacy. In their model, “intimacy develops when a discloser reveals thoughts and feelings to a listener.”

If the listener shows “responsive (caring, understanding, and validating) listening behaviors, the discloser interprets the listener’s response as responsive.” Having felt validated, the discloser then will either engage in further disclosing or not: “Repeated, reciprocated self-disclosure and perceived partner responsiveness promote intimacy.”

These interactive effects are driven, the U. Pittsburgh authors maintain, by the levels of self-esteem shown by each member of the couple. For the discloser, revelations about inner thoughts and feelings can become risky if they fear being laughed at or criticized by the other person.

Think about the last time you admitted to your partner that you didn’t like a member of the extended family who you are supposed to like, or that you cheated at an online word game. Willingness to admit to your flaws requires pretty robust self-esteem.

People low in self-esteem would be less likely to walk down this particular plank because they would be so fearful of rejection. If they are seeking support, as the authors note, they’re more likely to sulk and whine “rather than directly describing their problems and emotions.” Failing to get a positive reaction from their partner, they only sulk and whine some more.

What about the listener? How does self-esteem fit into their behavior in such situations? The most likely scenario, again reflecting that sense of inner confidence of those high in self-esteem, would be greater responsiveness.

Furthermore, given that the listener in one interchange is the discloser in another, high self-esteem should promote greater openness overall. You’re less likely to be threatened by the good news your partner brings home if you feel confident in your own abilities but also more likely to disclose whatever news you have because you won’t worry about being rejected or belittled.

Although the Forest et al. study focused on self-esteem, based on the prior discussion, it would seem reasonable to substitute identity as a contributor to the interactions that take place in a close relationship.

The ability to communicate, reveal your inner self, and be willing to make commitments are all part of identity. With this openness and confidence as a base, it would also be less likely for people with strong identities to become defensive or avoidant when something goes wrong.

To sum up, being able to develop your own 5 C’s should be a valuable way to enhance not only your own individual capacity for close relationships but the quality of those relationships you value most now and into the future.