English to Spanish Medical Medical: Health Care

Communicative displays of intimacy can be seen across cultures. This chapter discusses these verbal and nonverbal communicative competencies and will highlight how older adults often must adapt their communication skills to achieve and maintain intimate relationships in later life.
Several types of verbal behaviors have been linked to intimate relationships: self-disclosure; verbal responsiveness; relationship talk; and relational language. Self-disclosure is thought of as communication about one’s feelings and beliefs that the other person can only know if you tell them. The great majority of research on a wide variety of intimate relationships consistently points to the importance of a healthy amount of self-disclosure in all intimate relationships. Self-disclosure is important for both males and females in same-sex as well as opposite-sex relationships. In older-adult marriages, self-disclosure has emerged as a defining characteristic of a long-lasting marriage amongst couples from five continents. Openness, honesty, and self-disclosure are defining features of long-term satisfying marriages amongst older adults. The strongest predictor of closeness in both male and female friendships is self- disclosure.