I agree with what these reading are trying to portray based on the relationships and nuances that comprise of the gender stigmas associated with emotions. I believe that within our societal norms, with see that women are expected to be the more sensitive and emotional facet, while men are the robots or militants that lack an amygdala(limbic system of the brain, which is involved with emotions and other reactions to stimuli).

In the hetero-normative relationship the study suggest that women had an issue with getting emotions out of their significant male other, while the men felt that they didn’t more or less know how to respond to their wives emotional outreach. The women felt that there should not be a lack of boundaries when it comes to their relationship. The article states, “Research has also emphasized that women are more likely than men in heterosexual rela-tionships to view the absence of boundaries (i.e.,autonomy and separation of partners that pre-clude the sharing of personal thoughts, feelings,and emotions with each other) between partners as central to intimacy”( Journal of Marriage an Family, pg 2). This simply means that women rather a relationship where boundaries are less deemed as important, and being able to be transparent with ones lover should must more valued than having boundaries; where it pertains to emotion and intimacy. On the flip side men found that boundaries should pertain to relationship and should be presence for a healthy relationship to “successful”.

Lesbian relationship were quite opposite. These women in a general out- look felt that their should be no boundaries at all. Their was an example within the article relating to one lesbian couple that said, ” we tell each other everything”, based on that being said lesbian couples had little concern with boundaries and emotional responses, because sharing was just organically apart of dichotomy. Which begs the question do lesbians have the ideal relationship in comparison to both heterosexual couples and gay couples?

Gay couples leaned more towards the idea of the males in the heterosexual relationship; which there were counter examples stating male agreed with sharing. With this being stated about gay men it almost fit into the societal views that men lack emotional response while women are very much more advance on that front. The counter argument for the gay men was that they felt that there should be a sense of emotional sharing but with boundaries along side the emotion, knowing when is the right time and when is not.

I thought this article was fair in giving this analysis of the different genders and how they viewed emotional and intimacy. What was most interesting in the intimacy part of the study was that for lesbian couples intimacy was very important based on being able to distinguish a friend from a lover. Whereas in the gay and heterosexual relationships emotion and intimacy was veered as two different components. Honestly i feel that men are just as empathetic as women or even more than women in certain instances, but choose to be caught up with the hold that society holds for the expectation that men should not be as up front about their emotions as women.