Since the 1950s, Haitian transnational migrants have ensured the socioeconomic survival of many nonmigrants in Haiti by sending billions of US dollars annually to their families and friends back home. While Haitian migrants are often perceived as having a positive economic impact on Haiti, some are criticized for engaging in homosexual behaviours, seemingly infringing on ‘traditional’ Haitian family values in a largely conservative ‘Christian’ society. This revives old debates about migrants’ role in using their money to normalize same-sex identity and practices and pervert sexual morality and ‘acceptable’ gender norms among nonmigrants in Haiti. Accordingly, men in Haiti are involved in same-sex intimate transnational relationships with migrants from the Haitian diaspora because of their precarious socioeconomic status in Haiti and not necessarily because they may be gay. Although homosexuality has always existed in Haiti and same-sex intimate relationships among men in Haiti and those abroad have long existed, these relationships have rarely been studied in the literature on transnational migration and sexualities. To fill this gap, this thesis draws on eleven months of ethnographic fieldwork and forty-four semi-structured interviews with men in Northern Haiti to show how homosexuality intersects with transnational space and socioeconomic inequality to shape and organize transnational processes and same-sex intimate relationships involving men in Haiti and their migrant partners across the Haitian diaspora in the United States, Canada, France, Brazil, Chile, and the Dominican Republic. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / In 2022, the World Bank estimated that international migrants sent 647 billion US dollars to their families, kinships, and friendship networks worldwide. This significant flow of money exemplifies the cross-border ties, connections, and relationships that people who moved from their homelands to resettle in host countries maintain with those who have stayed behind in their home communities. While scholars have conducted significant research in the past four decades on how international migrants’ gender, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, country of origin and host countries’ reception contexts shape how they maintain such ties, connections, and relationships with their homelands, there is a dearth of research on how the sexuality of LGBTQ+ migrants and nonmigrants shapes how they develop and maintain connections, ties, and relationships that span national borders. To fill this gap, this thesis uses a Haitian case study to examine how migrant and nonmigrant men develop and sustain same-sex intimate relationships across national borders and what they mean to them in their home country’s socioeconomic and political contexts.

The present study explores the origins of fear of intimacy, specifically assessing parental involvement and attachment style. Correlations between each variable were analyzed and a mediation model was explored as well. Participants in this study (N = 372; mean age = 25.78; 86% female) completed scales to measure parental care, parental overprotection, attachment avoidance, attachment anxiety, and fear of intimacy. Data was analyzed to reveal correlational results that support the hypotheses. Negative correlations were found between parental care and attachment avoidance, attachment anxiety, and fear of intimacy. Parental overprotection was positively correlated with attachment avoidance, attachment anxiety, and fear of intimacy. Both attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety were positively correlated with fear of intimacy. Additionally, a mediation model assessed the extent to which attachment mediated the relationship between parenting and fear of intimacy. Attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety were both found to be partial mediators in this relationship; however, avoidance did not mediate when parental overprotection was considered the independent variable. These results link childhood experiences and adult relationships in a way that brings new light to the importance of parenting and attachment in shaping adult experiences. Results also make way for personal, clinical, and professional applications in the fields of education, parenting, and mental health.

This study looked at the relationship between personality functioning and generalized anxiety severity with the use of the Level of Personality Functioning – Self-Report Scale (LPFS-SR). This scale looks at the four core functions of personality: Identity, Intimacy, Empathy and Self-Direction. The population consisted of undergraduate students from the University of Central Florida who completed the study online (n = 1335; 63.7% female; mean age = 19.85, SD = 3.64, range = 18-57). Findings revealed that generalized anxiety severity related to more identity and empathy problems in both men and women. For both findings, women showed a stronger effect size than men. Future longitudinal research in a psychiatric sample can help clarify causal directions of these relationships. The results of this study can be applied to clinical settings to raise clinicians' awareness to further explore identity and empathy problems in individuals exhibiting generalized anxiety.

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Mobile media are quickly becoming primary sources of communication in everyday life. With this progress, comes the ability to experience an array of different degrees and types of presence. Individuals can be both in the physical presence of others as well as present with others at a distance by experiencing telepresence. This study examined the role of mobile media in the context of romantic relationships. It looked at the relationship between the senses of intimacy and telepresence as they were experienced by individuals. The theories of apparatgeist and perpetual contact were employed to describe the relationship between the nature of the technology, the associated behavior of its use, and the experience of various forms of telepresence. Interviews with fourteen participants provided the data analyzed in this qualitative study. These interviews were transcribed and used for a thematic analysis of presence and intimacy experience. The results describe a wide variance and nuanced reality of how individuals sense the presence of each other through mobile technology. These results contribute to an understanding of how individuals understand and talk about their experience of telepresence and also what it means to them in their personal lives. / Mass Media and Communication

no / Drawing on a 2011 national survey and 50 semi-structured interviews, we explore the differing ways in which those in living apart together (LAT) relationships discuss and experience notions of commitment. We found that sexual exclusivity in LAT relationships is expected by the large majority, regardless of their reasons for living apart. The majority of the interviewees also expressed a high degree of commitment to their partner in terms of love, care and intimacy, alongside an appreciation of the increased freedom and autonomy that living apart has to offer. Respondents were divided into four groups according to their perceived commitment: 1. Autonomous commitment, 2. Contingent commitment, 3. Ambivalent commitment, and 4. Limited commitment. Despite differing degrees of commitment, however, the overall finding was that the importance of relating and making relational decisions was central, even in the lives of those living in such unconventional relationship styles.

Yes / This article explores how people who live apart from their partners in Britain describe and understand ‘family’. It investigates whether, and how far, non-cohabiting partners, friends, ‘blood’ and legal ties are seen as ‘family’, and how practices of care and support, and feelings of closeness are related to these constructions. It suggests that people in LAT relationships creatively draw and re-draw the boundaries of family belonging in ways that involve emotionally subjective understandings of family life, and that also refer to normative constructions of what ‘family’ ought to be, as well as to practical recognitions of lived family ‘realities’. This often involves handling uncertainties about what constitutes ‘family’.

In this study, I explored the career satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, friendship intimacy, and mentoring functions of female faculty in marriage and family therapy (MFT) programs. Study participants included 111 women affiliated with a MFT program in a research or liberal arts institution or training institute. Participants completed the Faculty Satisfaction Questionnaire (FSQ), Kansas Martial Satisfaction Questionnaire (KMS), Miller Social Intimacy Scale (MSIS), Mentoring Functions Questionnaire, and a demographics section with open-ended questions about their experiences. Faculty women reported higher levels of satisfaction with teaching than with service or research and higher satisfaction with service than research. Faculty who were part of a significant relationship reported high scores on the KMS while faculty who had a close friend indicated moderate intimacy levels on the MSIS. Those with a mentor reported that their mentor provided more psychosocial mentoring functions than career mentoring functions. Characteristics of the mentor and the mentoring relationship predicted the extent of the psychosocial and mentoring functions provided. Associations among career satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, friendship intimacy, mentoring functions, and demographic variables were determined using stepwise multiple regression analyses on a subsample of 37 faculty with complete data on key career and relationship functions. Expanded service duties, psychosocial mentoring functions, being Caucasian, and having received an award for research were associated with greater levels of career satisfaction. Career mentoring functions were associated with reduced levels of career satisfaction. Possession of a doctorate and psychosocial mentoring functions were associated with greater levels of friendship intimacy. Based on the results of this research and the literature of women in academia, implications and suggestions for improving the academic climate are presented for institutions, MFT programs, the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), and the Commission on Accreditation of Marriage and Family Therapy Education (COAMFTE). Limitations and suggestions for future research are also discussed. / Ph. D.

This study uses autobiographical reflection to investigate the negative impact of essentialist masculine gender socialization on men's lives. In particular, I use personal recollective accounts both from my early childhood socialization-in the traditional Greek-Cypriot culture of the 1970s and 80s-and from my own introspections and analytical conceptualizations concerning intimate relationships in general. I analyze these accounts by using a feminist postmodern ideology of gender deconstruction and reconstruction. Men oftentimes fall victims of patriarchal masculine scripting by suppressing their needs for intimacy, connectedness, and self-disclosure, qualities traditionally devalued as feminine traits. Suppressing such needs exacerbates inadequacies in male intimacy with possible manifestations in the form of generalized non-clinical male sexual anxiety. Implications are also discussed in terms of the by-products of male sexual anxiety, such as non-clinical sexual addiction and male victimization. / Ph. D.