Amorous Couple. An intimate relationship is an interpersonal relationship that involves physical or emotional intimacy. Although an intimate relationship is commonly a sexual relationship, it may also be a non-sexual relationship involving family, friends, or acquaintances. Emotional intimacy involves feelings of liking or loving one or more people, and may result in physical intimacy. Physical intimacy is characterized by romantic love, sexual activity, or other passionate attachment. These relationships play a central role in the overall human experience. Humans have a general desire to belong and to love, which is usually satisfied within an intimate relationship. Such relationships allow a social network for people to form strong emotional attachments. Intimacy involves the feeling of being in a close, personal association and belonging together. It is a familiar and very close affective connection with another as a result of a bond that is formed through knowledge and experience of the other. Genuine intimacy in human relationships requires dialogue, transparency, vulnerability, and reciprocity. Dalton discussed how anthropologists and ethnographic researchers access inside information from within a particular cultural setting by establishing networks of intimates capable to provide information unobtainable through formal channels. In human relationships, the meaning and level of intimacy varies within and between relationships. In anthropological research, intimacy is considered the product of a successful seduction, a process of rapport building that enables parties to confidently disclose previously hidden thoughts and feelings. Intimate conversations become the basis for confidences that bind people together. Sustaining intimacy for a length of time involves well-developed emotional and interpersonal awareness. Intimacy involves the ability to be both separate and together participants in an intimate relationship. Murray Bowen called this self-differentiation, which results in a connection in which there is an emotional range involving both robust conflict and intense loyalty. Lacking the ability to differentiate oneself from the other is a form of symbiosis, a state that is different from intimacy, even if feelings of closeness are similar. Intimate behavior joins family members and close friends, as well as those in love. It evolves through reciprocal self-disclosure and candor. Poor skills in developing intimacy can lead to getting too close too quickly; struggling to find the boundary and to sustain connection; being poorly skilled as a friend, rejecting self-disclosure or even rejecting friendships and those who have them. Psychological consequences of intimacy problems are found in adults who have difficulty in forming and maintaining intimate relationships. Individuals often experience the human limitations of their partners, and develop a fear of adverse consequences of disrupted intimate relationships. Studies show that fear of intimacy is negatively related to comfort with emotional closeness and with relationship satisfaction, and positively related to loneliness and trait anxiety. The interdependence model of Levinger and Snoek divides the development of intimate relationship into four stages: the first one is zero contact stage, which is no contact between the two parties in the relationship; The second stage is awareness, which means people don't have any superficial or deep contact with each other, but just know each other; The third stage is surface contact, in which both parties know each other and have had superficial contact; The fourth stage of coexistence phase, refers to the mutual dependence has greatly increased, there are also deep contact existing, Scholars distinguish between different forms of intimacy, including physical, emotional, cognitive, or spiritual intimacy. Physical intimacy may include being inside someone's personal space, holding hands, hugging, kissing, heavy petting or other sexual activity. Emotional intimacy, particularly in sexual relationships, typically develops after a certain level of trust has been reached and personal bonds have been established. The emotional connection of falling in love, however, has both a biochemical dimension driven through reactions in the body stimulated by sexual attraction, and a social dimension driven by talk that follows from regular physical closeness or sexual union. Love is an important factor in emotional intimacy. It is qualitatively and quantitatively different from liking, and the difference is not merely in the presence or absence of sexual attraction. There are three types of love in a relationship: passionate love, companionate love, and sacrificial love.