A few days ago I started thinking about space, and how it affects our level of intimacy — in looking at the Couchsurfing.com mechanism, I’ve noticed that space itself is a crucial factor in changing how we interact with one another. So I started writing how we move through that space, and how that space can create both physical and emotional closeness.
In order to first explore the way space changes our relationship potential, we must first accept the fact that inter-human relationships are influenced by the time spent within public and private space. Mike Featherstone writes a great deal about space and it’s effect on the human psyche. In Undoing Culture, he mentions that people make “space” into a “place” through inter-personal bonds.[1] Our context of who we are is greatly influenced by where we are and who we are interacting with at the time. It goes without saying that the space[2] we inhabit has the ability to influence individuals on a great scale, and helps produce various levels of emotion. For example, urban life has been linked to emotional fluctuations such as increased anxiety or fear among the individual. Deborah Lupton states that the perceptions of place and space that individuals gather from their senses – the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feel of the environment – have a potentially powerful role in the production of emotion.[3]
So when we tour, when we are mobile, the tourism landscape can evoke emotion, and as Lupton states, the indivdual links an array of emotions to physical objects and urban/rural spaces while traveling. Yet let us note, that what Lupton is explaining is still the previous state of tourism-as-we-knew-it. She has not taken into account the emotional experience of meeting the local, of becoming intimite with the locality’s main protagonist, in this case, the Couchsurfer themselves. The experience one has with one’s host is beyond sensory yet still evokes emotion – meaning, the sights and sounds are secondary to the interaction made between host/surfer. Many of my respondents have admitted that upon returning to their home town after Couchsurfing, they remember much more about their conversations with their host than the actual setting they were in. It is not the landscape that evokes emotion as Lupton is stating, but the Couchsurfer themselves. Here, the surfer-host diad becomes the ‘space’ itself through verbal and non-verbal interaction. As I mentioned, the landscape becomes secondary.
Which brings me to my following point. If space affects us, it can also affect our interactions with others. Allow me now to make a connection between space, proximity, and level of intimacy between two people.
Intimacy Space
Intimacy between friends is usually created through a one-on-one connection between two people. Face to face, eye to eye, or arguably, keyboard to keyboard, two people become connected when they devote a certain amount of time to one another. I can not say I’ve become close with another person if I only met them in a group setting. Friendship or inter-human connection is strengthened through time spent within something I term “intimate space,” and what Giddens or Simmel would simply call privacy. Intimate space is something I classify as a setting which is conducive to intimate conversation or connection. These “intimate spaces” can be both public, such as a coffee shop, a park bench, or a quiet table at a restaurant, or private, like one’s home. But quite obviously, the home creates a stronger, more intimate space, and the reason for this is not that obvious when we try to explain it in words. The home, according to Lupton, has become a place of security, warmth, comfort, and freedom, after the progresive divide following industrialization between what has been represented as the aggressive, impersonal world of paid labour or the ‘public’ sphere, and the ‘private’ domain of the family and intimate relationships.[4] Simmel also comments on the ‘privacy of home,’ and the tranquility and spacial connection with have with ‘the home.’ Giddens too stated that privacy makes possible the psychic satisfactions that the achievement of intimacy as to offer.[5] Moreover, the more time spent within an intimate space with one person, the more intimate the frienship has the potential to be. One of my survey questions asked users to give an estimate of the number of hours spent with their host/surfer per day. Based on 1831 online respondends, 7.28 % of Couchsurfers spend more than 8 hours interacting with each other per day. 9.69% of all users mentioned spending between 6 and 8 hours with their host/surfer, while 28.43% said they spent between 3 and 6 hours and 20.40% said they spent between 1 and 3 hours per day. And according to the data, there is a connection between the time spent with a surfer/host per day and the level of emotional closeness achieved with a surfer/host. Of those users who answered that they spend 6 to 8 hours a day interacting with their surfer/host, 27 % say that they often become emotionally close with their surfer, compared to 9.7% per cent of users in the same time-interaction bracket who state that they rarely interact with their surfer/host. Moreover, of those who spend more than 8 hours with their surfer/host per 34.1% of them stated that they often become emotionally close with their host compared to 10.6% who said they rarely become emotionally close with their surfer/host.
Michael, one of my respondents, told me that “part of this [instant sense of intimacy] has to do with the environment fostered by staying with someone.” For him, this process is kind of an “equalization process” that people go through. “You have this intimate relationship where you’re sharing a physical space with someone that’s very personal to you and so to equalize this physical intimacy you develop this emotional intimacy and that kind of makes people more comfortable. Because as soon as they get really close and really personal with someone they don’t seem to feel that strange about how physically intimate the relationship is.” Throughout my empirical observations, I have also noticed Michael’s theory in-action. As strangers become physically close, or are confined to a set area, the physical closeness is off-balance with the emotional closeness or intimacy level one has with that stranger, and it becomes simply natural to try and ‘catch up’ with the physical intimacy and start talking about oneself in order to avoid the feeling of awkwardness.
[1] Mike Featherstone, p. 115.
[2] Here, the space of urban life can be defined as the general atmosphere of individuals living together in one set physical environment.
[3] Deborah Lupton, p. 152.
[4] Lupton, p. 157.
[5] Giddens, p. 157.
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