ABSTRACT
The characterization of women as “pursuers” of closer relationships and men as “distancers” is thought to be related to male and female gender role prescriptions whereby men are socialized to be achieving, independent, dominant, and rational, while women learn to be nurturant, emotionally expressive, and have more permeable ego boundaries. The stereotypical traditionally socialized man, women have reconciled their emotional needs with their needs for autonomy and have dissolved some of the barriers to intimacy. Many women feel guilty and anxious about asserting and gratifying their needs in the workplace, viewing such gratification as “selfish”. Men’s need for separateness and autonomy has been contrasted with women’s need for relatedness and her relative comfort with dependency. Great variability exists within the sexes as well as between them. It may be that some of the within-gender variability may be accounted for by the formation of a counteridentification with a more traditionally feminine mother.
