WASHINGTON, DC—Having “strong ties” with close friends and family has generally been understood among scholars to indicate that one is inclined to confide in them when facing personal issues. But close relationships are complicated, and recent studies report that people sometimes avoid strong ties when facing personal issues. How common is such avoidance?
In a new study, “The Avoidance of Strong Ties,” which appears in the August 2024 issue of the American Sociological Review, authors Mario L. Small, Quetelet Professor of Social Science, Columbia University; Kristina Brant, Assistant Professor of Rural Sociology, Pennsylvania State University; and Maleah Fekete, doctoral student in sociology, Harvard University, explore this question.
The authors posited that there is no more empirical justification for labeling strong ties as those who are trusted than labeling them as those who are avoided. In turn, the authors note, isolation might be less a matter of having no intimates than of having repeatedly to avoid them.
To test their hypothesis, the authors developed a survey that was sent by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) in July 2019 to a sample of 1,108 U.S. adults ages 18 and over. The sample was sourced from NORC’s AmeriSpeak® Panel, a probability-based panel representative of the U.S. household population.
Through the survey, the authors sought to answer their primary question of how often adult Americans avoid talking to those with whom they are close when facing personal issues. They addressed three aspects of that question: Is avoiding talking about personal issues with close family and friends rare? Is such avoidance limited to specific close connections? Is it limited to specific topics?
The authors found that avoidance is neither rare, nor limited to specific intimates, nor limited to specific topics. Avoidance is about as common as talking. Moreover, while people tend to avoid intimates who are more difficult or powerful than them, they nonetheless avoid most of their intimates at least some of the time. And while they avoid somewhat more when their concerns are secret or embarrassing, they tend to avoid intimates for most of their concerns. In general, people avoid different people for different topics.
According to the authors, “if we take seriously what people do in practice, then avoidance is as central to how people relate to their intimates as talking is. Rather than an exception, avoidance is common, and across demographic groups, equally common among high- and low-income Americans, among the high-school and college-educated, among black, white, and Latina/o adults. It is even more common among Asians and Asian Americans. It is even more common among men than women, for whom it is still highly prevalent. Avoidance,” the authors conclude, “is a constitutive element of how people relate to their close friends and family.”
The significance of this research lies in its implications for the meaning of close relationships. The nature of those relationships is not “we are close, therefore I can trust you,” but “we are close, therefore it’s complicated.” We seem to have fundamental needs both to reveal and to conceal. We yearn to reveal ourselves to our loved ones to achieve intimacy and receive support; we also seek to conceal parts of ourselves to avoid conflict, embarrassment, or discomfort. In addition, this research helps better understand social isolation. The most isolated person may not be the one with no one to talk to but the one who feels compelled to avoid everyone they are close to. Therefore, strategies to reduce social isolation may need to be more expansive.
The authors suggest a number of additional questions for future research: the difference between passive and active avoidance; the full relationship among talking, not talking, and avoidance; the role of self-reported motivation; the specifics of which kinds of intimates are avoided for which topics; the reasons behind gender differences in avoidance rates; the effect of other network characteristics; and the social and psychological consequences of avoidance.For more information, or for a copy of the study, contact communications@asanet.org.
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The American Sociological Association, founded in 1905, is a nonprofit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society. The American Sociological Review is ASA’s flagship journal.
