The master’s thesis presents the basic emotions and the process of expressing, recognizing and managing emotions; presented are the historical framework, different definitions of emotional processing, the developmental course of emotional processing and a description of mechanisms is provided. Intimacy is presented through a model of the process of developing intimacy. It is also mentioned, how dependency affects the development of intimacy, how intimacy develops within the relationship, how it reflects and how the fear of intimacy arises in the individual and later in the relationship. Presented are the infatuation and the selection of the partner, the relationship as such and some of the main characteristics of a quality relationship. Finally, the thesis presents the approach of relational family and couples therapy and its interventions, which are based on developmental periods of emotional competences. The research of the master’s thesis was looking for the correlation between fear of intimacy, the ability of emotional processing and the satisfaction in the relationship. It thoroughly analysed, if there is a correlation between the level of emotional processing and the fear of intimacy and if the level of emotional processing and the fear of intimacy are correlated with the satisfaction in the relationship. It also analysed, if there are any differences between men and women in terms of the ability of emotional processing, namely the ability of emotional expression, awareness and stability, and whether there is more fear of intimacy in men or in women. We obtained 277 properly and entirely filled out questionnaires, 80 (29%) by men and 197 (71%) by women. The average age of the respondents was 30 years (M = 30,77).
The results have shown that there is a low trend; the higher the level of emotional stability and emotional awareness, the lower the level of fear of intimacy. The results show that there is a low trend; the higher the level of emotional processing, the higher the satisfaction in the relationship, and that there is a moderate trend; the higher the fear of intimacy, the lower the satisfaction in the relationship. On the sample, a high statistically significant difference in the level of emotional processing between men and women has not been proven. However, there are statistically significant differences between men and women in terms of the ability of emotional expression, emotional awareness and emotional stability. It was not possible to prove statistically significant differences between men and women in terms of the fear of intimacy.
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