Psychological consequences of intimacy problems are found in adults who have difficulty in forming and maintaining intimate relationships. 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. It evolves through reciprocal self-disclosure and candor. Intimate behavior joins family members and close friends, as well as those in love. 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. 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. Intimacy involves the ability to be both separate and together as participants in an intimate relationship. Sustaining intimacy for a length of time involves well-developed emotional and interpersonal awareness. Intimate conversations become the basis for "confidences" (secret knowledge) that bind people together.
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. In human relationships, the meaning and level of intimacy varies within and between relationships.