Friends play important roles throughout our lives by providing expressive, instrumental, and companionate support. We examined sexual orientation, gender, and age differences in the number of friends people can rely on for expressive, instrumental, and companionate support. Additionally, we examined the extent to which people relied on same-gender versus cross-gender friends for these types of support. Sexual orientation differences in number of same-gender and cross-gender friends were generally small or non-existent, and satisfaction with friends was equally important to overall life satisfaction for all groups. Young adult gay and bisexual men, and to some extent bisexual women and older bisexual men, did not conform to gendered expectations that people affiliate primarily with their own gender. Data Availability: All relevant data have been uploaded as Supporting Information files.
Aim out PMC Labs and tell us what you think. Learn More. Although there is a small but budding body of work that examines the religious and spiritual lives of bisexuals, there is a strong need designed for additional research that further explores the intersectionality of these distinct identities. Encourage by the feminist notions that the personal is political and that individuals are the experts of their accept experiences Unger,the specific aim of this study is to better understand the intersection of multiple identities experienced as a result of bisexual individuals. Further, attraction to alike sex partners was associated with perceiving sexual orientation as a choice, identifying as bisexual at a younger become old, more likely to disclose one's sexual orientation, less likely to view belief as being socially important, and a higher score on the belief account. We discuss the implications of these results and make suggestions for coming research on the role of belief and spirituality in bisexual lives. Await fairly recently, scholars researching the devout and spiritual experiences of sexual minorities have focused nearly exclusively on the study of lesbian and gay individuals, virtually ignoring the experiences of the bisexual and transgendered, even while utilizing the inclusive acronym LGBT.