Pinterest Predicts Increased 'Emotional Intimacy' Is What Daters Are Looking For In 2024
While style statements like hairstyles and accessories are getting bolder in 2024, relationships are expected to get softer, according to the Pinterest Predicts Report for this year. Published by the social platform every December, the report showcases emerging trends through aggregated user searches. This year, the data analysis period lasted from September 2021 to August 2023, and its results displayed huge rises in searches for various lifestyle trends, including ones for home design, food, makeup, fashion, and, of course, relationships.
In this arena, Pinterest's report notes that "2024 will be all about forging deeper connections," with younger generations leading the charge. This shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. After all, Gen Z is "more racially and ethnically diverse than any previous generation," according to 2020 research from the Pew Research Center. This, surely along with the end of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing global conflict, has led to Gen Z being more inclusive and accepting, creating deeper and longer-lasting relationships. Now, Gen Z and even millennials are bringing that energy to those around them, with searches for "emotional intimacy" rising by 40% during Pinterest's data analysis period.
Raising relationships, not razing them
The rise of emotional intimacy in Pinterest searches will hopefully help people bolster their personal relationships and bring more light to the world, especially because users have also been searching for specific ways to deepen their emotional intimacy. Searches for "hot seat questions" rose by a staggering 825% during the data analysis period, while "questions for couples to reconnect" rose by 480%. Then, "deep conversation starters" rose by 185% and "deep questions to ask friends" by 85%. If people follow through with these searches, gone — not entirely, but then Rome wasn't built in a day — are the days of emotionally empty first-day Tinder chats and uncomfortably awkward friendship reunions. Hello, people taking an interest in you!
The biggest dating trends of the year reflect this growing mentality. Dating app Plenty of Fish's resident dating expert, Eva Gallagher, told Women's Health that connections are paramount for dating in 2024, even mattering more than where one lives. "With an increase in nomadic working, you're not tied down to any one place if you don't want to be. People are connecting farther and willing to consider living somewhere else if they meet the right person," Gallagher told the outlet. What's more, people are connecting sooner, with dating app OkCupid's head of global communications, Michael Kaye, adding to Women's Health that more and more people will be using FaceTime and the like to connect even before first dates.
With mindsets and actions like this growing more common, there's no reason to not say hi to the person you like or to reach out to someone with whom you'd like to catch up.
How to start building emotional intimacy
Building emotional intimacy — just one of the five types of intimacy — sounds daunting, but with a few simple changes to your routines, you may be able to foster deeper connections in no time. For instance, try reminiscing from time to time, whether you want to deepen your romantic relationship or one with a friend or family member (via Practical Intimacy). Talking about a memory can help you embrace the feelings you experienced at the time, as well as helping you carve out time for the two of you to set everything else aside and just talk. Bettering your communication — including learning how to "turn conflict into connection," as Practical Intimacy describes it — is crucial for any relationship.
You could also take Dr. Tony Ferretti's suggestion and create a "fun list" (via Verywell Mind). What you include on the list is up to you, but it should generally consist of activities that you find mutually enjoyable. Once you've established your list, simply do the activities on them. We're all busy, but this is precisely why finding the time to do "fun" things together is so important. While you're at it, you can also create a list of "questions for couples to reconnect"; after all, it's one of Pinterest's hottest relationship searches.
Ultimately, these are just a few ways to stoke the fires of emotional intimacy in your relationships, but the good news is that younger generations are hell-bent on making us all love each other a little more. We just need to buy into it and help each other get through each day, each month, each year.