Tapestries of Intimacy: Networked Intimacies and New Fathers’ Emotional Self-Disclosure of Mental Health Struggles

Abstract

This article considers the ways in which new fathers use networked media to emotionally self-disclose as part and parcel of negotiating, initiating, and reciprocating emotional intimacies in the context of mental health difficulties. While, doubtless, disclosure by itself does not equal intimacy, we focus closely on the moment of disclosure as an affectively significant moment in the building of intimate ties. We focus on the ways in which platforms and their affordances are worked with, within and against, in the fraught and liminal moment of disclosure. We use that key moment of disclosure to shed light on the fluid and cross-cutting networked intimacies men establish as they cope with mental health struggles within broader contexts of silences around male mental health. As our analysis reveals, this means we pay attention not just to the experiencing of new forms of intimacy online but equally to the mediated shaping of existing intimacies and ties—locating our project, at its topmost level, within mediated frameworks of interpersonal ties.