The article discusses contemporary changes in intimate relationships. A starting point for this discussion is Anthony Giddens’s theory presented in his book The Transformation of Intimacy (1992), particularly the specificity of self-help literature as a source of information for sociological reasoning. On the example of housework, the nature of the tensions between the conflict expectations of partners is presented. Today, many people are torn between several different models of intimate relations and different needs. The thesis of the article is that the ambivalence observed in the process of relationship formation is neither marginal nor only psychological but it represents tensions between different types and dimensions of knowledge which are used in this process. This ambivalence is also a perfect indicator of the discourse struggle in the public sphere and an element of changes of social bonds; its study may help answer the question about transformation of intimacy and about the commonness of “pure relations” or other models of intimate relationships.
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