AbstractThe present study examined the relations between individuals' social lives and the risks they perceived in being intimate with others. Participants maintained a variant of the Rochester Interaction Record (Wheeler&Nezlek, 1977) and completed the Risk in Intimacy Inventory (Pilkington&Richardson, 1988). The results indicated that, compared to people who perceived less risk, people who perceived more risk in intimacy had less rewarding social lives on measures of socio‐emotional and socio‐instrumental dimensions of interaction. Risk in intimacy concerns were particularly salient for women in their interactions with the opposite sex and for men in their interactions with the same sex. In addition, the statistical associations between perceptions of risk in intimacy and characteristics of interactions within close opposite‐sex personal relationships varied as a function of participants' sex and the nature of this personal relatio