Gay and Lesbian Couples – The Vanguard for Healthy Relationships

April 1, 2008 in Austin Pink, Legal Topics
Tags: gay & lesbian austin

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On Relationships: Keeping It Together

By Sue Marriott LMSW-ACP, CGP and Jeff Lutes MEd., LPC

Heterosexual couples have a lot to learn from gay and lesbian couples about successful relationships.

Dr. John Gottman is a clinical psychologist and research scientist at the University of Washington who has studied heterosexual relationships for almost 30 years now. You have probably seen his work on heterosexual couples on 20/20, the Oprah Winfrey Show or the like or perhaps you know one of his books, most recently The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work or the Relationship Cure. In observing four minutes of conflict between a couple, he and his staff at the Gottman Institute can predict whether the couple will divorce and how far in the future the divorce will probably take place.

Now Gottman and University of California Berkeley professor of psychology Dr. Robert Levenson, have completed a 12-year study on same-sex relationships. Using this data and gay and lesbian focus groups, Gottman has gone on to develop couples workshops specifically to honor gay and lesbian relationships. This from a straight Jewish mathematician.

He admits that he initially became interested in gay and lesbian relationships only because it was a good research design to help understand the sex differences they were finding in heterosexual couples. It was not long, however, before he became interested in these couples for their own sake.

“Gay and lesbian couples are the vanguard when it comes to relationships. Heterosexual couples can hope to be where gay and lesbian couples are in the next 200 years, maybe, if women continue to gain equality,” he said when we caught up with him in Dallas for a clinical workshop for therapists.

“Heterosexuals have a lot to learn from gay and lesbian couples. There is a lot of baggage heterosexuals bring to their relationships that make it difficult to be truly intimate with one another,” he said in reference to the chronic battle for power he reports that many heterosexuals struggle with.

Overall, relationship satisfaction and quality are the same for straight married and gay and lesbian couples. Those in satisfied coupled relationships tend to be physically healthier, have fewer infectious illnesses, and have improved psychological well-being. Apparently it turns out that it is not genetics or diet that primarily determines how long you live, but the amount of kindness in your life. Wow!

Of the differences found between same-sex and cross-sex couples in the Gottman and Levenson’s study, many of the differences favored same-sex couples. Same-sex couples use fewer controlling, hostile emotional tactics, and power sharing and fairness are more prevalent than in heterosexual couples. Gottman said that homosexual couples start a conflict on a more positive note and through the social influence process, use the discussion to end up in an even more positive place. Heterosexuals, on the other hand, start more negatively and through the social influence process end up in an even more negative place than when they started.

Lesbians are particularly concerned about shared power. They go to great lengths to make sure everyone is happy and accounted for, while gay men are also more egalitarian than heterosexual couples. Gay and lesbian couples display less belligerence, domineering and fear with each other than straight couples do.

In a fight, same-sex couples take it less personally. The gay or lesbian partner’s positive comments make the partner feel good, while their negative comments are less likely to produce hurt feelings. These couples generally use more positivity than heterosexual couples and thus fare better in a fight.

The primary difference between gay and lesbian couples turned out to be that lesbians fight more loudly. Lesbian couples in conflict show more humor, anger, excitement and interest than conflicting gay men do. They are more expressive both positively and negatively. Gottman guesses that this has more to do with gender than sexual orientation, in that two women are socialized to be more expressive overall.

Unhappy same-sex couples are better able to calm down while in a fight and appear better able to soothe each other during conflict or in its aftermath. Heterosexual couples are more physically agitated during a fight and not so good at soothing one another afterwards.

Gay men, however, have trouble if there is a great deal of negativity brought into the conflict. More so than straight or lesbian couples, gay male couples have a harder time de-escalating negative conflict. Again this is probably due to the gender factor rather than sexual orientation, because men in general are not as good at de-escalating than women. Thus gay men who have trouble in this area should be particularly careful to approach one another more gently when bringing up a dicey subject or issue.

Gottman said that researching gay and lesbian couples is hard because there is little money to support the studies. In addition, he and his organization the Gottman Institute have received pressure since they began outreach to the gay and lesbian community.

“They call up and say, ‘We were gonna sign up for your couples workshop but we heard you do gay and lesbian workshops. We are Christians so we don’t want to be a part of your organization’,” Gottman said.

We asked for his response to this. “Fuck ‘em is my response!” he said without missing a beat.

He went on to say that the Gottman Institute has a moral commitment to support same-sex couples and they promote it openly on their website, www.gottman.com.

“We have a commitment to support love wherever we find it.”

Which brings us back to your relationship. Gottman’s advice if boiled down to just one suggestion to improve your relationship is to support your partner’s dreams.

Do you know what your lovers unmet dreams even are? When was the last time you checked in about them? Why not now?