Professional Papers

  • Treating Gay Male Couples. In Kris, Keys to Caring: Assisting Your Gay and Lesbian Client, Alyson Press, 1990.
    The Coupled Gay, 1990. 3,700 words.
    This is a general overview of problems commonly met with in gay love relationships.
Some readers may be surprised to learn that homosexual love has been documented for at least 2000 years. By "homosexual love" we mean romantic feelings and sexual desire, whether transient or permanent, between two men.

Here are some well-known examples from history. The ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates, was said to be the love of young Alcibiades, who later became a leading politician in Athens. Hephaestion was the lover of Alexander the Great; they fought side-by-side in Alexander's conquests.
Classical Greek society institutionalized pederastic love. The Dorians of Sparta encouraged relationships between adult males and adolescent boys, using these relationships to train the youngsters for war. Athenians, on the other hand, emphasized youth and beauty, though they did not neglect the moral character of pederasty, as the works of Plato show.
Roman society has its examples of male lovers as well. Julius Caesar was a man who enjoyed a variety of sexual pleasures, and was for a time the lover of King Nicomedes of Bithynia. Caesar's reputation for bisexuality was once used against him in the Senate by the Elder Pliny, who called him "Husband to every man's wife, and wife to every woman's husband."
But perhaps the most prominent Roman example is the love of the Emperor Hadrian for the beautiful youth Antinous, who drowned in the Nile, quite possibly having sacrificed himself to save Hadrian from the wrath of the gods, who, many believed, were turning against him. When the distraught Hadrian deified his beloved, Antinous’ sacrifice so caught the imagination of the ancient world that he became the object of a widespread religion which lasted for centuries and produced some of the greatest art of late antiquity. But this important event in the moral development of the West has been almost totally written out of our histories.
Each year has produced men who were lovers of other men. Richard the Lion-Hearted, who preferred the company of his male friends to that of his wife, went on a crusade to the Holy Land. His opponent, Saladin, the Muslim military commander, is famous for remarking that sleeping with girls is like eating a joint of meat without a bone. Edward II of England was madly in love do with Piers Gaveston, who was murdered in a palace intrigue. A second lover of Edward's was murdered as well, probably because of his potential political influence. Finally, Edward himself was murdered most cruelly. James I of England fared better in his love affair with George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham (James used to call him "My Steenie").
We know best how the royal families lived and with whom the great generals of history bedded, but little of the common man. Much of this history does not exist because the prevailing moral system proscribed sexual relations between men and prevented even the mention of such a grave sin. By the 19th century, with the decline of clerical control, the discussion of these matters became possible in a medical setting. Medical science was then composed of equal parts of empiricism, conjecture, and moral beliefs. In the 20th century, psychoanalysis made its claim to understand the origins of all sexual behavior and defined the normal and the abnormal, in both cases ignoring contrary evidence. Today we know that psychoanalysis was burdened by the same prejudices and inaccurate reasoning as previous generations.


Today, gay couples live in every area of the country. They are found in urban settings and rural farm communities. We find men in loving, lifelong relationships with all the romance and passion found in heterosexual marriage. Gay couples have become an important economic force in many areas of the country. They buy property in common, sign contracts together, and benefit from survivorship. They demand, but have not yet received, full economic parity with heterosexual marriage. Nevertheless, for the most part, the lives of gay couples are very much like the lives of other people in their community. Where competition and dynamism are in the air, as in, say, New York City, gay couples compete in the fast lane; where time is measured more slowly, as in our rural settings, gay couples mirror the pace of their neighbors.

 Our modern gay couples share one trait with the historical examples previously cited: a desire to express both romantic and sexual feelings toward members of the same sex. But modern gay couples differ significantly from the historical examples in a number of important ways. Perhaps the most important difference is the concept of sexual identity, the idea that each of us can define ourselves as homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual. This is a distinctly modern idea. In fact that term "homosexual" was coined only in 1869. Previous societies believed that sexuality was merely behavior. It had nothing to do with what we today call "sexual identity." For instance, when Paul, in Roman's 1:26, writes that it is an abomination for one man to sleep with another, he is merely talking about the sex act. In his society there was not a class of people who defined themselves as gay.

 At the same time as the homosexual identity developed, medical science rushed in to explain it. Unfortunately for gay people, the explanations were devastating for the development of gay love relationships. Gay men who were initially diagnosed as suffering from a mental disease caused either by defective genes or a degeneration of the nervous system. When psychological etiologies replaced physiological ones, such depravity was thought to be the result of psychopathic adults, and later to be the result of a pathological constellation of family relationships. One wonders at how resourceful gay couples had to have been in order to maintain their relationship in the face of so much erroneous thinking, prejudice, and discrimination from family, society, religion, and the state.

 With the development of a gay identity, gay communities appeared in the United States. Today most large cities have a gay section, where one can find bars, restaurants, and a variety of businesses catering to gay people. Not surprisingly, one also finds a significant number of gay people living in this area. These gay ghettos are a haven for couples. In this environment, they can act freely and relax in a public setting with less fear of arrest and harassment. Such gay communities reinforce the concept of the gay identity and support the establishment of long-lasting love relationships.

 In summary, today's gay couples share very little with their ancestors, probably only similar feelings of romance and passion. They differ dramatically in their concept of themselves as gay. Consequently, the male lovers of antiquity felt themselves a part of the larger society, while the gay lovers of today feel themselves as separate and often alienated from it. This sense of alienation, the fear of police brutality and the brutality of average citizens, the condemnation by religious institutions, and perhaps most of all, the hostility of their own families give rise to many of the problems facing gay couples.

The Problems of Gay Relationships

For purposes of this short chapter, we may divide the potential relationship problems into three classes: Those that are externally caused, interpersonal problems within the couple, and individual personality problems that affect the relationship. Though the divisions are somewhat artificial, they are convenient classifications for learning purposes. In reality, these problems seldom occur alone. Most of the time, there is much cross-influence. The sensitive therapist will notice how these problems affect each other, and how changes in one's fear of influence can alter the others.

Problems Arising from Society's Attitudes

 1) Family Discrimination -- Perhaps no difficulty is as great for many gays as the rejection they face from their own immediate families. The average set of parents look upon their son's gay relationship as unfortunate that best, and at worst as decadent, immoral, abnormal, and doomed to misery. Fed for years with faulty information about the immorality of gay love and the belief that the relationship must end in hopeless despair, parents usually make a variety of attempts to interfere with it. One of the first courses of action is to send the son to a therapist. "Cure my son" is the desperate request. If the son is young enough to be coerced, or wants to please his family, the therapist (useless though it may be) will begin treatment.
A second reaction from parents is a guilt trip they place upon themselves. This is particularly true of mothers who believe, quite incorrectly, that an abnormal relationship with their sons produced a homosexual orientation. A mother may experience this guilt intensely. The gay son who continues his gay relationship may, in turn, assume responsibility for his mother's anguish.

 Another problem arises for the gay man, who, for whatever reason, chooses not to tell his parents about his homosexuality. Of course, he could not tell them about developing a love affair with another man, either. An enormous wall of secrecy surrounds his actions, making him a mystery to the family, who quickly learn not to ask questions. In this closet, the couple feel prohibited from spending the usual family holidays together. They separate at holiday time, each going to his own family.
Here the role of a therapist is to break through the barrier that prevents communication between the family and the gay couple. There are two ways to do this. The first is to provide good information about homosexuality to the parents. This material should be given by the son. Most parents want their children to be happy, but believe that a gay lifestyle will end in depression. There are usually willing (though sometimes not at first) to read whenever information is given. They should read this information by themselves, and then should take the opportunity to discuss it with their son and his lover. The second is to have discussions between family members (I am including the lover as a member of the family) to resolve all the barriers to good communication. (The lover, however, should not be dragged to these discussions against his will.) A full discussion should expose the fear, guilt, and resentment that prevent good communication between the family members and the gay couple.
Some families are destructive, abusive, or alcoholic. One finds fathers, for instance, who act mercilessly toward his son for his homosexual behavior, a mother who so wants to control her son that she will persist in trying to make him feel deep guilt for "having done this to me." There is no point in trying to establish communication with a destructive family; it will only end in further hurt for the gay son, and it may destroy his love relationship. Such families are so narcissistic, so involved with their own feelings of deprivation, that they lack even a primitive capacity for empathy. Though it may sound cold and unfeeling, the gay son and his lover should avoid such families.


2) Social Discrimination -- Job security can be a problem for a gay man, and especially one in a love relationship. There are many documented cases of gay men being fired from their jobs after the employer learns that his employee has moved in with another man. Unfortunately, there are rarely laws to prevent such blatant discrimination. This is truer of small communities that of large cities where gay couples have more anonymity. Sometimes gay couples are evicted from their rental housing on grounds of immorality.
While most gay couples, like their heterosexual counterparts, like to invite friends and colleagues over for dinner or for other social events, gay couples are forced into the closets are isolated from all but the gay community. If that gay community is itself small, as one finds in rural and suburban areas, it can increasingly create the feeling that gay couples live under a state of siege. This defensiveness is further reinforced when the local police, for reasons that escape logic, begin a vendetta against gay people, arresting them and publishing their names with the full knowledge that these actions will cause some of them to lose their jobs, perhaps their homes, and will create family embarrassment.
Both family and social discrimination create extraordinary stresses on a gay relationship. Disagreements between the gay men are likely to arise, aggravated by any personality problems, or by any unresolved conflicts in their relationship. Of course, there are also other gay couples who have the strength to turn to each other for guidance and support. These couples will likely turn out to be strengthened by the adversity, rather than crippled by it. The role of a therapist should obviously be to help the two men find strength in themselves and support for each other. It is in the circumstances of facing family and community discrimination that the therapist needs to be sensitive in separating levels of conflict between the men.
Problems Arising from Interpersonal Tensions

 A key concept when considering love relationships among gay people (from which all other concepts follow) is that gay relationships are different from straight ones in the sense that two male lovers emphasize masculine traits, and two lesbians emphasize female traits, while heterosexual lovers must compromise between male and female traits. This will undoubtedly sound peculiar in a society that perceives gay men as acting feminine, and lesbians as masculinized women. These ill-informed stereotypes aside, both the strengths and weaknesses of gay love relationships mirror the strengths and weaknesses respectively of masculinity and femininity as these are defined in our society.
1) Excitement-Seekers and Home-Builders -- One can find two general lifestyles within the masculine framework that contribute either to stability or conflict in a gay relationship. An Excitement-Seeker is one who emphasizes novelty and change, rather than stability and longevity in a relationship, often evaluating other men only on their sexual abilities. He avoids dull experiences and values his mobility and independence. The Home-Builder, on the other hand, is one who looks for permanence in a relationship, someone who wants to make future plans with and for his lover. He judges the quality of his relationship more by the degree of intimacy achieved then by the level of sexual excitement.
Commonsense would predict that the Home-Builder would be a better lover and more likely to be in a long-lasting relationship. But common sense would be wrong, the factors in human relationships being very complex. It is the compatibility of lifestyles that predicts success or failure. For instance, Excitement-Seekers, though often terrified of (and sometimes terrorized by) the Home-Builder kind of man will find a relationship with another Excitement-Seeker intimate and satisfying. Two Home-builders are also likely to form lasting relationships. The sparks fly, however, when an Excitement-Seeker and a Home-Builder are matched, the one motivated to increase the level of novelty in his life, the other striving for a more domestic, quieter environment. Sometimes compromises are possible, but often their incompatible goals will terminate the relationship. This is likely to be acceptable to the Excitement-Seeker, but not to the Home-Builder, a fact that only further drives them apart.
2) Monogamy and Fidelity -- There is probably no one issue in gay relationships that causes more strife than that of sexual fidelity. Conflict between the two men concerning sexual exclusivity is probably the single greatest cause for the breakup of gay couples. Many men are not highly motivated to remain in a monotonous relationship throughout their lives. Some people believe, without a shred of evidence, that this desire to have sex outside the relationship indicates an inability to be intimate and that it is caused by the socialization of men. These critics, however, are usually of the Home-Builder type themselves. This is not to say that fear of intimacy may not motivate some particular gay men to run out for sex, instead of dealing with their fear. But the fact is that very few gay relationships remain sexually exclusive for long. Before the first year is out, conflicts often arise, and it is a rare couple that has been together for more than a few years and still sexually exclusive. One should also note that a high percentage of heterosexually married men also have sex outside the marriage. We have every reason to believe that more would do so if they weren't frightened of the consequences.
Sex outside the relationship does not cause the breakup of gay couples. What is crucial is the means they use to resolve the crisis. There are innumerable solutions, too many to discus in this short chapter. Destructive to the relationship is the unconditional demand by the one who has remained sexually exclusive for the other to change his wayward behavior. Indeed, all demands are likely to end up being destructive to the relationship. Winning the battle does not increase intimacy and caring; rather, it most often leads to resentment, which only builds to a crescendo and a final explosion. Over time, negotiation and explorations of feelings and reactions will more probably lead to a mutually agreeable resolution. The prudent therapist, working with such a couple in conflict, will do everything possible to prevent quick, and especially retaliatory, actions by either man.
3) Problems of Jealousy and Envy -- In contrast to straight relationships, gay ones need to differentiate between problems of jealousy and envy. Let us define them. Jealousy is the fear of abandonment. What is likely to be feared by the jealous lover is that his beloved will leave him for another man. Jealous behavior is but the outward sign of the fear of abandonment and desertion. Such jealous lovers are likely to subscribe to Schopenhauer's dictum that “to forgive and forget is to throw away valuable experience!”

Envy, on the other hand, is the enmity motivated by competitiveness or covetousness. When envious, we are resentful of our lover's perceived superiority or success. We covet what he has -- perhaps his looks, his lifestyle, his money, or his sex appeal. Envy implies a competition between lovers in which one partner perceives himself as second-best. The perceived lack of equality by either or both of the lovers is most often a sign of long-standing insecurities. Moreover, envy can be extremely damaging to a relationship, especially since the envious lover is likely to be unaware of his feeling, and then confused by it.
Personality Problems that Interfere with the Relationship
Gay relationships, like straight ones, are subject to all the insecurities that each member of the pair brings to the relationship. Inevitably, these insecurities and fears become intertwined with the couple's way of functioning, communicating, and resulting conflicts in the relationship. There are no specifically interpersonal issues here, since the fears and insecurities begin their work long before romantic and sexual desire is arise. Still, we can discuss some common sources of personal conflict.
1) Self-hatred -- The first personality problems that can hurt a love relationship is self-hatred for being gay. It is very difficult to grow up in our society without some regret over one's homosexuality. For some, the disappointment of not pleasing the family and community is intense and persistent, leading invariably to low self-esteem. A chronic depression exist in such men, and any barrier to their plans, or roadblock in their progress, is interpreted as proof of their inferior status. These man typify the quip by Groucho Marx, who once said, "I wouldn't join any club with standards so low that they would invite me to be a member!" While homophobic gay men do try to establish love relationships, they cannot engage in intimacy because they cannot accept love from another man. Occasionally, one finds a closeted, self-hating in gay man in a relationship with another man who is out of the closet and secure in a positive sense of self. A clash is inevitable.
2) Overvaluation of Sex -- Overevaluation of sex is another personal problem for some gay men. Men, as distinct from women, value sexuality as the primary criterion of a relationship. Any sexual problems between men is often interpreted as an indicator that the relationship is over. This overvaluation also expresses itself by the gay lover using outside sex as a palliative for any frustration he may have in the relationship, or for problems in general. Sex is readily available in the gay world, and some gay men will vent their frustration through sexual encounters rather than by solving the real problem. These men live the Yiddish proverb that says, "When the penis is hard, the brains are soft."
3) Paternal Relations -- The relationship between a gay man and his father may exert a powerful influence on the success or failure of the young man's love relationships. This is a complicated issue, filled with many levels of subtlety. Etiological factors cannot be examined in depth here. The problem expresses itself in the following way: the gay man, quite unconsciously, expects his lover to fulfill two roles, that of lover -- and father. The father role is composed of the aspects that were missed by the son during the formative years of his development. It is as if the son were attempting to recover the missed love and caring of prior years by means of his current love affair. It is a restorative venture, but since it is misdirected in its object (lover instead of father), it is doomed to failure. The lover soon becomes confused about who he is in the relationship, and this quickly leads to conflicts and resentments that are ill-understood by both parties. This kind of problem usually leads to a feeling of helplessness and futility.
Not all traditionally trained therapists can work with gay couples in crisis. For instance, the therapist who believes that homosexuality is abnormal would serve the couple best by referring them to a colleague who is more sympathetic. But, generally speaking, the techniques of therapy for gay couples are no different than they are for straight ones.
In therapy, the therapist will learn that gay couples have their strengths, as well as special problems. They will find, for instance, that gay couples are unusually honest in their interactions. While deception does exist, it occurs less often in gay than straight couples. Good therapeutic techniques will always emphasize the strengths of a relationship, rather than dwelling on the weaknesses.