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Partners Task Force for Gay and Lesbian Couples
Online from 1995-2022

Demian and Steve Bryant originally founded Partners as a monthly newsletter in 1986. By late 1990 it was reformatted into a bi-monthly magazine. Print publication was halted by 1995 when Demian published Partners as a Web site, which greatly expanded readership.

In 1988, the Partners National Survey of Lesbian & Gay Couples report was published; the first major U.S. survey on same-sex couples in a decade.

In 1996, Demian produced The Right to Marry, a video documentary based on the dire need for equality that was made clear by the data from the survey mentioned above. The video featured interviews with Rev. Mel White, Evan Wolfson, Phyllis Burke, Richard Mohr, Kevin Cathcart, Faygele benMiriam, Benjamin Cable-McCarthy, Susan Reardon, Frances Fuchs, Tina Podlodowski, and Chelle Mileur.

Demian has been the sole operator during the last two decades of Partners.

Demian stopped work on Partners Task Force in order to realize his other time-consuming projects, which include publishing the book “Operating Manual for Same-Sex Couples: Navigating the rules, rites & rights” - which is now available on Amazon. The book is based on the Partners Survey mentioned above, his interviews of scores of couples, and 36 years of writing hundreds of articles about same-sex couples. It’s also been informed by his personal experience in a 20-year, same-sex relationship.

Demian’s other project is to publish his “Photo Stories by Demian” books based on his more than six decades as a photographer and writer.


Partners Task Force for Gay & Lesbian Couples
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Gender Role Socialization on Same-Sex Couples
by Kathleen Ritter, Ph.D. & Anthony Terndrup, Ph.D.
© 2000, Ritter & Terndrup


Family counseling includes the appraisal of family roles, interaction patterns, and decision-making processes. A critical issue for family counselors working with gay and lesbian clients involves assessing the effects of gender role socialization on same-sex couples. According to Kurdek (1994) and Peplau (1981), gender role influences gay and lesbian relationships more than sexual orientation. The following discussions consider the specific impact of gender role socialization on same-sex partnerships.


Male Couples

Rigid and stereotypic masculine gender roles frequently contribute to relationship problems if one or both members of a male couple have been conditioned to be competitive, strong, and independent (George & Behrendt, 1987). Male socialization seldom equips men to function in relationships, since their conditioning often discourages their development of intimacy skills (Hawkins, 1992). Conflict commonly arises when there is an inability to communicate tender and vulnerable feelings (George & Behrendt, 1987). Men in couple relationships often tend to hold back from commitment for fear of losing power and control (Farley, 1992).

Family counselors working with male couples need to focus on those variables related to masculine socialization that seem to be obstructing optimal dyadic functioning. If extreme competition, aggression, fear of vulnerability, and loss of control are predominant in one or both members of a male couple, then the risk of relationship dysfunction is high. If fears of vulnerability, attachment, intimacy, or engulfment are profound and prevent commitment to the relationship, then individual counseling may be warranted before couple counseling is resumed.

Over-separation and over-attachment are two factors that influence the development of identity and intimacy conflicts in gay men (Colgan, 1988). During childhood and adolescence, for example, gay males may encounter rejection or emotional abandonment by their fathers who attempt to discredit or extinguish gender-discordant behaviors in their sons. Consequently, these boys may experience a need to deny their attachment desires for their fathers. As patterns of over-separation are established and maintained, disorders of gay identity and same-sex intimacy develop into adulthood.

Each stage of male couple development, however, presents possibilities for negotiating separation and attachment (McWhirter & Mattison, 1984). Frequently, the establishment of an adult emotional bond forms the foundation of safety necessary for redressing earlier developmental wounds and for balancing independence and dependence. According to Forstein (1986), counseling “provides an opportunity for the [male] couple to work through individual and interpersonal issues, understand the developmental nature of the couple relationship, and affirm the essential nature of being gay and being coupled” (p.136). Gay men with fixed and rigid patterns of over-separation and over-attachment can be helped not only through the intimacy of their male partnerships, but also by the empathic understanding of their counseling relationships (Colgan, 1988).

Malyon (1982) agreed that intimacy is more complicated for homosexual males than for heterosexual men, but that therapeutic success can be achieved within the context of an emotional relationship with the counselor. Emotional and sexual impulses have been inhibited and compartmentalized for many gay men, who have become as isolated from themselves as they are from others. The empathic reflection of the counseling relationship can become an agent for restoring intrapsychic integrity and fostering interpersonal intimacy.


Lesbian Couples

Most women define themselves in association with others, develop within the context of connectedness, and learn to experience the needs of others as their own (Chodorow, 1978; Miller, 1976). This feminine socialization allows women to organize their identities around the ability to maintain relationships, the first of which is the mother-daughter dyad. Similarity and oneness between the girl and her mother facilitate the development of an enhanced capacity for empathy. This emotional understanding and inner experience of another then become a template for all future relationships (Brown, 1994; Chodorow, 1978; Mencher, 1990).

The quality of intimacy in lesbian relationships often has been measured according to male models of development based on individuation, separation, and autonomy. In comparison to these masculine concepts of maturity, women’s relatedness has been pathologized as fusion (Mencher, 1990; Miller, 1976). Classical psychoanalytic theory, for example, views experiences such as union or merger as regressive opposites of differentiation of self from the other.

In order to depathologize female patterns of connectedness and relatedness, merger has been reformulated as an ongoing adaptive strategy to maintain the integrity of a couple in a homophobic environment (McKenzie, 1992) and as a way to counteract the social and cultural pressures undermining the relationship (McCandlish, 1982). From the perspective of self-psychology, Mitchell (1988) asserts that flexibility and permeability of ego boundaries are essential elements in all intimate relationships. According to this theory, a woman’s ability to “open the boundaries of the self … is far from pathological. Rather, it is seen as the basis for a profound relationship and the necessary condition for psychological growth” (p.165).

During the initial phase of any relationship, a developmental stage of fusion allows two individuals to become one couple. Eventually, however, partners recognize their differences as well as their similarities. Once conflicts are recognized and resolved, mature intimacy develops. In other words, fusion is meant to last for a while but not forever. When fusion persists, a problem with merger exists. The development of mature intimacy represents an ongoing challenge for all couples, regardless of sexual orientation, and involves a dynamic balance between closeness and distance (Mc Candlish, 1982). “If enmeshment replaces the ebb and flow of connection and separation” (Burch, 1986, p.59), relationship dysfunction may require counseling intervention.

Family counselors must neither assume that the closeness of a lesbian relationship is immature and pathological, nor expect lesbian partners to identify with masculine concepts of maturity. Family counselors need to consider, however, that feminine gender role socialization sometimes results in prolonged difficulties with fusion in lesbian couples. Attention must be paid to enmeshment that restricts the movement between connectedness and separateness within the dyadic system.


Conclusion

The preceding discussions consider the specific impact of gender role socialization on gay and lesbian relationships. Although gender role conditioning is likely to be similar between members of same-sex couples, each partner inevitably will be socialized to differing degrees. In other words, one man will have been conditioned to be more competitive, strong, and independent than his lover; likewise, one woman will have been nurtured to be more empathic, relational, and sensitive than her beloved. Family counselors with flexible gender roles can ally with each partner accordingly and otherwise join these dyadic systems to recalibrate the dynamic balance between intimacy and individuation necessary for optimal functioning. Gender role flexibility thus becomes an important aptitude for family counselors to develop and cultivate within themselves in order to facilitate this vital equilibrium among same-sex relationships.


References

Brown, L. S. (1994). “Gender issues in lesbian relationships: Strengths and struggles.” Paper presented at the 102nd Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Los Angeles.
Burch, B. (1986). “Psychotherapy and the dynamics of merger in lesbian couples.” In T. S. Stein & C. J. Cohen (Eds.), Contemporary Perspectives on Psychotherapy with Lesbians and Gay Men (pp. 57-71). New York: Plenum.
Chodorow, N. J. (1978). The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the sociology of gender. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Colgan, P. (1988). Treatment of identity and intimacy issues in gay males. In E. Coleman (Ed.), Integrated Identity for Gay Men and Lesbians: Psychotherapeutic approaches for emotional well-being (pp. 101-123). New York: Harrington Park Press.
Farley, N. (1992). “Same-Sex Domestic Violence”. In S. H. Dworkin & F. J. Gutierrez (Eds.), Counseling Gay Men and Lesbians: Journey to the end of the rainbow (pp. 231-242). Alexandria VA: American Association for Counseling and Development.
Forstein, M. (1986). “Psychodynamic psychotherapy with gay male couples.” In T. S. Stein & C. J. Cohen (Eds.), Contemporary Perspectives on Psychotherapy with Lesbians and Gay Men (pp. 103-137). New York: Plenum.
George, K. D., & Behrendt, A. E. (1987). “Therapy for male couples experiencing relationship problems and sexual problems.” Journal of Homosexuality, 14 (1-2), 77-88.
Hawkins, R. L. (1992). “Therapy with the male couple.” In S. H. Dworkin & F. J. Gutierrez (Eds.), Counseling Gay Men and Lesbians: Journey to the end of the rainbow (pp. 81-94). Alexandria, VA: American Association for Counseling and Development.
Kurdek, L. A. (1994). “The nature and correlates of relationship quality in gay, lesbian, and heterosexual cohabiting couples: A test of the individual difference, interdependence, and discrepancy models.” In B. Greene & G. M. Herek (Eds.), Lesbian and Gay Psychology: Theory, research, and clinical applications (pp. 133-155). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Malyon, A. K. (1982). “Psychotherapeutic implications of internalized homophobia in gay men.” In J. C. Gonsiorek (Ed.), Homosexuality and Psychotherapy: A practitioner’s handbook of affirmative models (pp. 59-69). Binghamton, NY: The Haworth Press.
McCandlish, B. M. (1982). “Therapeutic issues with lesbian couples.” Journal of Homosexuality, 7 (2-3), 71-78.
McKenzie, S. (1992). “Merger in lesbian relationships.” Women and Therapy, 12 (1-2), 151-160.
McWhirter, D. P., & Mattison, A. M. (1984). The male couple. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Mencher, J. (1990). Intimacy in lesbian relationships: A critical re-examination of fusion. Work in Progress, No. 42. Wellesley, MA: Stone Center Working Paper Series.
Miller, J. B. (1976). Toward a New Psychology of Women. Boston: Beacon Press.
Mitchell, V. (1988). “Using Kohut’s self psychology in work with lesbian couples.” Women and Therapy, 8 (1-2), 157-166.
Peplau, L. A. (1981, March). “What homosexuals want.” Psychology Today, pp. 28-38.


© 2000, Ritter & Terndrup
by Kathleen Ritter, Ph.D.
California State University, Bakersfield
Anthony Terndrup, Ph.D.
Pastoral Counseling Center of the Mid-Willamette Valley
602 Southwest Madison Ave., Corvallis, Oregon 97333
541-753-9217
aterndrup@proaxis.com

This article first appeared in
The Family Digest, 12 (4), 4-5. (2000, Spring)
Used with permission of the authors.


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