Difference and Diversity:

Some therapists believe that they should treat gay and lesbian couples ôjust like heterosexual couples.ö Others hold the view that same-sex couples are completely different from heterosexual couples and that only specially trained therapist can work with them. This paper is an attempt to over come the lack of information about gay and lesbian couple by describing the differences between heterosexual couples and homosexual couples; differences between gay couples and lesbian couples; diversity within both lesbian couples and gay couples; and the therapeutic implications of these differences. The discussion of differences has powerful political implications and is embedded within a larger context of belief systems about gender and sexual orientation. Therapist needs to protect against categorizing, essentializing, or over generalizing about gay and lesbian couples. Although heterosexism, homophobia, and sexism affect the dynamics of all gay and lesbian relationships, it is important to recognize that age, class, race, ethnicity, and physical ability, as well as the dynamics of each individual couple, make each relationship unique. The therapist, whether lesbian, gay, bisexual, or heterosexual, should be familiar with issues specific to lesbian and gay experience within the dominant society, and, at the same time, be attuned to the idiosyncratic nature of individual couples.     

Relationship Education and Therapy for Same‐Sex Couples

The gay and lesbian community suffers higher rates of discrimination, mental health problems, and relationship break‐up than their heterosexual counterparts. In this paper we analyse the challenges confronting same‐sex couples, and the implications for couple education and therapy with same‐sex couples. We describe some similarities in the challenges confronting heterosexual and same‐sex couples (e.g., negotiation of shared realistic relationship expectations, effective communication). These similarities suggest existing evidence‐based approaches to couple therapy and relationship education are likely to assist same sex couple relationships. We also describe distinctive challenges for same‐sex couples (e.g., homophobic discrimination, internalised homophobia, and low support from many families for same sex relationships). These distinctive challenges suggest some adaptation of existing approaches to couple education and therapy could enhance their relevance and effectiveness to same sex couples.     

Freud,Grafenberg, and the neglected vagina: Thoughts concerning an historical omission in sexology

Because similarity between partners has been thought to be related to relationship quality, this study assessed similarities between partners in 44 married, 35 heterosexual cohabiting, 50 gay, and 56 lesbian couples on demographic characteristics, appraisals of relationship quality, and factors predictive of relationship quality. With regard to demographic characteristics: Partners' age was correlated for each type of couple; partners' income, education, and job prestige were correlated only for heterosexual cohabiting couples; and gay partners had the largest discrepancies in age, income, and education. With regard to appraisals of relationship quality: Partners' scores were correlated for each type of couple on relationship satisfaction but for only gay and lesbian couples on love for partner; partners across all couples differed in their assessments of relationship quality. With regard to the predictors of relationship quality: Partner scores were correlated for each type of couple only on shared decision making; these predictor scores were most frequently correlated for lesbian partners; differences between partners were least for lesbian couples on attractions to the relationship and perceived family support and greatest for cohabiting couples on dyadic attachment. Relationship quality was not related to discrepancies between partners' demographic variables but was negatively related to discrepancies in partners' dyadic attachment. In conclusion, partner homogamy was most pervasive in lesbian couples, and for all couples homogamy on dyadic attachment was related to relationship quality.     

May–December Lesbian Relationships: Power Storms or Blue Skies?

SUMMARY

What are the implications when there is considerable difference in the ages of partners in a lesbian couple? May–December lesbian relationships are those where partners are at least 10 years apart in age, and where both partners are over 30. These relationships have been either neglected or valorized in the psychological literature. Differences in socially ascribed power, women's socialization against acknowledging power, the value the lesbian community places on egalitarianism, and the interaction of other privileges, combine to impact these couples. The fluid nature of power dynamics in May–December lesbian relationships is highlighted and explored. Finally, ways that age-variant lesbian couples can navigate these power differentials in healthy ways are addressed.     

The Effect of Parental Gender Roles on Students' Attitudes Toward Lesbian,Gay, and Heterosexual Adoptive Couples

All of Canada's provinces and territories legally recognize the right of gay and lesbian couples to adopt children; however, widespread acceptance of this practice has not been documented. Using an experimental design, with 506 university students, the present study assessed (1) attitudes toward gay, lesbian, and heterosexual adoptive couples; (2) the sex of the child to be adopted; (3) gender role characteristics of the adoptive couple; and (4) predictors of attitudes toward adoption by same-sex couples. Using vignettes describing potential adoptive couples, the results revealed that gay and lesbian couples were rated significantly less favorably than heterosexual couples when asked about outcomes for the adoptive child. Participants were more likely to approve of child placements with lesbian adoptive couples whose gender role characteristics emulated the traditional masculine/feminine dyad as compared to lesbian couples in which both partners displayed feminine characteristics. Statistically significant predictors of negative attitudes toward adoption by lesbian couples were religiosity and non-essentialist beliefs about homosexuality as well as endorsement of modern homonegative attitudes predicted negative attitudes toward adoption by gay male couples. Targeted education for social workers and adoption agency workers should be developed to ensure objective assessments of prospective same-sex adoptive couples regardless of their gender role characteristics.     

We're both tenured professors . . .but where is home?

Mills' sociological imagination is used to look at relevant issues in the life of a lesbian academic couple in a distance relationship. Analysis includes concerns which are common to both lesbian and heterosexual couples in distance situations such as finding jobs, tenure, productivity, mentoring, managing two households, communication, community, and those items unique to lesbian couples-coming out to students, finding and maintaining a lesbian community, effects of hiring practices in academe. Based on the analysis, recommendations are presented.     

More than Surface Tension: Femmes in Families

SUMMARY

This article raises questions about the lack of scholarly focus on butch/femme couples and their absence in studies of lesbian couples and family-building. In an era of lesbian marriage and lesbian parenting, femme and butch coupling and family-building remain unspoken topics within family studies, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT)–specific research. Moving beyond a focus on eroticism within the femme/butch couple, questions about how gender expression impacts other relationships dynamics, including the maintenance of long-term relationships, power and intimacy, domestic chores and child-rearing, are raised. The femme role in “homemaking,” that is, building and maintaining families, especially needs further exploration.     

Lesbian Couples’ Relationship Quality Across the Transition to Parenthood

The transition to parenthood is a time of stress for many couples. Most research on the transition to parenthood has been conducted with middle‐class, heterosexual couples. The current study uses multilevel modeling to examine predictors of change in relationship quality (love and conflict) during the transition to parenthood in 29 lesbian couples. Predictors included personality variables, work context variables, social context variables, and couple characteristics. Results suggest that personality and couple characteristics were important predictors of change in love, whereas personality and expected social support were salient predictors of change in conflict. The importance of research on this key life transition for lesbian couples is discussed.     

HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION AND SEXUAL ORIENTATION

The 2006 Canada census is used, along with a well‐known model of household production, to estimate the value of household commodities produced by gay, lesbian, and heterosexual couples. The results show some intriguing differences and similarities. Unlike heterosexuals, gay and lesbian couples respond differently to changes in the cost of time. However, all couples are characterized by the importance of market goods over time and the importance of human capital in the market over the home, with respect to household production. Hence, although there are differences in the sexual division of labor between households of different sexual orientations, the value of household commodities is mostly driven by differences in the amount of market goods used in the home. Market goods are determined by income, and differences in income within a couple‐type swamp differences in income across couple‐types, and as a result there is no statistical difference in the value of household commodities produced across the three sexual orientations. (JEL D13)     

Same Sex Couples and Counselling:

This paper is about homosexual relationships and the way that clinicians and researchers have conceived them and then attempted to compare them with heterosexual models. When there are problems experienced by one or both people in a relationship the available conceptualizations are inadequate. The need for a different perception of these dyads in counseling is suggested. This paper extends earlier research with men and women who migrated to Australia as part of a same sex couple (Hart, 1990). My aim is to broaden the view of the social and personal dynamics of gay and lesbian couples in general. I conclude that couples, in or out of counseling, should be sited within gay and lesbian multicultural kinship patterns.     

Gay and lesbian couples in therapy: perspectives for the contemporary family therapist

This paper outlines the major concerns of gay and lesbian couples who seek therapy. Presenting problems are classified as either internal to the relationship or as external (contextual) ones that reflect the influence of oppressive cultural and gender biases. Throughout the article, distinctive therapy methods are described that address the unique concerns of lesbian and gay couples, with special sensitivity to heterosexist and homophobic bias.     

Gay,Lesbian, and Heterosexual Couples About to Begin Couples Therapy: An Online Relationship Assessment of 40,681 Couples

We currently have little idea of precisely who goes for couples therapy. This is a report of the results of a validated online assessment of relationship and individual functioning based on 39,251 heterosexual, 1,022 lesbian, and 438 gay couples about to begin couples therapy. Using validated and reliable questionnaires of relationship and individual functioning, this report presents and compares, for each sexual-orientation, the percentage of couples, pre-therapy, who are coping with a variety of relationship problems. To test for the replicability of results, the sample was divided randomly into two subsamples and statistical tests were performed on each sample. Couples initiating therapy suffer from greater distress and many more co-morbidities than has been presumed in previous literature, and same-sex couples present a particular set of both strengths and challenges compared to heterosexual couples. Gay-male and lesbian couples were very different on trust and monogamy, as were heterosexual and lesbian couples. Based on this epidemiologically sized sample, the challenge to our field may be to create interventions with much larger effect sizes than we currently have.     

Research on the treatment of couple distress

This article reviews the research on couple therapy over the last decade. The research shows that couple therapy positively impacts 70% of couples receiving treatment. The effectiveness rates of couple therapy are comparable to the effectiveness rates of individual therapies and vastly superior to control groups not receiving treatment. The relationship between couple distress and individual disorders such as depression and anxiety has become well established over the past decade. Research also indicates that couple therapy clearly has an important role in the treatment of many disorders. Findings over the decade have been especially promising for integrative behavioral couples therapy and emotion-focused therapy, which are two evidence-based treatments for couples. Research has also begun to identify moderators and mediators of change in couple therapy. Finally, a new and exciting line of research has focused on delineating the principles of change in couple therapy that transcends approach.     

Different Storks for Different Folks

SUMMARY

When gay and lesbian couples decide to become parents, they are unique as a group in always requiring the involvement of a facilitating other: a donor, surrogate, or (in the case of adopted or foster children) birth parents. This clinical paper explores common psychological and social challenges gay and lesbian couples face when using alternative reproductive technologies to attain parenthood. Between the wish and the actuality of being at home with their baby, gay and lesbian parents travel a long and winding road of choices and chances taken. The parenting partners often consist of one biological and one non-biological parent. Issues of psychological/emotional parenthood as opposed to merely biological parenthood (including assumptions of potential inequality or differential legitimacy) must be reconciled in the minds, couple relationships, family of origin relationships, and friendship support systems of the partners before and after the child's birth. The family must also navigate others' questions and assumptions as they venture ever further beyond their intimate circle and as their growing child forms relationships with peers. Specific guidelines are offered for helping couples surmount these psychosocial challenges.     

Results of Gottman Method Couples Therapy with Gay and Lesbian Couples

The results of an uncontrolled study of Gottman Method Couples Therapy in changing relationship satisfaction with 106 gay and lesbian couples is reported in this paper. Measurement of relationship satisfaction was conducted at five separate time points. The data show significant improvements in relationship satisfaction following eleven sessions of therapy for both gay male and lesbian couples. Effect sizes suggest that this therapy was highly effective, compared to the usual 0.5 standard deviation effect size in couples therapy. Initial co‐morbidities did not affect the size of the changes; in fact, some changes were significantly larger for three initial co‐morbidities.     

Genograms Redrawn

Abstract

One of the challenges faced by GLBT families is defining and representing family relationships in a way that is not constrained by heterosexist notions of family. This study explores the usefulness of asking lesbian couples to depict family relationships by adapting the genogram (family tree) techniques used in family therapy. Six lesbian couples were asked to construct their own family tree and to comment on the process. Genograms were found to be useful but needed to be redrawn, for example, with tiers and circles rather than traditional symbols. Drawing and redrawing genograms highlighted the importance of acceptance and affirmation versus homophobia and heterosexism in defining family relationships for the lesbian couples interviewed.     

Relationship satisfaction in lesbian couples: Review,methodological critique,and research agenda

ABSTRACT

There has been increased interest in and attention to understanding the characteristics associated with relationship satisfaction among same-sex couples. This review examines the individual, couple, and external factors associated with relationship satisfaction among contemporary lesbian couples, highlighting domains such as internalized homophobia, personality, communication, conflict, sex, stress, and social support. I discuss methodological concerns and future directions to advance research in this area.     

Couple Assessment:

This paper examines the three paradigms that intersect when working with lesbian couples affected by domestic violence. The intersection of these three paradigms-family systems theory, lesbian and gay affirmative therapy, and the feminist analysis of domestic violence-creates a dilemma for lesbian therpists working in rural areas or small cities. Without the support of domestic violence services developed for or within the lesbian community, or a lesbian/gay community committed to acknowledging domestic violence, the lesbian affirmative therapist must balance the needs of the lesbian client with the feminist analysis of violence. This article outlines strategies that protect abused lesbians, without prematurely sacrificing the lesbian couple's relationship.     

Assessing nontraditional couples: validity of the marital satisfaction inventory--revised with gay,lesbian, and cohabiting heterosexual couples

Thirty-one gay male couples and 28 lesbian couples were compared with 36 cohabiting heterosexual couples using the Marital Satisfaction Inventory-Revised (MSI-R), a multidimensional measure of relationship functioning intended for use with both traditional and nontraditional couples. Analyses of scales' internal consistency and factor structure supported the construct validity of this measure with nontraditional couples. Analyses of mean profiles on the MSI-R indicated that cohabiting opposite-gender and same-gender couples were more alike than different, and were more similar to nondistressed samples of married heterosexual couples from the general community than to couples in therapy. Implications of current findings for clinical assessment and intervention are considered, and directions for future research are proposed.