Why don't relatnships seem to last? - The Lounge - Gay Authors

Contents:

• GAY RELATNSHIPS DON’T LAST BEE….
• GAY RELATNSHIPS CAN BE MORE STABLE THAN STRAIGHT ON
• GAY MEN’S FEARS OF LONG-TERM ROMANCE
• THE SECRET TO KNOWG IF YOUR GAY RELATNSHIP WILL LAST
• 5 MYTHS ABOUT GAY PEOPLE DEBUNKED
• MANY SUCCSFUL GAY MARRIAG SHARE AN OPEN SECRET

GAY RELATNSHIPS DON’T LAST BEE….

Though gays did state that they alt wh creased strs levels due to societal attus, they were more likely to report beg ntent and livg happy liv. The notn that all gays bounce om lover to lover is are many, many mted gays who want nothg more than to live their liv and be wh the love of their liv.

The night June 1969 that gay men fought police raidg the Stonewall Inn Greenwich Village marked the begng of wir acceptance of male homosexuals. Homosexualy has not been nsired pathologil by mastream psychiatry sce the 1970s, and the years that followed, gay upl have begun to acknowledge their partnerships publicly.

Mothers who enjoy the sensivy and shared terts of gay sons may lean too much on them, g them to fulfill their unmet emotnal believ that the dynamics n prevent adult gay men om formg long-term romantic bonds. Many gay men seek affirmatn not through an endurg, lovg relatnship, he said, but cultivatg large works of iends, pursug transient sexual liaisons, focg on profsnal succs and creatg flawlsly appoted environments for his new book, Commment and Healg: Gay Men and the Need for Romantic Love, Isay scrib how therapy n help provi gay men wh sight to the effects of childhood fluenc on the pacy to m to a partner. In a book accsible to nontherapists and illtrated wh se studi, Isay shows how gay men n rever om childhood wounds and learn to sta mted monogamo partnerships.

GAY RELATNSHIPS CAN BE MORE STABLE THAN STRAIGHT ON

A clil profsor at Weill Medil College of Cornell Universy and a faculty member at the Columbia Universy Center for Psychoanalytic Trag and Rearch, Isay draws upon his experience as a Manhattan psychotherapist wh mostly gay published his first book, Beg Homosexual: Gay Men and Their Development, 1989, at a time when he was g out.

His 1996 book, Beg Gay, outl the ways which gay teenagers and adults velop said that his new book has stirred up some ntroversy bee he argu that gay upl who tolerate sexual adventur outsi the partnership may do so out of an unnsc fear of closens rather than a sense of liberatn om tradnal heterosexual strictur.

GAY MEN’S FEARS OF LONG-TERM ROMANCE

“It ns unter to the prevailg doctr of the gay muny that mata that our relatnships are fe, more mocratic and better than heterosexual relatnships, ” said hop that his new book will help gay men to exame the patterns of their romantic relatnships and perhaps seek the guidance of a therapist attuned to gay issu. Approval of same-sex relatnships has been steadily risg sce 2009 (Pew Rearch Center, 2017), and the 2015 Supreme Court cisn endorsg same-sex marriage was a w for many lbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) dividuals.

Clients (and reporters) often ask me whether I predict that the gay divorce rate will be higher or lower than the straight divorce rate – which most folks believe is about 50%. Gay marriage is allowed six stat and six foreign untri; six other stat upl n sign up for “all the rights and duti of marriage” but is lled domtic partnership or civil unn – so are those folks nsired married or not?

And, given how new the formal legal relatnships are, and pecially light of the lack of feral regnn of state marriag, the “take-up” rate the gay and lbian muny has been far ls than the percentage of mted straight upl that marry. ” Recent studi show that as few as 10% of gay men are a “legal” partnership, and even though the take-up rate is higher for lbians, is still only around one-third. Roughly half of the “unmarried” lbians and gay men are, nohels, livg relatnships, but for var reasons they choose to keep them rmal – even stat like Massachetts or California where marriage or domtic partnership is an optn.

THE SECRET TO KNOWG IF YOUR GAY RELATNSHIP WILL LAST

And, sce sexual orientatn isn’t ually tracked even stat that have legalized same-sex marriage, a rearcher would have to look at dividual licens to sort between straight and gay marriag – and for some wh genr-ntral nam further quiry would be need. Bottom le, we don’t know how many gay “marriag” currently end “divorce, ” and chanc are we won’t know for s whether our legal relatnships last shorter or longer than the straight on.

Same-sex upl are far ls likely to raise children together, for obv blogil reasons and bee of lgerg nsequenc of a socializatn that disurag lbians and gay men om parentg, and is well tablished that havg children leads upl to get married and stay married more often. As a rult of a long history of discrimatn, lbians and gay men tend to have lower tn out and lower (spe the myth of the rich homosexual) and th are ls likely to fd themselv suatns where marriage is appropriate – and th they are ls likely to marry the first place. Conversely, the absence of this social and cultural amework is bound to make a difference who gay and lbian folks pick as partners, how they thk about and anize their relatnships, and how they approach their relatnship problems the long term.

It will take a generatn or so of te social acceptance of same-sex relatnships (pecially for younger gay folks, where the attus are formed) before the lgerg impacts of homophobia will be eradited, and so is likely that our relatnships will ntue to be more turbulent for a few more s to e. If unhappy gay marriag end earlier than their straight unterparts, that is not necsary a bad thg; what is more important is to fd ways to support our relatnships and fai regardls of sexual orientatn.

5 MYTHS ABOUT GAY PEOPLE DEBUNKED

Gay myths(Image cred: © Dawn Hudson |)Gay people have been acced of beg unf parents, more likely to be pedophil, unable to sta lastg relatnships, and worse.

MANY SUCCSFUL GAY MARRIAG SHARE AN OPEN SECRET

"Not every sexual act has a reproductive functn, " said Ja Mann, a blogist at Geetown relatnships don't lastSame-sex marriage; gay men givg their weddg vows.

"There is nsirable evince that both lbians and gay men want to be strong, mted relatnships [and] are succsful creatg the partnerships, spe difficulti created by social prejudice, stigma, and the lack of legal regnn for same-sex relatnships most parts of the U.

S., " said UCLA psychologist Anne Pepl, -thor of a book chapter on the subject published the 2007 Annual Review of example, John Gottman, a Universy of Washgton emer profsor of psychology, and his lleagu llected data om homosexual upl across 12 years, and found that about 20 percent had broken up over that time. That rate projected over a 40-year perd is slightly lower than the divorce rate for first marriag among heterosexual upl over the same time span, acrdg to the study published 2003 the Journal of Homosexualy.

"The overall implitn of this rearch is that we have to shake off all of the stereotyp of homosexual relatnships and have more rpect for them as mted relatnships, " Gottman fact, the same study found that gay upl tend to be better at rolvg nflicts and enuragg posive pedophil are gay(Image cred: © Normasmond |)An pecially pernic myth is that most adults who sexually abe children are gay. A number of rearchers have looked at this qutn to terme if homosexuals are more likely to be pedophil than heterosexuals, and the data dite that's not the example, a 1989 study led by Kurt Frnd of the Clarke Instute of Psychiatry Canada, scientists showed pictur of children to adult gay and straight mal, and measured sexual aroal. (Image cred: © Alanpoulson |)Many of those who oppose gay marriage and gay adoptn charge that same-sex parents aren't good for kids, and that a child needs both a father and a mother to grow up to be a healthy adult.

Rearch, however, shows that children of gay parents tend to fare jt example, one recent study looked at nearly 90 teens, half livg wh female same-sex upl and the others wh heterosexual upl, showg that both groups fared siarly school. "Both studi were scribed a lerature review paper published Febary 2010 the Journal of Marriage and gay is a choiceThe mystery DNA spippets are about 300 tim ls likely than other regns of the genome to be lost durg the urse of mammalian evolutn. (Image cred: Dreamstime)While some claim that beg gay is a choice, or that homosexualy n be cured, evince is mountg that same-sex attractn is at least partly geic and blogilly tt whether gen play a role, rearchers have pared intil tws ( which all gen are shared) to aternal tws ( which about 50 percent of gen are shared).