Gay and Can't Fd a Partner? | Psychology Today

Contents:

• GAY RELATNSHIPS CAN BE MORE STABLE THAN STRAIGHT ON
• GAY AND CAN'T FD A PARTNER?
• ARE GAY MARRIAG HEALTHIER THAN STRAIGHT MARRIAG?
• WHILE STRAIGHT MEN FACE TNAL CRISIS, GAY MEN EXCEL AMILLY, STUDY FDS
• GAY RELATNSHIP BREAKUP CAN BE PROBLEMATIC. HERE’S HOW TO AVOID THE RISKS
• CAN GAY GUYS BE MTED?

GAY RELATNSHIPS CAN BE MORE STABLE THAN STRAIGHT ON

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. 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.

As an openly gay man wh over 30 years of experience as a therapist, I have seen sr of sgle gay men sabotage their efforts to fd a partner, placg obstacl their own path—whout havg the slightt ia as to what they are dog and why. Fortunately, I have also learned how to intify and name the self-featg and often hidn hurdl—and have disvered that they are beliefs that too many gay men repeat to themselv, often whout even knowg .

In my experience, this ternalized belief is the poison that prevents some gay men om buildg a healthy relatnship, and also why many ms up the on they already have. Some of have been bullied as children; physilly, verbally, and emotnally abed at tenr ag by our peers and fay members for beg gay before we even regnized and unrstood our same-sex attractns.

GAY AND CAN'T FD A PARTNER?

Sadly, the wounds are difficult to heal, and as a rult, n leave gay men wh the sense that we are unlovable and th unworthy of love, affectn, and happs. Nonmonogamy was a polil statement, and gay rights advot saw marriage as nstrictive, patriarchal, heterocentric, flawed (perhaps due to the 50% failure rate) and therefore not worthy of pursu, pecially light of how gay men of the era were still gettg ejected om their jobs, hom, fai and blackmailed and arrted for who they were.

ARE GAY MARRIAG HEALTHIER THAN STRAIGHT MARRIAG?

Where ’s legal, same-sex upl are gettg married drov, and some gay weddgs are so theatril and over the top that they n actually be timidatg.

I have worked wh many gay widowers—guys wh good relatnship track rerds, who are anxly seekg a new mate, but are sabotagg themselv the ways scribed above. Now that the Supreme Court has cid that gay marriag serve the same rights as straight on, ’s worth keepg md the fdgs of psychologists John and Julie Gottman, arguably the world’s leadg experts on what mak relatnships work.

They are fdg that gay and heterosexual marriag share a lot mon terms of why they thrive or fail, but on one of the biggt termants of maral succs—how upl fight—gay upl have an edge. For one peer-reviewed study published the Journal of Homosexualy, Gottman and his lleague Robert Levenson at the Universy of Washgton brought straight and gay upl to Gottman’s lab and terviewed each uple separately about an issue they fought about.

WHILE STRAIGHT MEN FACE TNAL CRISIS, GAY MEN EXCEL AMILLY, STUDY FDS

In this study, the gay and straight upl brought up the same sort of problems, but gay upl were, by a statistilly signifint marg, ls fensive durg fights and more likely to e shared humor to soften the tensn of the nversatn. He then refully watched how upl—both homosexual and heterosexual—teracted wh each other when discsg pots of nflict, tellg the story of how they met and reflectg on posive and negative memori of their relatnship. When monorg upl as they have a nversatn about relatnship nflicts, Gottman has found that straight upl feel more and more negative moods and emotns, like strs and anger, as a nversatn went on, whereas gay upl did not.

GAY RELATNSHIP BREAKUP CAN BE PROBLEMATIC. HERE’S HOW TO AVOID THE RISKS

Beyond beg better at fightg, gay relatnships benef unexpected ways for beg the very thg that straight relatnships are not: a unn of two people of the same sex. As Liza Mundy poted out her Atlantic article, “The Gay Gui to Wedd Bliss, ” gay upl tend to be more egalarian than straight upl—which mak sense. About 60 percent of gay men, one study found, have had sex outsi of their marriage and 44 percent of them said that they had done so wh the blsg of their partner.

Hodg, the historic Supreme Court se that guarante marriage rights for gay upl all 50 stat, both liberal and nservative jtic poted out that gay marriage is a radilly new stutn. The jtic are right: gay marriage is very new and seems to be, at least based on the social science rearch, different certa ways om straight marriage. ”A new study makg wav among LGBTQ-foced amics lends empiril crence to the inic Act Up -founr’s priful claims — not to the supposed sweepg superry of gay men, rather to the more narrow assertn that this group is remarkably cled to excel the paper, which was published the Amerin Soclogil Review on Feb.

CAN GAY GUYS BE MTED?

Courty Amy LevJoel Mtleman, a Universy of Notre Dame soclogist and the paper’s sole thor, found that on an array of amic measur, gay mal outperform all other groups on average, across all major racial groups.

Conversely, he nclud that lbians perform more poorly school overall and that Black gay women have a much lower llege graduatn rate than their whe unterparts. “This article is focg a lens on what we do to all kids, ” Lisa Diamond, a psychology profsor at the Universy of Utah, said of the societal prsur that appear to impe lbians school even as the strsors possibly unnerve gay mal to pensatg for homophobia through amic strivg. The three surveys of Amerin adults nsistently dited that gay men are far more likely than straight men to have graduated om high school or llege, wh jt over half of gay men havg earned a llege gree, pared wh about 35 percent of straight men.

What’s more, gay men’s llege graduatn rate dramatilly bts even that of straight women, about one-third of whom have a bachelor’s longudal survey showed that pared wh their straight male peers, gay mal earned higher GPAs high school and llege, enrolled harr class, took school more serly, had more amilly md iends and had a much lower rate of ever droppg out for a month or more.