For too long, gays and lesbians have been told that our love is less worthy, that our relationships are less authentic.
That's not true at all. But there ARE differences between gay and lesbian relationships compared to straight relationships. And some are very significant indeed. In this post, we'll talk about some of them.
"Asking who's the 'man' and who's the 'woman' in a gay relationship is like asking which chopstick is the fork."
Gay relationships do not conform to the heteronormative model of a relationship. No one is the 'man' or the 'woman' in the relationship. The relationship is simply two people coming together to form an emotional bond with each other.
That is at once bewildering but also incredibly liberating. Bewildering because living in a homophobic society such as Singapore's, leaving aside the heteronormative model, it is difficult to find many positive role models for durable committed gay relationships.
However, it is also liberating, because gays and lesbians have the freedom to define for themselves what a healthy relationship means, and how the two people in the relationship relate to each other. None of us need to be constrained by what society says is a "proper" relationship.
This freedom to choose how a relationship will be defined is both a gift of our sexual orientation, but also a burden that we must bear.
Healthy gay relationships can be equitable in a way that straight relationships rarely are.
I dance the tango. And one reason why I am drawn to the tango is because queertango , the most modern and progressive interpretation of tango, is a perfect metaphor for gay relationships.
In queertango, unlike the tango which originated in the barrios of male-dominated Argentina, the two partners are not confined to the traditional male and female-gendered roles. No longer is there a “male” role and a “female” role. Instead, one partner “leads” while the other “follows”. Men can dance with men, women can dance with women, and women can lead while men can follow. In addition, partners are free to exchange roles as they wish, even mid-step within the same dance. No one needs to dance only a single role throughout the dance.
In the same way, a gay relationship can be equitable in a way that straight relationships rarely are. Because there are no predefined gender roles, no one person needs to be solely responsible for being the primary breadwinner, or managing the housework, or taking care of the kids, or being the financial gatekeeper, or any one of a hundred things that in a straight relationship would fall to a default gender in the absence of a discussion.
In healthy gay relationships, there is a more equal division of the responsibilities and obligations of the two people in the relationship.
When I bring up this point in conversations with my straight girlfriends, they all unanimously say how they wish their own relationships were like that, marked by mutual respect and equity. This is without doubt, one of the most positive qualities that gay relationships have that straight relationships seldom share.
Two men in a relationship often have to learn how to jointly negotiate intimacy.
From a young age, men are conditioned to be strong, competitive and independent. Unlike women, men are generally not socialized from a young age to negotiate intimacy. Men, gay and straight, tend to lack intimacy skills.
Think about how boys learn early that it is not OK to cry in public, that crying is weak behavior unbecoming of a real man. That proscription against crying that we learn from a young age is reinforced similarly for displays of emotion. The traditional male antipathy for what is merely the display of emotions carries over to the experiencing of the actual emotions themselves. Most men come to maturity without having a complete emotional vocabulary, so to speak.
In straight relationships, there is a whole body of literature discussing how part of the woman’s role in a relationship is to educate her man on the intricacies of navigating their emotions. What does it mean to be sensitive? What does it mean to be vulnerable, to be intimate? How do trust, faith, desire and commitment figure in the warp and weft of the tapestry that is a relationship?
Two men in a relationship face an uphill challenge when it comes to achieving true emotional intimacy. Conflict commonly arises when there is an inability to communicate tender and vulnerable feelings. Gay men in relationships often tend to hold back from commitment for fear of losing power and control.
Because so many of the difficulties of handling emotions for a man are inextricably linked to the (straight) male gender identity, an identity largely defined by societal expectations, the challenge becomes even more complicated if the men in question have not yet defined for themselves the meaning of masculinity, and what being a gay man means for either of them.
The desire for sexual variety outside a committed relationship is often thought of as the biggest challenge that gay male couples face. But the challenges of negotiating intimacy may in fact be more difficult.
Communication is even more important in gay relationships than in straight relationships.
Corollary 1: Healthy gay relationships are characterized by robust communication.
Corollary 2: In a healthy gay relationship, there is more and better sex compared to a straight relationship.
Because of the challenges of negotiating intimacy, the healthiest gay relationships, just like the healthiest straight relationships, tend to be characterized by superior communication.
Getting to the stage of superior communication obviously requires a lot of time, work and patience. But it is well worth the effort, not just within the relationship, but also beneath the sheets.
Popular sex advice columnist and gay activist Dan Savage has argued that gay men have better sex, simply because we communicate better what we enjoy, oftentimes out of complete necessity. As he puts it, two men having sex have to decide if there's going to be penetration, where the penetration happens, who does the penetration...you get the idea. Unlike gay men, straight people seldom have this kind of discussion in detail prior to having sex. That can lead to mismatched expectations.
In the same way, solid communication between partners in a gay relationship extends into the bedroom. Assuming that the partners adhere to the advice that Esther Perel gives on preserving erotic space, sex can continue to be exciting and novel, and yes, there will be more of it and it will be more satisfying than either partner thought possible.
