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Long-term Gay Relationships
Louis Berman, Ph.D.
Mark, a gay man who works among the corporate elite, tells his interviewer that it bothers him that "people automatically assume that gay people don't form close attachments of any length or duration. And that's just not true." Mark himself has been with his partner 14 years and "virtually all of my friends are in couples. {1}Most of our friends have been together for ten years or more. They are people who live relatively normal kinds of lives, interesting lives too." (Adair, pp. 119-120)
An enduring relationship between gay men may look "relatively normal" to neighbors but is quite different from a monogamous marriage. McWhirter and Mattison spent five years studying 156 male couples—312 individuals—"in loving relationships lasting from one to thirty-seven years" (p. ix). At Me beginning of these many partnerships, many spoke about, thought about, or hoped for sexual fidelity. "My parents were faithful to each other, and I expected us to be the same" (p. 250). But such hopes, they soon realize, are simply contrary to homosexual yearnings, and not a single couple reported sexual fidelity lasting longer than five years (p. 252}. When asked why they want sex outside the relationship, here are some of the answers they gave (pp. 253):
"All my sexual needs are not met by my partner. Sex together gets boring at times, and I need new material for my fantasies."
"My partner is not really my sexual type. I still like to have sex with a certain type of guy."
"It's fun and adventure. The more variety and number of partners, the more adventure and fun."
"I have some kinky sexual interests that my partner doesn't share."
"We have found that having sex with others often enhances our sex together afterward."
Published in 1984, the findings of the McWhirter and Mattison study are generally consistent with how gays have for many years been describing their longest-term relationships. In 1979, for example, Fairchild and Hayward offered the following descriptions of two "committed gay couples":
1) Todd, a law student, was addicted to the bar scene until he met Gary, a high school art teacher, and it was "love at first sight." For Todd, it brought an end to disturbing habits (every night at the bars, doing poppers—drug of abuse amyl nitrate, a vasodialator, chain-smoking, a lot of drinking, and endless TV), and was the beginning of a stable and satisfying life.
Todd: "From the very first I knew I wanted a long-term commitment to him, but of course you don't make that kind of promise at the beginning. We sort of set it up as a one-year probation period, like an engagement or trial marriage." Gary owned a home, previously married, and longed for the stability of a good home life and a stable partnership. "It's important to us to have a nice home that affords comfort, and it's important to have something to do there. You have to make a nest and live in it. It's good to just be able to stay home on Saturday night and watch TV, for example, or work on a project around the house, or study, as Todd has been doing for his bar exam. Having to maintain a frenetic social life isn't healthy."
After a year together, Gary reflected:
"Being one of a couple, you're affirmed. It has to affirm your own existence. For myself, I'm a loner in many respects.... With Todd, I see myself as a more important, bigger person. Being a couple, you know you're someone in the other person's eyes. And relating to other people, you build up a force. There are two of you, solid against the world."
Says Todd: "I'm proud of Gary. It makes me feel good to be seen with him, to have people know we belong together. So what if we're gay—we're not freaks! With salespeople, for instance, when we shop for furniture or something, I think it's important to let them know that we're making a joint decision about purchases, that we're a couple. Because I love and admire him so much I feel as though I want to shout it to the world (Fairchild and Hayward, pp. 128-129)."
2) Tim, a writer, speaks of the quiet satisfactions of a stable partnership, and of his partnership with George, a hospital administrator and a person with whom he "hopes to spend the rest of his life."
"Even single people get plants and animals to take care of. People feel more worthy if someone depends on them. You get feedback on your effectiveness as a human being when you're acting as a positive influence on someone's life. Having responsibility, making a contribution to another person gives you a role. Sometimes you have to change your idea of yourself to fit the other person's needs, but that's a growing experience. [At first] . . .I wasn't too happy . . . about letting myself depend [financially and emotionally] on George. He likes to do housework and cooking, for example, and in that sense he really takes care of me. I've learned that George needs to feel that I need him, and I'm learning to accept that (Fairchild and Hayward, pp. 150)."
When gay lovers decide to live together, they can no longer conceal their homosexuality from their neighbors, and may face an open hostility they never knew during their days of closeted "bachelorhood." Bawer, page 254, reports: "At one apartment building in which Chris and I lived, the superintendent spit at me one day without provocation . . . Living alone, most gay people can conceal their sexuality. Living together, a gay couple advertise theirs every time they step out of the house together. Is it any wonder then that so many gay men have historically been promiscuous, shunning long-term relationships in favor of one-night stands?"
Rick describes David as "the person with whom I've loved and lived for the past sixteen years." He describes himself as married to David, but candidly adds that their relationship is not monogamous. "It doesn't feel comfortable for me; there are needs that I have that are not met in the one-to-one relationship" (Adair, pp. 37-39, emphasis added).
In his 1977 description of gay life, Loovis admitted that there is a fidelity problem in gay relationships. He proposed to solve it by redefining fidelity! Wrote Loovis: ". . .In order not to violate fidelity," both lovers might together have sex with a third person "satisfactory to both lovers." Going to an orgy together is likewise "not considered unfaithfulness.... Refreshed and relieved, [they can] link arms and return home" (p. 130).
Loovis adds: "Another method of retaining a fair facsimile of faithfulness is the one night a week each gay lover spends away from the other.... This is exactly parallel [Loovis argues] to the "boys' or girls' night out" arrangement between heterosexual couples, and it usually works for both straight and gay (p. 130)." These suggestions are in keeping with the "designs for living" McWhirter and Mattison reported seven years later.
How can a partner who is in an "eminently compatible" long-term love affair be seized by a sudden compulsion to have sex with a stranger? Loovis describes this experience as an insider with a gift for literary expression:
"One . . . suddenly sees a stranger in the street, their eyes meet, and they are off to bed at the stranger's place. I would say that the cheating lover has had an irresistible experience of beauty in the person of the stranger, which time and circumstance allow him to indulge. He comes across a perfect exterior "type" and must have union with him. When it happens, a force is loosed in the cheating lover that he feels he must succumb to or perish. My advice to such a lover is to do it and forget it, never mention his lapse to his lover whom he really does love—and try not to let it happen too frequently. That experience of beauty, which is irresistible, by the way, is one of the most mysterious and awe-inspiring in the entire homosexual galaxy of experiences" (pp. 130-131).
Kirk and Madsen, in their 1990 study (page 318), likewise lament the fact that `'relationships between gay men don't usually last very long. Yet most gay men are genuinely preoccupied with their need to find a lover. In other words, everybody's looking, but nobody's finding. Among 'permanent' gay partnerships, the wayward impulse is inevitable," say Kirk and Madsen (page 318, emphasis added).
"Yes, that wayward impulse is as inevitable in man-to-man affairs as in man-to-woman, only, for gays, it starts itching faster. It's a disastrous aspect of human nature that, sooner or later, no matter how fortunate we may be, the bird that we glimpse in the pubic bush starts to look more appealing than the bird that we hold in our hand. And no maker how happy a gay man may be with his lover, he's likely, eventually, to go dowsing for click."
'`. . . The gay community has never had any tradition of faithfulness . . . to serve as the cement that might hold roving lovers together. In our experience, unfaithfulness between gay male lovers as often as not spells the beginning of the end."
Loovis speculates that the popularity of the one-night stand does not simply mean that gays prefer promiscuity, but that gays "are still looking . . . [for] that one individual who can heal them, mend their dividedness," for an enduring love relationship (page 126). To Loovis, the long-term love affair fulfills a deep human need "for that one person with whom to share the deepest and most significant experiences of life. . . A gay person can subsist on casual love and sex relationships, but it is meager fare, as opposed to the wonder and delight of a love transference that endures (page 126)."
Gay couples often say, "Most of our friends are gay couples." But sharing a domestic life, and friendship with other couples, clearly does not imply a monogamous relationship. The testimony of Rick and David, Loovis, and Kirk & Madsen all suggest a norm that permits each member to independently make outside sex contacts, or share a group-sex experience together.
Why does a couple dissatisfied with maintaining a monogamous relationship continue to live together? "As friends of mine have said," writes DuBay, (p. 143) "a good roommate is worth much more than a good lover" p. 143. Their sexual lives are something else; they are still driven by the search for something or someone new so long as their health, their energy, and their looks hold out. They are forever vulnerable to some "mysterious and awe-inspiring force" that one "must succumb to or perish."
Gay men who are living in long-term partnerships must negotiate the limits of their fidelity, writes Edmund White.
"The variations are endless. Is tricking outside the relationship to be permitted? If so, under what terms? Shall the lovers describe the outside adventures to one another or stay discretely silent? One couple might decide that each partner can trick but only during separate vacations or when apart. Or they might say there's one night a week for tricking out. Or they might say only three-ways are permissible (White, p. 34)."
If it is true that most gay partners cannot maintain a monogamous relationship for very long, is this not an inherent weakness of gay relationships? On the contrary, argues Andrew Sullivan, this is where gay customs are better than prevailing standards for a straight marriage. Heterosexuals can learn from gay partnerships how to unburden themselves from the restrictive demands of monogamy, and live together with an openness, honesty, and flexibility. "Same-sex unions often incorporate the virtues of friendship more effectively than traditional marriages; and at times, among gay male relationships, the openness of the contract makes it more likely to survive than many heterosexual bonds. . . There is more likely to be a greater understanding of the need for extramarital outlets between two men than between a man and a woman. . . Something of the gay relationship's necessary honesty, its flexibility, and its equality could undoubtedly help strengthen and inform many heterosexual bonds (Sullivan, pp. 202-203)."
Sullivan candidly admits that gay couples can afford to be more experimental and open, since "the lack of children gives gay couples greater freedom. Their failures entail fewer consequences for others" (Sullivan, p. 202).
Does it work? Can gay couples continue to live together after their physical interest in each other has gone stale and they feel impelled to look for fresh excitement? No two cases are exactly alike. In some cases, sexual jealousy and rivalry do threaten a break-up.{2} In some cases, one or both partners may cease their sexual activity. Sometimes the couple has developed a friendship so strong that it overcomes any differences in sexual habits. A couple may have developed a network of common interests—an apartment filled with possessions (or joint-ownership of a home), a circle of friends, shared hobby and business interests—so enveloping, they continue to live together despite their lack of sexual interest in each other. "A good roommate is worth more than a good lover" (Dubay, page 143).
Edmund White recalls (page 149) an incident of his own sexual experience which illustrates how to homosexual partners, friendship and sexual fidelity can be two very different matters:
". . .When I was in my early twenties, I kicked out with a famous playwright, my first infidelity to my lover of two years. After I had sex with the playwright, he told me that I made love exactly like this kid he'd met a week before and he named my lover, whom I promptly telephoned from the playwright's apartment. We all dissolved into peals of laughter."
This highlights one of the striking differences between gay and straight partnerships. When a straight couple breaks up, that's the end of their relationship. When a gay couple cease to be lovers, they may remain the best of friends. Writes White:
"When a straight man breaks up with his girlfriend, the break is often decisive; it's very hard to move from the end of their affair into an ongoing friendship. However . . . many, if not most, gay men who break up continue to be best friends. And they may even continue to live together. They may enter into a period of rivalry during which each of them tries to meet somebody new first. When that phase wears out their friendship gets mellower and better. This is something which seems unthinkable to most straight people; they don't know how we can do it . . . The idea that . . . when love ends the friendship can continue, astonishes many outsiders" p. 258. Writes White: "Again and again I've seen two men who have stopped being lovers continue to live together. As for myself, I can count on several ex-lovers as close friends" p. 149.
The ripening of a gay relationship comes when over the years, sexual attraction may have faded or become diverted, and romantic attraction is transformed into what might be called a feeling of kinship at its best. After they have weathered "the storms of jealousy and the diminution of lust," the couple settles down to a long-term relationship of best friends who used to be lovers (White, pp. 164-165).
How long will an "enduring relationship" actually last? According to McWhirter and Mattison (pp. 213-216), the couples who stay together longest are those who have a few years' difference between them. Each partner brings something unique to the relationship: one brings the glamour of youth, the other brings the benefits of experience, stability, and perhaps financial worth. Partners closer in age are likely to be more competitive about finding outside sex partners (McWhirter & Mattison, p. 260).
Kinship is what gay men sorely need. Often they have been ostracized by their birth families so completely, they know that their kinfolk will not even attend their funeral. Anthropologists see kinship ties in every culture. There seems to be a basic human need for membership in a primary group. Homosexuality alienates many from their families and from straight society in general, and gay men surround themselves with circles of friends: close friends, good friends, friends, and acquaintances.{5} For many, this need for affiliation is satisfied by a kinship-like relationship of "fidelity without sexual exclusivity," as McWhirter and Mattison have described it (p. 252). Whether these arrangements can be called marriages is another matter.
Notes
{1}What portion of gay men are in stable partnerships? The Kinsey Institute survey, reported by Bell and Weinberg in 1978, reported only 10 percent of gays in a long-term relationships. Gays who are "close-coupled," they report, don't abandon cruising; they do less cruising (Bell and Weinberg, pp. 132, 346). The data was collected during the 1 970's in gay bars, where close-coupled gay men were likely to be under-represented. Today the AIDS epidemic is undoubtedly increasing the number of gay men attempting to establish stable partnerships.
{2}Gay writers give the impression that gay couples enjoy a beautiful relationship, and when their sexual interest in each other wanes, they often remain good friends. From his experience as a therapist, however, Nicolosi describes gay partnerships as bedeviled by cheating, teasing, fights, jealousy, rage, suspicion, envy, restlessness, and disappointment. Nicolosi writes, "Homosexual relationships are so characteristically volatile because the homosexual hates what he loves. He realizes on some level that no man can fulfill his unrealistic expectations (Nicolosi 1993, p. 152)." "In all my work with many couples, both homosexual and heterosexual, the most violent domestic arguments have occurred in male relationships," Nicolosi (1993) reflects.
{3} Writes Browning, page 158: "No matter how gay people feel about domestic partnership and gay marriage, most share a core belief: Our friends are our family . . . For those gays who felt themselves alienated from their blood relations, comradely friendship often developed as a substitution. Yet if friendship is to offer more than escape from solitude, it must carry the genuine power of family p. 185 . "
{4} Shokeid documents the life of a gay synagogue community in New York. He notes (pp. 78-79) that when a member dies, his family might participate grudgingly in the funeral or refuse to attend altogether.
{5}Casual sex contacts, at one extreme, and lovers, at the other, only describe the two extremes of commitment and intimacy. The entire gamut runs from trick, number, fuck-buddy, lover, and husband (White, p. 150). Browning conjectures (pp. 156-157) that some gay men use recreational sex to keep friendships alive:
"I wonder whether making sex . . . recreational, we [gays] have learned to re-form it into a tool for building diverse forms of comradeship. By stealing sex away from the restrictive laws of marriage, by acknowledging its myriad meanings, gay men have shown how lust contributes to the bonds of friendship. By devaluing the taboo of sex among friends, they may have begun to shine more light on the complex and various ways of intimacy that can be arranged in emerging gay families (emphasis added)."
References
Adair, Nancy and Casey Adair. (1978). Word Is Out. New York: Dell Publishing Co. Transcript of filmed interviews of 26 homosexual men and women.
Bawer, Bruce. (1993). A Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society. New York: Poseidon Press.
Bell, Alan R. and Martin S. Weinberg. (1978). The Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity in Men and Women. New York: Simon & Schuster. Report of a study sponsored by the Kinsey Institute.
Browning, Frank. (1993). The Culture of Desire: Paradox and Perversity in Gay Lives Today. Crown Publishers: New York.
DuBay, William H. (1987). Gay Identity; The Self Under Ban. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., Inc.
Fairchild, Betty and Nancy Hayward. (1979). Now That You Know: What Every Parent Should Know About Homosexuality. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Kirk, Marshall and Hunter Madsen. (1989). After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90's. New York: Penguin Books.
Loovis, David. (1977). Straight Answers About Homosexuality for Straight Readers. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
McWhirter, David P. and Andrew M. Mattison. (1984) The Male Couple: How Relationships Develop. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Nicolosi, Joseph. (1993). Healing Homosexuality; Case Stories of Reparative Therapy. New York: Jason Aronson.
Shokeid, Moshe. (1995). A Gay Synagogue in New York. New York. Columbia University Press.
Sullivan, Andrew. (1995). Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality. New York: Alfred A. Knoph.
White, Edmund. (l 980). States of Desire. New York: E.P. Dutton.
Biographical Information
Louis A. Berman, Ph.D.
A native Detroiter and University of Michigan Ph.D., Professor Berman joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1957 and worked there as an instructor, test developer, researcher, and psychological counselor until his retirement in 1989. During his career at University of Illinois, he contributed to the clinical literature, authored a psychological study of intermarriage (Jews and Intermarriage, a Study in Personality and Culture, 1968) and earned the rank of Full Professor.
He celebrated his retirement by authoring three books related to various hobby interests. His book on male homosexuality (now being considered for publication) represents a return to his professional role as a psychologist.
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Updated: 14 July 2002