While many researchers are trying to present gay relationships as unviable by their very nature, the works of such reputable researchers as Gottman and Julien say the opposite. Gay and lesbian couples strive for the same romantic, full of emotional attachment and mutual support relationships as mixed couples. They face the same financial problems, are also looking for genuine intimacy and have difficulty communicating with relatives. They rate their relationship as successful by about the same criteria as mixed couples.
One of the earliest and most famous models for the development of relationships in a gay couple was proposed by McWhirter and Mattison in 1984. Although it may seem that their model is outdated, it is nevertheless extremely clear and was the result of studies of 150 male couples with the experience of living together from 1 year to 37 years for five years. Moreover, this model is consistent with more modern studies of relationships in male couples, although it does not take into account the important fact that more and more male families are currently raising and raising children, as well as entering into civil unions.
According to the concept of McWhirter and Mattison, gay relationships go through six consecutive stages. The researchers began the discussion of their model with a remark about the social climate in which relationships develop. In particular, they noted: "Heterosexual couples do not solve questions about roles in relationships, finances, property and social obligations in the same way as gay people do. Heterosexual couples who are concerned about how their union will be perceived by families are an exception, while homosexual couples tend to be worried about the opinion of their families... Heterosexual couples live with the attitude that the relationship will last "until death do us part," and gay couples wonder if their relationship can survive at all... Gays can rely only on heterosexual models of relationships, including those that have developed in their own families, and try to reproduce them, finding them ultimately unsuitable. Non-gays rarely ask questions about the correctness or inaccuracy of their sexual orientation, but this is exactly what gays do at one time or another in their lives."
The formation of healthy gay relationships is still happening today in a society that is at best contradictory, and at worst aggressive towards gays.
Here is a short description of the six stages of healthy (meaning, not complicated by domestic violence) gay relationships highlighted by McWhirter and Mattison in 1984.
Merging - Stage 1 - Year 1
At the first stage, the pair becomes one. Men say goodbye to loneliness, partners spend most of their free time together, feelings of romantic love prevail, and sexual activity during this period is at its peak. Partners strive to balance responsibilities, establish rules of family life, define common goals, and learn each other's strengths and weaknesses.
This time can be very difficult for a couple, since each of the men may perceive himself as the main earner, responsible for the decisions made by the family, a kind of "dominant male" as a result of social education. Such attitudes of partners can lead to huge difficulties when discussing problems. It can be difficult for men to accept a higher financial or social status of a partner, as well as to recognize that they need each other's support.
Note that Gottman came to the conclusion that gay and lesbian couples are more optimistic when discussing problems. They are less likely to use a negative communication style (for example, belligerence or intimidation) and are less excited physiologically during a conflict compared to mixed couples. This last conclusion is especially important, because, according to Gottman, overexcitation during an argument makes communication ineffective.
Nest Building - Stage 2 - Years 2 and 3
The second stage of the relationship is "building a common house" or strengthening mutual obligations that have developed in a couple.
Partners begin to be connected by commonality and compatibility, as they understand and accept individual differences, strengths and weaknesses, goals and needs of each other. Very often, at the same time, the "honeymoon" ends, or love passes, but at the same time a more realistic view of the relationship and the partner arises.
Partners begin to look at each other, "eyes wide open", but mixed couples go through the same experiences. Benjamin Franklin said: "Keep your eyes open until the wedding, but then cover them half." These words mean that before we start living together, we should strive to objectively evaluate a partner, but once we enter into a relationship, do not judge him too harshly. It should be noted that, compared with mixed couples, gays and lesbians are less likely to perceive their partner's critical remarks as a personal insult. Thus, gay couples may be willing to accept some degree of negativity in the relationship, and the partners' perception of each other may be more realistic.
Years 2 and 3, according to Larry Kurdek, one of the leading researchers of relationships in gay and lesbian couples, are often the most difficult in gay couples. In addition, unlike mixed couples, partners either do not receive support from families at all, or it is insignificant. Gay couples do not receive the "wisdom" about family life that mothers traditionally pass on to daughters and fathers to sons, they are not told how to equip a house or create family rituals.
Maintenance - Stage 3 - Years 4 and 5
At this stage, the couple is looking for a balance between the individual characteristics and needs of the partners and the traditions and rituals that have developed in the couple. The difficulty of this period is that each partner can start to make his personal friends again, get carried away with new hobbies, and also try to revise the previously established rules of living together.
When mixed couples go through the same stage of relationship development, they may be held together by religious, financial, social considerations, as well as the opinions of their own families. Mixed couples may enter a period of emotional isolation from each other due to severe stresses associated with raising children or partners' careers, as well as the desire of each of them to "be alone or alone."
In this regard, Gottman discusses the idea of the Predominance of Positive Emotions (Positive Sentiment Override (PSO). According to her, when partners are happy, they tend to ignore small difficulties and focus on positive events and aspects of the relationship, sometimes noticing up to 20 positive experiences for 1 negative. Larry Kurdek came to similar conclusions. According to his observations, on the one hand, when gay men are happy in a relationship, they consistently assess the benefits of partnership as high, the costs as low, and the desire to find a new partner as weak. On the other hand, when gay men are generally unhappy in life, they talk about reduced satisfaction from relationships, high costs and a stronger desire to find a new partner. And such assessments are given, even if everything goes smoothly in the relationship itself.
Construction (Building) - Stage 4 - Years 6 - 10
At this stage, the "residual" issues of Stage 3 are resolved, and the couple has a feeling that the relationship is reliable and they know each other well. They have reached a new balance between dependence/independence and can cooperate in the field of career growth, career change and retirement planning.
It is interesting to note that when studying mixed couples, Gottman found that the beginning and end of this stage of the relationship is exactly the time when mixed couples get divorced. If they do not resolve the contradictions at the beginning of their own Stage 4 (from 5 to 7 years), then they divorce to put an end to the unhappiness and find a new relationship. If they fail to re-establish a bond at the end of their own Stage 4 (from 10 to 12 years), they tend to end their marriage due to the loss of intimacy and a sense of community.
It is often noted that gay relationships are most likely not monogamous, arguing that because of this, gay marriages cannot be compared with "real" mixed families with "real" devotion. In other words, they say that in non-monogamous gay relationships there is no basic element - "genuine fidelity". These accusations can be answered in two ways.
First, it is possible to correct this misconception. Gottman notes that 20-25% of heterosexual men admit to extramarital affairs (at the same time, we do not know how many men entered into side relationships, but did not admit it). Although in the 70s of the last century there were half as many unfaithful wives as unfaithful husbands, since then they have "caught up" with men for infidelity. It can be assumed that men who are prone to infidelity marry the same women, which keeps the infidelity rate in mixed couples at 20-25%. Nevertheless, if at least half of unfaithful men are married to women who do not cheat on their husbands, we are talking about infidelity in about a third of mixed couples (30-37%). Pittman and Pittman-Wagers talk about even higher rates of extramarital affairs, indicating that about 50% of husbands and 30-40% of wives cheat, and in 90% of divorces by first marriage, one or both spouses were unfaithful. Thus, comparing mixed and gay couples, focusing on infidelity exclusively in gay relationships, is a blatant misconception.
Secondly, it is worth considering what is significant in terms of partner satisfaction with the relationship. Larry Kurdek found that relationship satisfaction is more related to social support and the similarity of partners, how they are able to express feelings and how much they are willing to "emotionally invest" in a relationship. This is true for mixed, gay and lesbian couples. However, monogamy as such does not correlate with satisfaction with gay relationships. Thus, even if monogamy is the key difference between gay couples and mixed couples, it is likely that gay couples do not attach much importance to it, and therefore it may not play a special role. Other studies show that although the details of gay couples' agreements about sex and fidelity may not matter, the way partners follow these agreements plays a huge role (Bryant and Demien, 1994).
To comfort those who have already become uncomfortable, let's talk about mixed couples. In mixed couples, household responsibilities are divided between partners extremely unfairly, since women do household chores much more than men (especially if there are children in the family), even if they work outside the home no less than men. In gay and lesbian couples, there is much greater equality on the issue of household duties. One may wonder how a mixed couple seeking to build a life together does this, assuming that one of the partners habitually does more work.
It could be argued that most mixed couples lack, thus, the fundamental element required for "true devotion".