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THROUGH GAY EYES
Episode 9 Relationship Pitfalls
You hear more and more often these days that gay relationships don’t last as long as straight ones,
and whether or not they work at all. To get some real answers, we invited Csilla and Krisztián.
You’ve recently opened gay couples’ therapy practice, and you work with gay couples.
We prepared before we came. We didn’t want to just bring examples from our own experience,
so we did a bit of research. We found a lot of relevant research, particularly from British researchers.
And indeed, it turns out that everyone who’s researched this has found that gay couples don’t stay together.
- They cheat on each other all the time... - If they adopt a child, there’s usually abuse,
and the child has to be taken away from them...
Are you serious? Is this really what the studies show?
:) No. We were just kidding.
We were hoping that "British researchers"... - ...would give you a hint.
Of course this isn’t true at all. There have been studies about this, but this isn’t what they show.
So gay relationships are just as good as straight ones? They don’t differ at all?
It’s not that they’re completely identical or completely different. There are areas –
intimacy, love, ability to maintain a long-term relationship – that are the same,
but there are differences as well, of course.
The main difference is that there isn’t a well-travelled path for gay couples,
like there is for straight couples. A gay couple needs to make several
decisions that they haven’t seen other people in their life make.
For a straight couple, moving in together happens naturally after some time.
For a gay couple, they might not know whose apartment to move into,
what legal rights they have. If they're renting, whose name should they rent under?
There are numerous existential fears that can be another source of problems for a gay couple.
Do gay couples in the West have a well-travelled path they can follow? Is it easier for them?
Yes, it’s gotten more and more so. If by "the West" you mean Western Europe and
the United States, then yes, they’re about twenty years ahead of us. But things are improving in Hungary.
There are more and more couples living together in long-term relationships, sharing an apartment,
and they're more and more likely to show up in public together.
And it’s very important for a child to see examples in real life, because one of the problems
is that gay children grow up with straight parents and later on they don’t have any role models to follow.
So it’s a lot harder for them to figure out their own identities and develop their own value system
than it is for straight children, who can use their parent's model.
So to make things easier for gay couples in this respect, we can only rely on society’s help.
Every gay person can help by showing examples for other people. Some people are out in every
aspect of their lives - at the workplace, among friends, with family members.
And if someone like this gets into a relationship and moves in with someone who isn’t as open
about being gay then conflicts can arise. What do they do about holidays and visiting the family?
What do they do about the neighbours? Can they invite people over?
What about the question of having kids? What kinds of problems are there, if any?
There’s a phase of the coming out process where a gay person might want to have kids.
But if two people are living together, and one is at this phase and the other isn’t, this can cause
issues regarding the direction of the relationship.
Gay couples have to jump through a lot of hoops in order to even have kids,
and this can cause stress in the relationship.
So there are three main differences in gay and straight relationships, then:
having children, existential issues, and coming out, right?
On coming out I would add that it’s not just about how much the gay person himself or
herself is willing to come out but also how supportive their environment and family is.
Lack of family support can cause many problems for gay people, not just in their relationships
but in their personal lives as well.
So we can help other gay people by showing example. Is there anything else
we can do to eliminate these problems?
I think coming out is the key. Without it, a person’s identity is damaged,
causing the person to flee, to feel rejected and to experience fear. This causes secrets to build up
and these can ruin a relationship. It also makes it hard to develop the integrity of the personality
and to form healthy relationships.
So we should accept ourselves and be honest about it and there will be fewer and fewer problems, right?
Yes, pretty much. I think psychology can help in looking fears in the eye and challenging
those internalized social expectations that indicate that the only way we’re acceptable
in today's Hungarian society is if we live a straight life.
If you have relationship questions for Krisztián and Csilla, write to info@szimpozion.hu
(c) Szimpozion Association 2011 www.melegvagyok.hu
Translation by Széll Melinda