Gay, lesbian couples can teach heterosexuals how to improve relationships: U of Wash

Married heterosexual couples can learn a great deal from gay and lesbian couples, far more than the stereotypical images presented by the television show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," according to the first published observational studies of homosexual relationships.

"Gay and lesbian couples are a lot more mature, more considerate in trying to improve a relationship and have a greater awareness of equality in a relationship than straight couples," said John Gottman, a University of Washington emeritus professor of psychology who directed the research along with Robert Levenson, a University of California, Berkeley, psychology professor.

"I think that in 200 years heterosexual relationships will be where gay and lesbian relationships are today," said Gottman, who now heads the Relationship Research Institute in Seattle.

In the first of two papers published this month in the Journal of Homosexuality, the researchers explored the conflict interaction of homosexual and heterosexual couples using mathematical modeling techniques. In the second study, they looked at factors influencing gay and lesbian couples' relationship satisfaction and dissolution.

"In the modeling paper we looked at processes, and they look so different you could draw a picture," said Gottman. "Straight couples start a conflict discussion in a much more negative place than do gays and lesbian couples. Homosexuals start the same kind of discussions with more humor and affection, are less domineering and show considerably more positive emotions than heterosexual couples.

"The way a discussion starts is critical. If it starts off in a bad way in a heterosexual relationship, we have found that it will become even more negative 96 percent of the time. Gays and lesbians are warmer, friendlier and less belligerent. You see it over and over in their discussions, and their partner is receiving the message they are communicating. In turn, their partner is allowing himself or herself to be influenced in a positive way. With married heterosexual couples a discussion is much more of a power struggle with someone being invalidated."

Gay and lesbian relationships seem to be marked by what Gottman calls "the triumph of positive emotions over negative emotions."

"Negative emotions have more impact in heterosexual relationships," he said. "This is why our previous research has shown you need a 5-to-1 ratio of positive to negative statements. This seems to be universal in heterosexual couples. But it may be different in gay and lesbian relationships where positive emotions seem to have a lot more power or influence."

Dan Yoshimoto, a UW psychology doctoral student who worked on the studies, added that the ways gays and lesbians resolve conflict may be the glue that maintains stability in homosexual relationships.

"They start and maintain a conversation a positive way and this may enable them to solve a problem and resolve conflict," he said."

What makes the new studies noteworthy is that they went beyond collecting self-reported data from questionnaires. While self reports produce important information, the researchers wrote, "there is considerable evidence that people's perceptions of their relationship may diverge quite markedly from their actual interaction." The researchers videotaped discussions each couple had about what occurred that day, a topic of ongoing conflict, and a pleasant topic to analyze the verbal and nonverbal content of their interaction during the talks and again at a later time when the partners viewed the tape individually. The researchers also collected an array of physiological data, including heart rate, during the conversations.

Homosexual couples in the studies were recruited in the San Francisco Bay area and they filled out a questionnaire that assessed relationship satisfaction. Forty pairs – 12 happy gay couples, 10 unhappy gay couples, 10 happy lesbian couples and 8 unhappy lesbian couples – were chosen to participate in the study. The comparison sample of married couples was drawn from a larger study that recruited couples from around Bloomington, Ind. It was matched in terms of age, marital satisfaction, education and income to the homosexual couples and consisted of 20 happy and 20 unhappy couples.

The researchers also collected data for 12 years on the relationships of the homosexual couples. By then eight couples (20 percent) – one gay and seven lesbian – had broken up. This rate, if projected over a 40-year period, would be almost 64 percent, which is similar to the 67 percent divorce rate for first marriages among heterosexual couples of the same time span.

Data also showed that while high levels of cardiovascular arousal among straight couples during a conflict conversation was a predictor of lower relationship satisfaction and higher risk for relationship dissolution, the reverse was true with homosexual couples. With gays and lesbians, low physiological arousal was related to these negative outcomes.

"Another interesting thing that emerged in conversations the couples had was that gays and lesbians are more honest. They talked explicitly about monogamy and sex. Those topics don't come up in 31 years of studying heterosexual couples," said Gottman. "Heterosexual are uptight in talking about sex and you don't hear explicit sexual talk. In reviewing the tapes of their conversations, you really don't know what they are talking about. Same sex couples talk about sex, and are more mature and honest and less fragile in talking about it.

Gottman also said: "The overall implication of this research is that we have to shake off all of the stereotypes of homosexual relationships and have more respect for them as committed relationships. Gays and lesbians may be more competent at having a mature relationship. Our data suggests our society needs to reconsider its policy and that we should value and honor love where ver we find it," Gottman said.

Co-authors of the conflict interaction paper were Catherine Swanson and Rebecca Tyson, both of whom earned their doctorates in applied mathematics at the UW, and Kristin Swanson, a UW research assistant professor of pathology. Co-authors of the study examining gay and lesbian relationship satisfaction were James Gross, a Stanford University associate professor of psychology; Barbara Frederick, University of Michigan psychology professor; Kim McCoy, a UC Berkeley psychology doctoral student; Leah Rosenthal, who earned a doctorate in psychology at UC Berkeley; and Anna Ruef, an assistant professor at Boston Veterans Administration Medical Center.

What Homosexuals Say About Homosexuals - Is This Gay Behavior Sick?

""Let´s look at gay behavior as defined by two gays, Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen Ph.D., authors of After the Ball: How America will Conquer its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90´s (1989).

In Chapter Six, they outline “ten categories of misbehavior,” drawn from their own experiences, wide reading and thousands of hours of conversation with hundreds of other gays. Their contention is that the gay lifestyle, not gay sexuality mind you, “is the pits.” They want gays to improve their image by addressing “what is wrong with a lot of gays.” (276)

What follows are some highlights. As you read this, ask yourself if there is another human community, including the Mafia that could make these generalizations about itself. Ask yourself if we haven´t caught this disease, or at least the sniffles.

• The authors say “a surprisingly high percentage” of pathological liars and con men are gay. This results from a natural habit of self-concealment, and leads to a stubborn self-deception about one´s own gayness and its implications.
• They say gays tend to reject all forms of morality and value judgments. Gay morality boils down to “If it feels good, I´ll do it!” If a gay feels like seducing a trusted friend´s lover, he´ll do it, justifying it as an act of “sexual freedom” and the friend be damned.
• They say gays suffer from a “narcissistic” personality disorder and they give this clinical description: “pathological self absorption, a need for constant attention and admiration, lack of empathy or concern for others, quickly bored, shallow, interested in fads, seductive, overemphasis on appearance, superficially charming, promiscuous, exploitative, preoccupied with remaining youthful, relationships alternate between over idealization and devaluation.”
• As an example of this narcissism, the authors say “a very sizable proportion of gay men” who have been diagnosed HIV positive continue to have unprotected sex.
• They say the majority of gays are extremely promiscuous and self-indulgent. They must continuously up the ante to achieve arousal. This begins with alcohol and drugs and includes such “forbidden” aspects of sex as wallowing in filth (fetishism and coprophilia) and sadomasochism, which involves violence.
• They say many gays indulge in sex in public bathrooms and think it is antigay harassment when it is stopped. Many think they have a right to importune straight males, including children.
• Many gays are “single minded sexual predators” fixated on youth and physical beauty alone. When it comes to the old or ugly, gays are “the real queerbashers.” Disillusioned themselves, they are cynical about love.
• “Relationships between gay men don´t usually last very long.” They quickly tire of their partners and fall victim to temptation. The “cheating ratio of ‘married´ gay males, given enough time, approaches 100%.”
• Even friendships are based on the sexual test and hard to sustain. Unattractive gay men find it nearly impossible to find a friend, let alone a lover.
• The authors say gays tend to deny reality in various ways: wishful thinking, paranoia, illogic, emotionalism and embracing crackpot ideas.

An excerpt from "Culture of Vice":

"The homosexual cause has moved naturally from a plea for tolerance to cultural conquest. As Robert Reilly notes a society can withstand any number of person who try to advance their own moral disorders as public policy. But it cannot survive once it adopts the justifications for whose moral disorders as its own. This is what is at stake in the culture war...
For any individual, moral failure is hard to live with because of the rebuke of conscience. Habitual moral failure, what used to be called vice, can be lived with only by obliterating conscience through rationalization. When we rationalize, we convince ourselves that heretofore forbidden desires are permissible. We advance the reality of the desires over the reality of the moral order to which the desires should be subordinated. In our minds we replace the reality of moral order with something more congenial to the activity we are excusing. In short, we assert that bad is good...
It is often difficult to detect rationalizations when one is living directly under their influence, and so historical examples are useful. One of the clearest was offered at the Nuremberg trials by Dr. Karl Brandt, who had been in charge of the Nazi regime's Aktion T-4 euthanasia program. He said in his defense: “...when I said `yes' to euthanasia I did so with the deepest conviction, just as it is my conviction today, that it was right. Death can mean deliverance. Death is life.”
Unlike Dr. Brandt, most people recover from their rationalizations when remorse and reality set back in. But when morally disordered acts become the defining centerpiece of one's life, vice can permanently pervert reason. Entrenched moral aberrations then impel people to rationalize vice not only to themselves but to others as well. Thus rationalizations become an engine for revolutionary change that will affect society as a whole.
The power of rationalization drives the culture war, gives it its particular revolutionary character, and makes its advocates indefatigable. It may draw its energy from desperation, but it is all the more powerful for that. Since failed rationalization means self-recrimination, it must be avoided at all cost. For this reason, the differences over which the culture war is being fought are not subject to reasoned discourse. Persons protecting themselves by rationalizing are interested not in finding the truth, but in maintaining the illusion that allows them to continue their behavior. For them to succeed in this, everyone must accede to their rationalization. This is why revolutionary change is required. The necessity for self-justification requires the complicity of the whole culture. Holdouts cannot be tolerated because they are potential rebukes. The self-hatred, anger, and guilt that a person possessed of a functioning conscience would normally feel from doing wrong are redirected by the rationalization and projected upon society as a whole (if the society is healthy), or upon those in society who do not accept the rationalization.
The homosexual movement's rationalization is far more widely advanced in its claims. According to Jeffrey Levi, former executive director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, “We (homosexuals)_ are no longer seeking just a right to privacy and a right to protection from wrong. We have a right - as heterosexuals have already - to see government and society affirm our lives.” Since only the act of sodomy differentiates an active homosexual from a heterosexual, homosexuals want “government and society” to affirm that sodomy is morally equivalent to the marital act. “Coming out of the closet” can only mean an assent on the level of moral principle to what would otherwise be considered morally disordered.
And so it must be. If you are going to center your public life on the private act of sodomy, you had better transform sodomy into a highly moral act. If sodomy is a moral disorder, it cannot be legitimately advanced on the legal or civil level. On the other hand, if it is a highly moral act, it should serve as the basis for marriage, family (adoption), and community. As a moral act, sodomy should be normative. If it is normative, it should be taught in our schools as a standard. In fact, homosexuality should be hieratic: active homosexuals should be ordained as priests. All of this is happening. It was predictable. The homosexual cause moved naturally from a plea for tolerance to cultural conquest. How successful that conquest has been can be seen in the poverty of the rhetoric of its opponents. In supporting the Defense of Marriage Act, the best one congressman could do was to say, “America is not yet ready for homosexual marriage,” as if we simply need a decent interval to adjust ourselves to its inevitable arrival.
The homosexual rationalization is so successful that even the campaign against AIDS is part of it, with its message that “everyone is at risk.” If everyone is at risk, the disease cannot be related to specific behavior. Yet homosexual acts are the single greatest risk factor in catching AIDS. This unpleasant fact invites unwelcome attention to the nature of homosexual acts, so it must be ignored..."

"Gay and lesbian couples are a lot more mature, more considerate in trying to improve a relationship and have a greater awareness of equality in a relationship than straight couples"

"I think that in 200 years heterosexual relationships will be where gay and lesbian relationships are today"

"Straight couples start a conflict discussion in a much more negative place than do gays and lesbian couples. Homosexuals start the same kind of discussions with more humor and affection, are less domineering and show considerably more positive emotions than heterosexual couples.

Gay and lesbian relationships seem to be marked by what Gottman calls "the triumph of positive emotions over negative emotions."

"Another interesting thing that emerged in conversations the couples had was that gays and lesbians are more honest ... Same sex couples talk about sex, and are more mature and honest and less fragile in talking about it."

Gays and lesbians may be more competent at having a mature relationship.

To sum it all up: Homosexuals are superior to those antiquated "breeders" ...

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