Part II: Identifying and Implementing Your Options

In the last issue, I described how in my work as a psychotherapist specializing in gay men and their relationships, very often I see couples expressing a desire to eliminate “cheating” in a relationship by bravely, candidly, and sensitively discussing their options about how and why either or both partners might desire occasional sex outside the relationship, and how this does not have to be unhealthy or damaging to the relationship. Studies of gay male relationships over the years have explained how it is culturally relatively more acceptable in gay male relationships (more so than in any other kind of human relationship) to have a primary partner but allow sexual play with others. Read the rest of this entry »

Part I: Starting a Dialogue With Your Partner

Perhaps no word in relationships, including those between gay men, is as inflammatory as “cheating” – the slang to denote one person in a relationship having sex with someone outside of that relationship in a way that too often results in feelings of anger, betrayal, and disappointment in the remaining partner. Yet some would say this dynamic simply borrows from an antiquated Legendary psychotherapist Michael Shernoff, LCSW, who has been an author, professor, and therapist specializing in gay men’s issues in New York City for over 30 years, Read the rest of this entry »