Seven Ways to Enhance a Gay Men’s Relationship for Satisfaction and Longevity
Over my thirty years of providing gay men’s relationship therapy in West Hollywood and Los Angeles, as well as relationship coaching for gay men nationally and globally, and sex therapy for gay men, I have gained the benefit of experience working with so many gay couples and even gay polycules to learn, over time, what “works” and what doesn’t in helping gay men improve their relationships, through large conflicts or even just small, incremental improvements.
As I like to joke,”the older I get, the stronger my opinions get,” because I see guys in gay men’s relationships making the same mistakes over and over that undermine, erode, or even destroy their relationship, and, fortunately, I also see the actions (in both thought and behavior) that partners in gay relationships do that support healing, and growth, and enjoyment in the short term and a happy duration in the long term. Despite the wonderful uniqueness of each couple or polycule, and the diversity (age, national origin, ethnicity, personality, etc.) of the partners involved, the challenges that hurt relationships, and the positive actions that heal them, remain remarkably constant throughout.
Perhaps the most important of these challenges are the subtle ones; which are aspects of gay men’s relationships that someone who is not a gay men’s specialist therapist could easily overlook, simply because a specialist (or someone long-experienced) has the good fortune of a large amount of “observational data” and trial-and-error over many client cases over decades of being focused on specifically this work, with much less attention or focus on what straight couples do, which may or may not be transferable to gay ones (usually not).
So, here, I’d like to offer some of these more subtle elements, dynamics, and behaviors that partners in gay men’s relationships can elect to increase the odds that their relationship will be enduring (lasting a long time), and rewarding (not just long, but good). And, with each one, I’ll offer a recommendation that you might want to try out in your own relationship; that can make this content more relevant and useful for you.
These are, in no particular order of the seven:
- Autonomy – Just last week, a client was describing his relationship and being quite adamant that the reason why his relationship was so satisfying to him and apparently to his partner is that both of them come from the opinion that autonomy is a vital element in a relationship. They are “securely attached,” but perhaps paraodoxically or ironically it’s because they each place a high value on their individual sense of self. Having at least some separate friends, separate hobbies, separate livelihoods, separate opinions, and separate tastes/preference lends a certain “breathing room” in the relationship so that they don’t feel stifled in subjectively feeling themselves as whole, self-actualized, well-developed people.
This seems to be especially important for gay men, for these are at least two (or more) men in a relationship, the male animal of the species, and with two men, the issues that are very “male” in the Animal Kingdom such as competition and jockeying for power are very relevant. Gay men don’t compete as rival suitors for a woman, the way straight men might, but we remain just enough of the “male animal” (like a band of gorillas) that we will compete, even subtly, with the partner we also love and support.
We also have some psychodynamic “castration anxiety” or the fear of loss of autonomy, as men, in general, don’t take kindly to another man dominating them (except in sexual play dynamics). Work settings, competitive sports, even “RuPaul’s Drag Race” can be examples where you throw even gay men in a room together, and they will jockey for power and influence within the tribe. This is almost certainly unconscious and very “evolution-based”.
It’s not that women don’t have these independence and autonomy needs; for example, look at the debate about women having control of their own bodies in the right to choose abortion, or the right to sexual consent, or the right to be the driver of their own life. Feminism writings posited that a “woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” but other feminist writings (the great Gloria Steinem has said something along the lines of, as a straight woman, I don’t ‘need’ a man, but I want one for my relationship). The #MeToo movement has confronted the idea of the importance of women’s autonomy over their own bodies, especially sexually, in the face of Toxic Masculinity that ranges from subtle sexism in society, to sexual harassment in the workplace, to marital rape, to sexual assault, to complete enslavement in some (usually Middle Eastern/Arab) cultures, up to and including be literally shrouded in public and not “allowed” to be educated, drive, be in public alone “unchaperoned,” have their own financial credit their own bank accounts, own a business, etc.
As important as the fight for women’s autonomy is as a social justice issue worldwide, men’s and gay men’s autonomy also is a requirement for robust mental health. In gay relationships, there is a place for a “healthy inter-dependence,” but I’ve observed over many years that at least some sense of personal autonomy, or “tolerating difference,” or preventing enmeshment and the obliteration of the individual, is part of the happiest gay male relationships out there. This could be things like Consensual Non-Monogamy, having separate bedrooms or bathrooms, having some separate hobbies or sports, celebrating different cultural or ethnic custom observances, personal expression through clothes, hair, or jewelry, or different charitable and social cause interests. It is in the difference, the “gap” between the partners where eroticism lies, according to the great couples therapist, Esther Perel, LMFT, a Belgian straight female therapist in New York but who sincerely is affirmative to gay male relationships and their “similar but different” dynamics compared to straight couples, I think more so than other very well-known and commercially successful couples therapist figures.
Gay men who spend some time apart on business trips or the pursuit of hobbies (time and money allowing) can contribute to the “absence makes the heart grow fonder” idea, as well as avoiding the “familiarity breeds contempt” idea, as so many relationships had to endure during the relative isolation of the Covid Pandemic, which tested issues that come up over “excessive” or “forced” close-ness.
Recommendation: Find ways that you and your partner are separate. What differences do you find between each other that you find exciting? What things feel like they are “just for you,” and while much (most) of life you might want to share with partner, hence the “sharing a life together” idea, it can be fun to declare that at least some things (interest in TV shows, clothing, grooming, hobbies, social or historical topics, etc.) are “my thing” and “your thing.” If this is under-developed in your relationship, see how you might experiment with some behaviors in the course of the day/week/month that feel very “all your own” in a way that feels affirmative to who you are outside of your mutual identities as each other’s partner. Having this underscoring of your own autonomy through these small opportunities can lessen the risk of resenting your partner that he’s “keeping you from” something you enjoy, or that you maybe used to enjoy when you were single.
- Food – In the casual parts of a client session, usually as we are getting started or about to finish up for the day, we might mention something around Food. Food can be problematic in the context of eating disorders, allergies, or digestive problems, but food is a great way for partners in a relationship to celebrate differences, often very starkly (I have a blog and podcast on food in gay men’s relationships as well). “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” so to speak, and unlike my husband, I believe beets belong in the trash.
But then, he might not understand that I fully consider Nacho Cheese Doritos to be a legitimate religion and important cultural idol to be duly worshipped!
There can be situations where there is the joy of overlap, such as both of you (or more, in a polycule) savoring the opportunity to indulge in a favorite food that everyone enjoys and it’s one of the things you have in common in your relationship. But when one partner likes a certain food and the other one very specifically does not, exploring this difference can be a way to experience your partner as “the other,” an opportunity to explore that you are not the same conjoined organism, but that you have different tastes, just like you have different histories, cultures, hearts and souls.
Recommendation: See if you can “populate” the menu of your food consumption with representation from both camps, the foods you share the enjoyment of, and the very seemingly indulgent enjoyment of something else that only one of you enjoys (black licorice comes to mind, or some foods that were a part of your Family of Origin and culture that might get “lost in translation” to someone not of that culture).
- Traditions – I’ve written before about rituals and traditions in gay male relationships, but I believe that rituals and traditions are such small joys that are part of what makes a relationship fun. My husband and I have this, I realize, obnoxiously cute habit of kissing briefly whenever we are alone in an elevator. Wherever it is. It’s really instinctual by now, and it’s not like it’s a burden that we “have to,” but we can be in the middle of conversation, or running late, or being excited, or being resigned, whatever we are doing, it’s a thing in the elevator where we live, at the mall where we see movies, just so many elevators in our weekly lives (ever notice those?).
Another tradition might be doing something like having “Date Night” each week, where you put the priority of your relationship first, above the other obligations or plans you might have other nights of the week. Another tradition might be going to the same favorite spot on vacation each year, or observing your anniversary, or observing Valentine’s Day, or crafting mutual surprises for your respective birthdays. Depending on your preferences, tastes, culture, abilities, and opportunities, the traditions you have might vary, including if they are daily, weekly, monthly, annually – but the key there is “you have” them, and these traditions create the “shared experience” that can help a relationship to feel like it’s on a sound foundation.
Recommendation: Think about that concept of “traditions”. Do you already have some? If not, what would feel good to you? See if you can experiment with little things that feel like moments of “stolen intimacy” from your otherwise busy and over-obligated lives.
- Integrating In-Laws – This is one of those that I’ve only been able to glean after many years of observation of gay male relationships, and it’s that relationships where you and your partner are integrated into each other’s Family of Origin and there is some kind of relationship with “the in-laws” enjoy an extra layer of stability.
Not getting along with in-laws, such as for straight couples, has led to thousands of hours of television sitcom humor. “Bewitched,” “Everybody Loves Raymond,” “All in the Family,” are all historic examples of humor that was based on the comedic conflict between a character and in-law of the primary couple of the show.
But that’s television, and played for comedy. In real life, if you can cultivate meeting, knowing, and sharing something – anything – with your in-laws, it can give you a sense of a broader family concept, and while you may or may not have things (like having children) that unite the in-laws, such as a child’s respective four grandparents, a greater sense of family can feel like a larger support system, and can feel abundant. It’s only been relatively recently that a gay man has had such integration with his mother-in-law, father-in-law, and so on, but I think it’s part of the larger social movement in accepting gay men and gay male relationships in a family, and it’s theorized that this might be part of why gay men and other LGBT+ community members have made gains politically, legally, and socially, and it’s probably ultimately what might help us to preserve our rights in the face of those who want to very violently (at least socially) oppress us anew, going backwards to the days of the 1950s or something when gay men were shunned from public life and forced “underground” due to social pressure.
Recommendation: Talk about how you and your partner(s) feel about “the in-laws.” How do you experience the various members you’ve met of each other’s Family of Origin? Do you have a favorite in-law? Why? Do you have a least favorite? Why? Some courses of couples therapy I’ve conducted have really focused on conflict with the in-laws, such as a mother-in-law really dissing a guy’s partner, very unfairly due to her homophia and a misplaced “protectiveness” of her son against “others,” but this can be a product of their Narcissistic Personality Disorder where no one is every “good enough” for their – key word their – relative. They experience the “new guy” as the “outsider” and a threat to be vanquished. This puts pressure on the original partner, and can test his boundaries, requiring a loyalty to his partner (we hope!) but also a very diplomatic navigation so that people can get along and not stress out the original partner and threaten the relationship, which might be exactly what the Evil In-Law wants!
But when integrating your Families of Origin works, it’s an opportunity to share the love you have for your partner with others (such as his parents and siblings). It’s an opportunity to learn about even a slightly different culture, up close and personal, with an “access” you would not ordinarily have from the “outside.” These criss-cross relationships among the members of the two Families of Origin can create a network of mutual support, especially a support system for the original dyad or polycule partners. This is part of the argument, rightly, that same-sex relationships are just as important in the fabric of the broader (American) family life as straight ones, which homophobes often like to overlook.
From a time management perspective, see if you and your partner(s) can identify and schedule opportunities in the course of a year for various members of your Family of Origin to mix. Plan a birthday, or anniversary, or winter holiday, or summer vacation that might involve “exposing” the gay male relationship to the families so everyone can see how it all “works;” I really believe nothing helps a homophobe to become less of a homophobe than exposure and experience getting to know an LGBT+ person in their own family; I’ve seen this in my own Family of Origin.
- Sharing Separate Day Events – Sometimes the underscoring of your own, personal Identity can come in the form of spending a day apart. One partner might spend a day at a convention like ComicCon, or a sporting event, with outside friends, while the other partner might spend a day doing something that they individually like; this could even be, when used judiciously, whole weekends apart (I don’t usually recommend separate, week-long vacations, though; there is a point when too much time apart can undermine the emotional attachment of the relationship). The fun part is when the day or event is over, and you get to mutually share, like “show-and-tell”, what happened with your partner. Sharing your separate experiences can actually, ironically, be something to bond over. This is even true in Consensual Non-Monogamy, when the members of the original dyad or polcule get off in that “compersion” way hearing what their partner has experienced in outside sex, living “vicariously” in discussion with an erotic charge that can be a form of foreplay for the couple (but some couples don’t like this, and even their Consensual Non-Monogamy can have a “don’t bother me with the details” component, if learning what your partner has been up to triggers jealousy or comparison or abandonment; the partners have to discuss how they want to handle this as part of the up-front discussion of the Ground Rules for Consensual Non-Monogamy, which might actually change over time.
Recommendation: Think about days apart that might feel exciting to you, even if you know (or maybe especially if you know) your partner might not enjoy that experience as much as you would. Discuss calendar: the different between Dreaming and Doing is Scheduling. When can your specifically explore this? And maybe it’s not concurrent; maybe you “take turns.”
- Play Time/Games – I notice when I work with oftentimes affluent gay men that these are guys with what I call “high demand, high reward” jobs. They are executives or professionals who enjoy a certain amount of professional status, and increasing responsibility over time in the lifespan, to management or executive positions. Here in Los Angeles, it sometimes includes being high-profile or in the public eye. Also, historically and economically, this is a time of long work days, long work weeks, and a pretty challenging “rat race” in the professional world that demands consistent skill and stamina, perhaps now more than in previous generations when everybody (or most) went home at 5:00. So that time when we are “off the clock” becomes especially precious. It’s the Work Hard/Play Hard philosophy that gay men can be really good at!
So it’s important to identify and implement “Play Time” or “Games” in your relationship. There’s an old saying, “the family that plays together, stays together,” and that has been altered to include other verbs besides “play.” Gay men are not immature, as some homophobes like to suggest, that we psychologically have not “matured” into opposite-sex relationships, and I call bullshit on that as being a part of the old psychoanalytic homophobia that progressive/modern mental health professionals like me love to challenge. But gay men can be awfully good – maybe more than straight guys – at “play time.” The traditional squirt gun party on the pool deck of Atlantis Events gay cruises, or elaborately dressing up for Halloween, or even drag, can be a time when we let out our Inner Kid who wants to “play” for once and not have to deal with raising Fourth Quarter sales by 10 percent in our corporation.
Recommendation: See if there are ways that you and your partner(s) can just “play” more. What’s fun for you? A local gay sporting league? Playing a video game together at home? Having a game night at your house for your friends? Doing some kind of tourist adventure or outing like an Escape Room or theme park? We have enough work, for sure, but let’s consciously identify and implement (again, schedule) time for just play that can foster good feelings in a relationship.
- Living Space Improvements – It is a somewhat accurate stereotype of gay men that we do have good taste. So many of us are interior decorators or architects or fashion designers or costume designers or hair/makeup professionals. We don’t want to indulge the patronizing devaluing of stereotypes, but gay men are known to frequent the local Home Depot or Lowe’s hardware stores in pursuit of doing home improvements that put a certain “classy gay touch” on our living spaces. We tend to be creative, industrious, and perhaps competitive with our living spaces (again, it’s that “male competition” thing, even among gay men). Part of “making a home together” is, well, making a home together. Beyond cultivating a relationship to get to the cohabitation stage (which is its own discussion), we also continually evolve our home environment not only with how the partners change through the lifespan, and in careers, but also with where and how we live, and what we live in. By making our home (together) safe, comfortable, esthetically pleasing, practical, and supportive of how we live, we are strengthening the non-literal foundation of our relationship.
Recommendation: How much you can transform your living space depends a lot on how long you plan to be there, how much you’re allowed to change in an apartment or condo, your budget to invest in home improvements, your cultural background, and your personal tastes for styles, components, and atmosphere you want to live in. It’s a combination of what you can do, and what you (each) want to do. (Many years ago, I wrote a blog article about, “Is your house a home” for gay men.) Set aside time to discuss how you live, and where. Discuss if there are any changes that you want to make that might help you feel like this is a space that you have built (or re-built) together. You are ”feathering your nest” according to your mutual needs and preferences. Do you want the garage to be a new home office, or a kink play dungeon? Do you want a “show kitchen” that you really never cook in, or a “practical kitchen” that probably just has more “stuff” for one or both of you into cooking? How do you like to sleep? Do you associate a certain style of home décor with a lift to your mood? Over time, you and your partner(s) can feel like you have built something emotionally and historically in your bond and attachment, because you have literally “built” something that has evolved to your needs over time.
This is not an exhaustive list of so many “little things” that undergird, and enhance, a relationship, but it’s some of the ones I’ve seen in practice that tend to work for gay male relationships with, fortunately, remarkably good consistency. Do some, or all, of these kinds of things, and it’s likely to have a healthy impact on your relationship.
What also has a “healthy impact” on a relationship is investing in couples therapy (for guys where I am licensed, in California, where at least one of you has a mental health challenge that would benefit from what mental health professionals call “conjoint treatment”) or relationship coaching, which can be about just supporting the short-term and long-term relationship goals, and that can be in any city, state, or country (we just “do the math” on our time zone difference).
I have found that, like the Alcoholics Anonymous saying, “it works if you work it,” when it comes to couples therapy and relationship coaching. It is an investment that tends to pay off long after the time we have done this kind of work, and it’s an investment that’s cheaper than the many costs (practical and emotional) of a premature breakup.
If this support interests you, call or text (phone or WhatsApp) 310-339-5778, or email Ken@GayTherapyLA.com, or Ken@GayCoachingLA.com. All sessions are conducted via the Zoom telehealth platform. I’d be happy to help.
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Ken Howard, LCSW, CST is the most experienced gay men’s specialist psychotherapist in the United States today (licensed in California), as well as a life/career/relationship/executive coach for gay men worldwide. With over 30 years experience working almost exclusively with gay men as individuals, couples, and polycules, he is also an AASECT Certifed Sex Therapist, a retired Adjunct Associate Professor from the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work at the University of Southern California, and is a Certified Psychiatric Social Worker with an additional year-long certification in Consensual Non-Monogamy and Polyamorous Families from Sexual Health Alliance. He is a member of Kink-Aware Therapists and the Secular Therapy Project. He is the host of the podcast, “Gay Therapy LA with Ken Howard, LCSW, CST,” and is the author of the books, Self-Empowerment: Have the Life You Want! and Positive Outlook: Collected Essays for Successfully Living HIV Today. He is the librettist/composer/lyricist for the gay-themed musical, “On the Boulevard,” an LGBT-take on George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” (from which “My Fair Lady” was adapted) available on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube.
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Your writing has a way of resonating with me on a deep level. I appreciate the honesty and authenticity you bring to every post. Thank you for sharing your journey with us.