Gay Relationships: Many Couples Find Lasting Love

Who said gay love doesn't last a lifetime? It appears that with an increasing number of lifelong same-sex commitments the tragic days depicted in The Well of Loneliness and A Boy's Own Story are fading into the melodramatic shadows of the past.

Blossoming in its place are new dramas and comedies of the present and future – long-term couples and families with children underfoot.  The report entitled "The Close Relationships of Lesbians and Gay Men," by noted same-sex relationship researcher Letitia Anne Peplau, Ph.D., and graduate student Adam W. Fingerhut at the University of California, Los Angeles, reviewed studies of same-sex relationships from the past 30 years. The report was published in the Annual Review of Psychology.

Compiling the data revealed that relationships are similar, but gay couples do have a few differences compared to straight couples.  It all began with same seeking same.  Unlike popular belief, opposites don't always attract. "That's just a sort of normal human desire," said Fingerhut. "Across the board whether you're gay, straight, lesbian, [or] bisexual we tend to be attracted to people who are similar to us. So this adage that opposites attract is actually not really that true. In fact, we tend to want to be with people who are like minded, who have similar values, similar goals, who see the world the same way as we do."

Couples who have been together for well over a decade agreed. It wasn't what was different about each other that attracted them, but shared interests and goals. From politics to religion to career interests to entertainment, there were more common values and interests than things they liked to do separately.

It was love at first site for Cate Larsen, 57, a technical writer, and her partner of 26 years, Emily Brooks, 49, a software tester for scientific software, in Silicon Valley. They met in graduate school in Iowa studying to be scientists, but argued for two years until they finally got together.

"We argued and argued over our different perspectives. Then we discovered, oddly enough, that we were using different terminology from different perspectives and that we really did have the same values," said Larsen. "Who knows why chemical attractions occur?"

Phyllis Lyon, 82, and Del Martin, 85, (pictured) the first couple to be married at San Francisco's City Hall by Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2004 and who celebrate their 54th anniversary this month, met while they were working for an engineering company in Seattle.

They were both from the Bay Area, which was a comfort for them, but politics and meeting other lesbians was their primary shared interest.

In an interview last week, Lyon told the Bay Area Reporter about the night she and Martin went out for a drink after work with another co-worker. The conversation turned to homosexuality and they realized that Martin seemed to know a lot about the subject, so they asked her how she knew.

"She said, 'Because I am one.' That was the most exciting thing," said Lyon, her eyes sparkling. Lyon proceeded to go home that evening and call the other women they worked with to tell them about Martin being a lesbian.

Martin rolled her eyes, "I thought, Oh God, now I'll lose my job.'" "But she didn't lose her job," said Lyon.  The two women courted long distance after Lyon returned to the Bay Area. Martin later moved to San Francisco and both were in the same city for about three years when they found an apartment in the heart of the Castro together. The rest is history.

Hadley was always a tease," said Warde Laidman, 75, about how he met his partner Hadley Hall, 73. The men, retired social workers, met while Hall was a graduate student and Laidman was a social worker. They have been together for 46 years. "He would usually steal my weekly magazines off my desk or do something that would get a conversation going. One time he followed me to the Golden Gate Bridge and when we got through he said, 'My place or yours?' and that started it."

They both agreed that what kept them together was their similar perspectives, and like Lyon and Martin, politics was a major factor.

Into the groove: Getting through the quotidian affairs of life is more evenly dealt with by same-sex couples who don't necessarily fall into gender roles like their heterosexual counterparts.

"There's a lot more freedom to create the rules as they see appropriate for them," said Fingerhut. "I think the most interesting thing is to really see how same-sex couples have created their own norm. They have gone against tradition to create something that really works for them."

Couples interviewed for this article agreed that living together, especially after living alone, wasn't always easy, but they found ways to negotiate, compromise, and even work around each other's habits that just weren't going to change.

"Trust and respect is the key, even when we argue we don't disrespect each other," said Brooks.

Don Herman, 79, and Maurice "Maury" Loomis, 79, (pictured) who met a few years after Herman's partner of 31 years died, admitted that they changed roles and tasks over the years, especially when Herman retired and Loomis suffered a stroke about three years ago.

"When I worked he cooked supper and when I retired and I saw what the kitchen went through when he fixed supper," said Herman. "I thought, 'I'll take over the kitchen.' So I do all the cooking now."

The gentlemen laughed. Couples found ways to adjust to the vicissitudes of life."You have to have a positive attitude," said David Priess, 59, who has been with his partner, Melvin McKay, 54, for 37 years.

Keeping that burning feeling:  "A lot of our friends ask us if we still make love after all these years and we lie and say we mess around like bunnies," said Larsen. "We just have a regular sex life. Sex is important to us."

But the report noted that there can be issues around not only dwindling libidos that come with aging, but the reports over the last 30 years that claim lesbians and bisexual women in relationships have sex less often than heterosexual and gay male and bisexual male couples.

"Important to mention that there are all these data that lesbians seem to have sex less than anybody else, but that we don't really know that for certain, because of our definitions of sex," said Fingerhut, regarding the review of sexuality within queer relationships compared to straight relationships. "So it's often the case that ... we don't really, at this point, have accurate data regarding lesbian sex. We need better research using broader definitions of what sex is to really capture the sex life of lesbian women and gay men."

Lesbian sexuality expert Felice Newman, author of The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us , believes that just like many other things in people's lives, sex needs to be recognized as a priority. In order to have a great sex life, she said, it requires a degree of consciousness. So you have to choose to have a great sex life, she said.

Couples who spoke to the B.A.R. and the report mentioned that people negotiated their sexual relationships. For the couples who met in their teens, especially the gay men, they admitted to having "arrangements," or open relationships, which has been found in other studies over the past 30 years. Other couples remained exclusively monogamous. In the end, couples who stayed together were not only monogamous, but admitted that along with shared interests, physical activity from sex to cuddling was on the agenda.

Wedding bands:  "Our life together was never boring," said Marvin Burrows, 71, who was with his late partner Bill Swenor for 51 years. The two met when they were teenagers. 

"I have no idea what kept us together. We always said it was the three 'Ls,' you know when you're teenagers it's like lust then turns into love and then I think it was just luck that we stayed together." Burrows and Swenor got married at City Hall during the "Winter of Love" a year before Swenor suddenly passed away.

Swenor's death threw Burrows into the midst of the legal blocks and potholes, despite being domestic partners and preparing some legal documents on their own to protect themselves. Through his mourning the loss of his partner, Burrows suffered what so many LGBT couples go through due to being denied the right to marriage.

After losing his home of 35 years, Burrows moved in with a friend and became the senior outreach director for Marriage Equality USA. It is his way to keep Swenor's memory alive. He is one of many people participating in the "Marriage Equality Story Quilt" that will be on display in San Francisco's City Hall this month.

Maya Scott-Chung, 46, outreach director for LGBT parents for MEUSA, developed the concept of the quilt as a part of her public health master's degree project at San Francisco State University.

Scott-Chung perceives the quilt as a tool to "bring alive" and "tying together the connections of communities, ethnicities, and families" and represent the impact of the 1,138 federal rights that marriage automatically provides for couples and their families.

She modeled the quilt after the AIDS Memorial Quilt because of the impact and the historical meaning. The quilt commemorates the three-year anniversary of the "Winter of Love," when Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered city officials to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples; the 36th anniversary of the beginning of marriage counter demonstrations when LGBT couples began requesting the right to marry; and the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned laws against interracial marriage.

Scott-Chung told the B.A.R. that marriage wasn't a high priority for her and her partner, Mei Beck Scott-Chung, until it became available at City Hall. Mei Beck Scott-Chung was two months pregnant at the time and they were on their way to a doctor's appointment, but ended up getting married at City Hall on February 13, 2004. It all became crystal clear to her in an instant what marriage meant and how family would be affected culminating, in "being good and responsible parents." Since then she has been a marriage activist.  [ Source ]