Introduction
Probably the number one question I get asked most often by gay couples is, unsurprisingly, “How do I make my relationship better?” So, in line with the holiday and beginning of a New Year, I thought I’d write a short blurb that lists some possible action steps you might take to improve your partnership in the coming year. We’ve all heard of making personal New Year’s Resolutions like “I’m going to lose weight this year” or “I’m going to go to the health club more often”, but what would happen if we expanded upon that concept and created Resolutions for our relationships as couples? read more >>
Introduction
So what makes a healthy and lasting long-term gay relationship successful? Our society certainly doesn’t make it easy for us as gay men to date and mate with all the homophobia and discrimination that exists. Though this is slowly starting to change in many parts of the world, man-to-man love continues to be stigmatized and this backdrop of cultural oppression and hatred can put a strain on a gay couple’s budding relationship that many heterosexual pairs may take for granted. As a gay community, we lack adequate and visible positive role models of gay couples that provide hope for lasting relationship success. As men, we’ve been conditioned to define our masculinity in rigid and narrow ways as part of the socialization process growing up and this can create conflict when pairing up two individuals of the same gender looking for intimacy and emotional connection. And then we have our own layers of discrimination and pressure in our own gay community that at times can leave gay couples feeling unsupported and uninspired to achieve relationship longevity in the one place they thought they’d be safe—among their own. read more >>
Introduction
It’s the beginning of a New Year and people all around the globe are making resolutions and goals for self-improvement and personal growth. But while everyone is creating individual objectives to accomplish their ideals, an important part of our lives tends to be overlooked and neglected when going through this period of introspection and renewal. Our relationships! Whether it’s an intimate relationship with a significant other or our connections with family and friends, all relationships require consistent attention, feeding, and sustenance to keep them healthy and vital. What better time of the year to take stock of your relationships and give them some much needed “Tender Loving Care” than now! For purposes of this article, we will focus on some specific strategies you can implement within the context of your relationship with your partner that will keep the focus on your identity as a couple. read more >>
Introduction
In our first installment of this article series, you learned about inhibited sexual desire, a very common sexual disorder that plagues millions of couples, and gay partnerships are no exception to this epidemic. You learned about its symptoms, subtypes, and possible causes for its existence in a relationship. In Part 2, some tips and strategies will now be offered on how best to manage and overcome this barrier to intimacy so that your relationship may enjoy the fruitful rewards of a healthy sexual lifestyle. read more >>
Introduction
“Not tonight, honey. I have a headache” is the well-known slogan attributed stereotypically to women who lack desire to have sex with their husbands. The slogan itself is intended to be a tongue-in-cheek joke at the expense of couples with discrepant sex drives, but the situation is actually no laughing matter. A large portion of intimate partners struggle on a daily basis with incompatible desires to have sex and it can create serious problems in relationships. And yes, there is a clinical term for this scenario…it’s called inhibited sexual desire. The urge to be sexually intimate with one’s partner waxes and wanes all the time throughout the course of a relationship; no two individuals in a couple can be expected to be in-sync sexually in every instance. It’s when sexual overtures are denied on a consistent basis and the relationship becomes devoid of any erotic or sexual fulfillment that trouble can start to brew. It tends to be more common that one partner desires the contact while the other distances and refuses participation in sexual activity. read more >>
Introduction
When I first came out to myself as a gay man many years ago, I was completely clueless about the gay lifestyle. Like any culture, I quickly came to learn that the gay community has its own norms and practices that differed to lesser or greater degrees than what I’d experienced in the mainstream heterosexual world that we all grow up in and internalize.
Living in the suburbs of Chicago where few resources existed for learning about and meeting other gay folk, I established a friendship base in the Windy City itself, which houses a fairly large gay metropolis. It was here that my virginal journey into gay society began. So naïve I was in learning all the social nuances involved in this new land I was venturing into! I amusingly recall one day walking through the gay ghetto with one of my friends, just chatting away about this and that, when all of a sudden in mid-sentence, his neck spun around in a double-take (very similar to Linda Blair in “The Exorcist”) when a striking man in a tank-top walked past us. I found myself a little startled and taken aback by his behavior, which seemed so overt and untamed by my conventional standards with his eyes bugged out and tongue wagging. As I quickly came to learn, this commonplace ritual is called “cruising”, an important social skill that all single gay men quickly learn to develop to snag themselves a potential date or casual sex partner for the night.
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