Researchers wonder whether same-sex couples are up to the commitment.

Till Death Do They Part?

By Nina Shapiro
June 23, 2004

Therapist Dorsey Green hopes lesbians can hold off on the U-Hauls.
There's an old joke among lesbians, relates Dorsey Green, a Seattle therapist and author of Lesbian Couples and The Lesbian Parenting Book. Question: What do you take on a second date? Answer: A U-Haul.

Commitment phobia doesn't appear to be a problem when two women are involved. "Lesbian couples tend to move in together faster," Green says. And that's not necessarily a good thing. Like many of her colleagues counseling lesbians, Green says, she believes that women may not give themselves enough time to get to know each other: "I argue hard for people to slow down."
It's something worth thinking about as we haltingly enter a new age of gay and lesbian marriage. While there's been tons of attention on the first controversial bursts of weddings and related court maneuverings, few have looked at what makes gay and lesbian relationships work—or falter. It's a neglected subject in academia as well as in the press, but there is some research out there.


A FEW YEARS AGO, psychologist John Gottman, who runs a famed "love lab" at the University of Washington, made a splash when he announced the results of a 12-year study of gay and lesbian couples. The study, based in part on observations of couples talking about problems, offered mostly positive news. Both same-sex and straight couples had much in common, he concluded, as far as overall relationship satisfaction and quality, mirroring much of the research to date. Where they differed, though, same-sex couples had the edge: Gottman contended that they were more upbeat in the face of conflict, used fewer controlling or hostile emotional tactics, and took arguments less personally. The study, however, looked at a very small number of couples—just 42 gay and lesbian couples in all. "It's a good start, but it's just a start," says Christopher Martell, a UW psychologist who has run relationship workshops with Gottman for gay and lesbian couples.


Gottman's findings are also overshadowed by more sobering research. Studies consistently find that gay and lesbian relationships tend not to last as long as heterosexual ones—even in places where gay and lesbian marriage exists. A ground­breaking new study by four researchers in Scandinavia compared the divorce rates among gays, lesbians, and heterosexuals in Norway and Sweden, both of which allow gays and lesbians to form "registered partnerships" that are almost identical legally to marriage. Presented this spring at the annual conference of the Population Association of America, the study by Gunnar Andersson and colleagues found that gay men were 50 percent more likely to divorce than were heterosexual couples in Sweden. Even more interesting, it showed that lesbians were not only more prone to divorce than straight couples but were twice as likely to split up as gay men. In Norway, the researchers found a similar dynamic.

The researchers posit that same-sex couples may break up more often in part because children tend to be involved less frequently. This coincides with what academics and therapists have observed in this country; only here, with marriage until recently out of the question, gays and lesbians have even fewer obstacles to leaving relationships. Professionals who work with same-sex couples also stress that social and family pressures can weigh heavily on relationships. "I've seen very few couples where both sets of in-laws are open and accepting," says local therapist Cynthia Orr.


What, though, accounts for the greater breakup rate among lesbians? Perhaps the tendency to rush relationships is one factor. Larry Kurdek, a psychologist at Wright State University who is a leading researcher on gay and lesbian relationships, suggests another. Because women are considered "relationship experts," he says, many people have assumed that two women would have some kind of super relationship. But two women, both carefully monitoring the ebb and flow of their union and wanting to talk about it, is not necessarily a pretty sight. "They may disagree on how they see it," Kurdek says.


What's more, lesbians can have a particularly hard time dealing with differences in a relationship, according to therapist Green. There's an expectation that because both partners are women, they're supposed to be the same. Green works with women on accepting differences without seeing them as problems. She says one of the biggest differences that crops up in all couples is around sex drive; one partner usually has more of one than the other. Possibly because women have more emotionally complicated sex drives than men, lesbian couples tend to see sexual interest drop off "sooner and more drama­tically" than either straight or gay-male couples, Green says

.
A DIFFERENT KIND of sexual issue surfaces among gay men. Not infrequently, they have openly nonmonogamous relationships, according to psychologist Martell. "It doesn't have to create conflict," he maintains. But couples have to negotiate rules. "In couples that make it work, it's not like it's a free-for-all." One couple might declare the house off-limits for affairs. Another might decide that affairs are only OK on business trips. "If those rules are broken, it causes just as much trouble as infidelity in heterosexual relationships," Martell says.


"There's another interesting twist to the monogamy issue," Martell continues. "There can also be envy—not jealousy, but envy." One person can start to wonder why his partner is getting all the sexual attention, tapping into the competitive instinct that tends to exist between men anyway.


If issues like these can stress a relationship, some therapists wonder whether new trends will slow down the breakup rate among gay and lesbian couples. Not only has the prospect of gay marriage raised the bar on relationship longevity, so, too, has the increasing propensity among gay and lesbian couples to have or adopt children. Will gays and lesbians now find themselves staying together for the sake of the kids?
nshapiro@seattleweekly.com
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crazy christian fanatics

http://deepinmymind.blogspot.com/2006/08/i-havent-got-clue.html

brokeback

Stephen Holden, NEW YORK TIMES

The lonesome chill that seeps through Ang Lee's epic western, Brokeback Mountain, is as bone deep as the movie's heartbreaking story of two cowboys who fall in love almost by accident. It is embedded in the craggy landscape where their idyll begins and ends. It creeps into the farthest corners of the wide-open spaces they share with coyotes, bears and herds of sheep and rises like a stifled cry into the big, empty sky that stretches beyond the horizon.
One night, when their campfire dies, and the biting cold drives them to huddle together in a bedroll, a sudden spark between Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) flares into an undying flame.
The same mood of acute desolation permeates the spare, gnarly prose of Annie Proulx's short story, first published in The New Yorker in 1997, adapted by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. Mr. McMurtry knows about loneliness. Its ache suffused his novel and his screenplay for "The Last Picture Show," made into a film 34 years ago by Peter Bogdanovich.
The sexual bouts between these two ranch hands who have never heard the term gay (in 1963, when the story begins, it was still a code word transiting into the mainstream) are described by Ms. Proulx as "quick, rough, laughing and snorting."
That's exactly how Mr. Lee films their first sexual grappling (discreetly) in the shadows of the cramped little tent. The next morning, Ennis mumbles, "I'm no queer." And Jack replies, "Me neither." Still, they do it again, and again, in the daylight as well as at night. Sometimes their pent-up passions explode in ferocious roughhouse that is indistinguishable from fighting.
This moving and majestic film would be a landmark if only because it is the first Hollywood movie to unmask the homoerotic strain in American culture that Leslie Fiedler discerned in his notorious 1948 Partisan Review essay, "Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey." Fiedler characterized the bond between Huckleberry Finn and Jim, a runaway slave, as an unconscious romantic attachment shared by two males of different races as they flee the more constraining and civilizing domain of women. He went on to identify that bond as a recurrent theme in American literature.
In popular culture, Fiedler's Freudianism certainly could be applied to the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Minus the ethnic division, it might also be widened to include a long line of westerns and buddy movies, from Red River to Midnight Cowboy to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: the pure male bonding that dare not explore its shadow side.
Ennis and Jack's 20-year romance begins when they are hired in the summer of 1963 by Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid), a hard-boiled rancher, to work as sheepherders on Brokeback Mountain in the Wyoming high country. (The movie was filmed in Alberta, in the Canadian Rockies.) Subsisting mostly on canned beans and whiskey, the two cowboys develop a boozy friendship by the campfire.
So taciturn and bottled up that he swallows his syllables as he pulls words out of his mouth in gruff, reluctant grunts, Ennis tells Jack of being raised by a brother and sister after his parents died in a car crash; Jack, brought up in the rodeo, is more talkative and recalls his lifelong alienation from his father, a bull rider.
When signs of an early blizzard cut short their summer employment, Ennis and Jack go their separate ways; Ennis's farewell is a simple "See you around." Both, though, are torn up. Ennis marries his girlfriend, Alma (Michelle Williams), and they have two daughters. Jack meets and marries Lureen (Anne Hathaway), a Texan rodeo queen, with whom he has a son, and joins her father's farm-equipment business.
Four years pass before Jack, who is living in Texas, sends a general-delivery postcard to Ennis, who has settled in Wyoming, saying he will be in the area and would like to visit. The instant they set eyes on each other, their suspended passion erupts into a spontaneous clinch. Alma sees it all, and her face, from that moment on, remains frozen in misery. The reunited lovers rush to a motel.
So begins a sporadic and tormented affair in which the two meet once or twice a year for fishing trips on which no fish are caught. Jack urges that they forsake their marriages and set up a ranch together. But Ennis, haunted by a childhood memory of his father taking him to see the mutilated body of a rancher, tortured and beaten to death with a tire iron for living with another man, is immobilized by fear and shame.
Both Mr. Ledger and Mr. Gyllenhaal make this anguished love story physically palpable. Mr. Ledger magically and mysteriously disappears beneath the skin of his lean, sinewy character. It is a great screen performance, as good as the best of Marlon Brando and Sean Penn. The pain and disappointment felt by Jack, who is softer, more self-aware and self-accepting, continually registers in Mr. Gyllenhaal's sad, expectant silver-dollar eyes.
The second half of the movie opens up Ms. Proulx's story to follow both men's slowly crumbling marriages. For years, Alma chokes on her pain until one day, after she and Ennis have divorced, it rises up as if she were strangling on her own bile. As Jack, desperately frustrated, has clandestine encounters with other men, Ms. Hathaway's Lureen slowly calcifies into a clenched robotic shell of her peppery younger self.
Brokeback Mountain is not quite the period piece that some would like to imagine. America's squeaky closet doors may have swung open far enough for a gay rodeo circuit to flourish. But let's not kid ourselves. In large segments of American society, especially in sports and the military, those doors remain sealed. The murder of Matthew Shepard, after all, took place in Brokeback territory. Another recent film, Jarhead (in which Mr. Gyllenhaal plays a marine), suggests how any kind of male behavior perceived as soft and feminine within certain closed male environments triggers abuse and violence and how that repression of sexual energy is directly channeled into warfare.
Yet Brokeback Mountain is ultimately not about sex (there is very little of it in the film) but about love: love stumbled into, love thwarted, love held sorrowfully in the heart.
Or, as Ms. Proulx writes, "What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger."
One tender moment's reprieve from loneliness can illuminate a life.

http://www.brokebackmountainmovie.com/splash.html

Love will survive

When I was Younger, I thought I knew,
All of life’s answers, and how to be true.

Of people and love I knew the ins and outs.
And in that ignorance, made decisions without doubts.

The decisions I made where not all wrong,
Indeed, most of them helped me along.

But all the answers, I did not know
And have made mistakes that surely show.

I walked along the pathway of life
Unaware of the coming pain and strife.

At one of life’s biggest hurdles, did I stumble
And ever since then, I have had to be humble.

Yet from that mistake emerged a bright light
Which I will honour, and, for always will fight.

Till now it was that light, that has sustained,
Any reason, for love and life to be maintained.

Then I was older, and You came along,
And breathed new life, like a beautiful song.

The emotions and feelings that I thought dead
Have awoken, and become stronger instead.

What is wrong, what is right and what can be shared?
These are the questions constantly in my head.

Of one thing I am sure,
My love for You is very pure.

I have listened to what society has taught
And to these things, everyday I give thought.

Yet we pass this way one time only,
And I don’t want to spend it being lonely.

When that light shines in it’s own direction,
And no longer needs my undivided affection,

Will I be standing alone and sad?
Or will You be there to make me happy and glad?

I know You will understand when I say,
That although the price may be high to pay,

You and I will find a way.

Don M

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/other/sharon_forbidden_love.html

i wish lesbians loved me too

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Bobby darling loves woomen so much, he became one

Smriti Z Iraani gave me a tough time when I attended her talk show Kuch Diil Se"
Posted on 28 February 2004

How could we have bypassed an extremely unusual face on the small and big screen both? Our sleuths inform us that he is a gay who does not go by his actual name Pankaj Sharma but calls himself Bobby Darling. Big deal!

What surprises, sorry, shocks us is the additional information that he is screaming from the rooftops about his deviant sexual behaviour. We track him down on his mobile and he invites us home. I express that it would be better if we catch up at a food or a coffee joint.

He laughs, "Are you scared?"

We have been challenged.

An hour later, we are ringing his doorbell. It's pitch dark inside. No one attends. We are about to return. Just before we turn back, he comes roaring from behind, in a sleeveless T-shirt.

"Hi," he nearly shrieks. As we enter his flat, we start straight-away. We are feeling slightly uncomfortable and would prefer to finish this fast.

Here's an excerpt of what transpired between indiantelevision.com's Vickey Lalwani and Bobby Darling:

Being a gay, how did you get into films?Why? Bollywood hasn't closed it door to gays, has it?

But what makes you go so open?

See, I have had a very hard time due to my homosexuality.

I am a man's body with a woman's soul. I don't want to fritter away my life. Life is God's greatest gift to mankind. And why should I bother about what people will say?

Today, I want to make it in the glamour world at any cost. So, why not throw my weakness card into the ring and try making it into my trump card?

Rolling backwards. When and how did you realize that you were a gay?

I was always different from my classmates. At school, I used to feel shy of boys and loved playing all girlie games. In seventh standard, I sensed that there was something wrong with me.

In the eighth standard, I started feeling that I was an eunuch. Whenever I saw eunuchs, I trembled. By eleventh or twelfth standard, I finally realised that I was gay as I was getting sexually drawn towards males in a very strong manner.

What happened when his parents came to know?

They were flabbergasted, to say the least. They took me to psychiatrists and sexologist, but they told them exactly what I was trying to convey to them.

And then?

I fell in love with a guy, Nomy. He used to treat me like a girl, and I used to treat him like a boy. I started dreaming that we'll get married to each other. We had decided that I'll go in for a sex-change operation. I completely lost interest in studies. I was in 12th then.

Imagine, I was a science student and my dad was a professor! Under the pretext of going to college, I used to land up at my boyfriend's place every day, and we used to go to his secluded flat, nearby.

And did you appear for your 12th exams?

Are you crazy? How could I? I hadn't studied a word! At this point of time, he and I decided to elope. We went to Hong Kong and then traveled to 12 countries including Switzerland, Korea, Seoul, Taiwan, China, Russia among many others. Nomy helped me arrange my passport in four or five days through his contacts. And he carried ample money with him, he was filthy rich.

Why did you come back?

Things didn't work out much. Actually, I was in constant touch with my mom wherever I went. One day, she told me she was terminally ill. I returned, looked after her for a month, and then she died.

"I've been considered for an entry into The Limca Book of Records for doing 18 roles as a gay at the age of just 23"

How are your relations with your family?

Bad. My father considered me to be a stigma to the family. Things are better now, but the crack in the glass is still there. My sister's marriage ran into a few problems when her in-laws came to know about my homosexual tendencies. If we ever meet, she visits me as I can't go to her in-laws place.

What happened to Nomy?

Don't ask. He gave me a 440 volts shock. He got married. I realised that he was bisexual!

And then?

I swore that I'll prove to this guy that I can become something in life without him. I wanted him to regret that he ditched me. I came to Mumbai. I started going to producers' offices. Thanks to Subash Ghai, the ball started rolling in Bollywood. He gave me my first role in Taal.

Then I did N Chandra's Style, then I was there in Na Tum Jano Na Hum where I danced in G-strings with Hrithik Roshan and Saif Ali Khan. Sohail Khan's home-production Maine Dil Tujhko Diya, Shah Rukh Khan's home-production Chalte Chalte followed.

Akbar Khan has signed me for a beautiful role in his forthcoming film Taj Mahal and Atul Agnihotri's next is also in my kitty.

A few days back, I completed my work on Vinod Chhabra's film Shaque... Mysteries. Recently, I did two films in the role of a normal guy - Imtiaz Punjabi directed Fun2shh and Aruna Raje directed Tum. In Tum, I play Netanya Singh's obsessive lover. In fact, I am quite enthu about playing a normal guy from here on. There's a film called Shadow that I've just bagged where I am playing a double role - a normal guy and a gay.

Plus, I am doing Govind Menon's forthcoming film starring Dharmendra. Would you believe if I tell you that I have got an entry into 'Limca Book Of Records' for doing 18 roles as a gay at the age of just 23? And now I am being considered for the Guiness World Book of Records.

And how can I forget television which gave me some very good breaks? I did Balaji Telefilms' Kitne Cool Hain Hum, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and Kaahin Kissii Roz. I also did Dipti Bhatnagar Productions' Kabhi Aaye Na Judaai. Not so long ago, I did a DJ Aqeel's music video Are Deewano, Main Hoon Don with Jackie Shroff. Now I am back in Kyunki...

Has the film and television industry treated you well?
In a way, yes. Like, recently I was interviewed by Shekhar Suman and Rajiv Bajaj. There have been difficult moments too. Like, I got my money from Sohail Khan and N Chandra's office with tremendous difficulty.

Three of my scenes in Chalte Chalte were cut off at the editing table. But now I have made it a point that I won't do any project without signing a contract. Earlier, I had no guts to even request a producer to give me a contract. But today, I have reached somewhere; I have a small flat of my own. I am getting several small offers but I don't want to take them up.

A few days ago, I refused the happening TV serial Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahin; they were offering me fluff and I want meat. I wish there are more of the likes of Imtiaz Punjabi and Aruna Raje. They have treated me very well.

Go on.

Then, Smriti Z Iraani gave me a tough time in Kuch Diil Se. The discussion was centred on gays and I was a part of the talk show. She refused to understand that why I had adopted a peculiar look. She said that gays don't go around applying lipstick and putting a feather in their hair. I had a hard time in trying to convince her that I had to do something to get noticed as I always had an inclination in me that I was talented enough to be an actor.

Believe me, I even used to get my arms, underarms and legs waxed. I badly wanted to make an entry in television and films. I had decided to use my weakness as my strength and I am sure there's nothing wrong in that.

I had been thrown out of my house and my untapped creative instincts were giving me a heartache. In order to fill my stomach, I have even dressed up as a girl and danced in bars. Producers used to meet me for casting, but my feminine actions used to spoil it all.

"I decided to use my weakness as my strength and I am sure there's nothing wrong in that"

Have you been attracted to any female in Bollywood or Tellywood?(Blushes)

Hmmm... I think it happened when I was working with Aishwarya Rai in Taal. But then Aish is so very beautiful, who wouldn't be attracted to her?

Have any males from the glamour industry made overtures towards you?
Many. If I tell you their names, there'll be a 'tehelka' - models, actors, secretaries of actors and actresses... I know for a fact that some of them are petrified that I'll leak their names!

The other day, a well-known music director chased me at a party... for reasons best left unsaid.

Do girls get attracted to you?
Lots. But I don't want them to waste their time. I won't be able to give them what they're looking for.

Will he ever go for a sex-change operation?
If I settle down into proper male roles, maybe I won't. Otherwise why not? There 'are' guys who get married to 'such' girls. One of my friends did the same in Delhi, and he (now a she) is leading a happily married life.

Who are your male fantasizes?Akshay Kumar and Yuvraj Singh. Aren't they hot, hot, hot?

Almost an hour has passed. We remember our earlier discomfort and laugh at ourselves... Lesson learnt:

'Never have preconceived notions about any person.'

Click here for more Actor's Interviews