Do you and your partner avoid conflict?

All human relationships involve some amount of disagreement. It seems that part of being human is to put one’s ideas forward for feedback, and to offer opinion on one another’s ideas. And as anyone who’s ever been in a relationship will tell you, rarely do you always agree.

So how do you and your partner respond when you disagree? (more…)

Keep Your Relationship Spark Alive –

Couples are always saying to one another, “Hey, we should have a date night - a night for just us, like when we started dating…”

But many couples never get around to actually implementing such an evening, often due to life being so chaotic. And in the midst of that chaos, couples often don’t have enough time to connect in a way that keeps their relationship strong.

That’s why the Gay Couples Institute is hosting Date Night for Gay and Lesbian Couples. Held at Pisco Latin Lounge in San Francisco, you can: (more…)

GCI Executive Director Salvatore Garanzini, MFT appeared on San Francisco Comcast’s TV show “Outspoken” talking about latest relationship research and our upcoming July 19, 2009 “Relation Renovation” couples workshop. Catch the replay of the program 5/26 Tuesday at 9PM, 5/27 Wednesday at 7PM, 5/29 Friday at 7:30PM, 5/30 Saturday at 6:00PM, and 5/31 Sunday at 7:00PM on ComcastSF “The City Station”, cable channel 11 in San Francisco. 
http://www.outspokensf.com/schedule

At 5pm (PST) Tuesday June 2nd join Salvatore with all your relationship questions on “The Radio Boiz”, a worldwide internet LGBT radio station. Hosted out of St. Petersburg, Florida, you can listen to the replay now below: 

Enjoy the replay of the show. We talked about how to respond when your partner tells you that you’re too “needy”, how to deal with issues around your partner’s ex, and much more!

Did you know that couples are fighting less than they were 20 years ago?

Seems like a positive statistic, right? 

Did you know that couples are spending 28% less time together shopping, hanging out at home, or pursuing projects or recreational activities together? 

Now it starts to make sense. People aren’t spending as much time together, so it follows that they have less time to argue or fight. 

We call this “Turning Away”. Couples are constantly bidding for each others’ attention (”Hey, want to go for a walk later?”), but they’re not Turning Toward their partner’s bid. They’re Turning Away (”What did you say?,” pretending not to hear the request/bid.)

Amazingly, we’ve found that Turns Away teach your partner to stop bidding at all. They stop asking to do things with you. And then the loneliness develops, and you can begin to develop separate, but parallel lives. 

The good news is that much of this is reversible. Turning Toward leads to more Turning Toward. Many couples make a commitment to Turn Toward each others’ bids at least once a day, which can quickly end the loneliness spiral. Let us know if we can help you with this. 

 Loading ...

Obviously when you marry you never think you might be sitting in a divorce attorney’s office dividing your assets. Who would want to think such things?

But it can happen. So now that gay couples can marry in some states, how can gay couples take on the responsibility of trying to stay together?

I found a few good gay pre-marital suggestions from hunting around through the research.

1. Ideally, get married after about 2 years of courtship. The ideal courtship length seems to be about 2 years and 4 months, to be exact.
2. Marry after age 25.
3. Talk about the big issues before marrying. How many kids does he want? How does she handle money? Are you sexually compatible? Couples tend to have one of these 6 common problems to deal with throughout their marriage:
   • Money
   • Sex
   • Parenting
   • Getting along with In-Laws
   • Tidiness/Chores
   • Use of Personal Free Time
4. Do stuff together, but also enjoy spending time at home together. One of the important things we look at when evaluating a couple’s relationship is whether, if given the option, they like spending time at home together, or if they’d rather be on the go. A preference of being on the go can be an indication that they’re avoiding being trapped together at home.
5. Have issues? Get help. A recent New York Times Article talked about how couples tend to get the most out of doing a couples workshop, rather than going to just therapy by itself. Workshops can serve as a good relationship “checkup”. If you’re interested, take a look at one of our coming gay couples workshops HERE.

For those of you who are getting married, we wish you a long-lasting, happy marriage. Congratulations!

Many couples in gay relationships struggle with stopping arguments. But are arguments really something to be avoided?

The country’s leading relationship researcher, John Gottman, PhD, has found in his 30 years of observational research that all relationships have disagreements, and even arguments at some point.

Arguments, by themselves, are not correlated with breakup, separation, or divorce. He found that all couples will, at some point during an argument:

• get defensive
• criticize one another
• get overwhelmed and walk away.

So should gay couples worry about these communication rough spots? Not really, BUT there is one pattern of communication you should avoid: contempt.

John Gottman defines contempt as basically talking down to your partner, like they’re a child who has done something wrong. Contempt has over a 90% correlation with separation/divorce.

So what does contempt look like?

(more…)