Gay couples 'not immune to issues of gender'
Couples in same-sex relationships are not necessarily immune to the gender issues that can plague relationships between men and women, international experts explained at Hong Kong's first conference on couples.
Same-sex relationships were discussed alongside heterosexual relationships at University of Hong Kong Family Institute's international conference on couples, a move welcomed by Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food York Chow Yat-ngok in his opening address to the gathering.
'I am glad you have expanded on the concept of couples to include same-gender couples,' Dr Chow said. 'I'm sure a lot of people want to know but are shy to ask about the issues in these relationships.'
Peggy Papp, director of the depression project at the Ackerman Family Institute in New York and author of Couples on the Fault Line, said men and women in relationships responded differently to depression.
'Women nearly always get depressed because of some cut-off in a relationship, whereas men get depressed with performance failure of some sort,' Dr Papp said.
'When women get depressed, men nearly always try to come up with some kind of practical solution when the woman just wants to be listened to and understood. Women nearly always become protective when their husbands are depressed.'
Academic and author of the book Couple Therapy with Gay Men, David Greenan said gender stereotypes generally applied to gay men and lesbians as much as they did to heterosexuals.
'Gay men also have the knee-jerk response to 'fix' things, and a male couple's problems are exacerbated because they have not had the acculturation to soothe each other,' Dr Greenan said.
'With lesbian couples, the women both have the acculturation of 'caretakers', and they are supportive of each other at the expense of the individual to the extent that it is negative.'
Both experts agreed that regardless of the couple's gender, active involvement of the partner in therapy was essential.
