GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
NOVEMBER 8, 1996
Evenings Out
Lovers for life
Dr. Betty Berzon talks about making relationships last, as we
by Daniel Vaillancourt
Shortly after meeting my partner, psychotherapist-turned-weaver Gregory L. Wolfe, in 1989, I purchased a copy of Dr. Betty Berzon's 1988 book, Permanent Partners: Building Gay and Lesbian Relationships That Last. After reading the guide once, I referred to it repeatedly as Greg and I fell in love, moved in together, cemented our union, and became beloved members of each other's family of origin.
grow and change
some of what she's learned--both professionally and personally-about forging enduring same-sex alliances.
Daniel Vaillancourt: What is "the intimacy dance"?
Betty Berzon: The intimacy dance is a way of describing the way two people in a relationship move toward and away from each other. It's a psychological dance that people do, and what it's really about is managing the emotional distance between two people.
We all have a need to control how close we let somebody come to us, and how much closeness we allow at a given time. It differs in different people, and in some people it's
Much has happened since: Greg and I spent seven months apart in 1991 while Ientangled in red tape-awaited the issuance of my green card back in my home town of Montreal. In the spring of 1992 we left Los Angeles, consecutively emigrating to such varied locales as Ashland, Oregon; San Francisco; and Santa Fe, N.M. As I write this, Greg and I are in the midst of preparing for a September return to the City of Angels. Through it all, we've both grown and changed, thankfully in parallel directions.
What gay people too often say is, "Are Joe and Bill still together?" or, "Is Susan still with Mary?” We reinforce that tradition of impermanency. I think that's one of the biggest problems we have.
As for Dr. Berzon, during the last seven years she has continued to counsel numerous same-sex couples—as well as many single gay men, lesbians, and bisexual individuals-via her private psychotherapy practice in Los Angeles. Permanent Partners, which has sold more than 60,000 copies in its .hardcover and paperback editions, is still flying off the shelves of bookstores throughout North America at a steady pace. The author and her own permanent partner, Teresa DeCrescenzo, are going on their 24th year together.
For couples like she and Terry, and Greg and me, Berzon has written a sequel to Permanent Partners entitled The Intimacy Dance: A Guide to Long-Term Success in Gay and Lesbian Relationships, recently released by Dutton.
"I thought there were different issues involved in long-term relationships than the ones that I focused on mostly in Permanent Partners," says Berzon of her decision to write the new book, which includes such chapters as "Talking it Over,” “Sex in the Long Term," "The Challenge to Keep Growing," "The Outside World," and "Couple Counseling."
Berzon-who has become somewhat of a same-sex relationship guru to many in the gay, lesbian, and bisexual community-admits that people often ask her, "When will you write a book for single people?”
"Probably never," she replies. "But I do have to laugh. I talked to somebody the other day-I can't remember who at the momentand he said, 'I read your book between all my relationships.' I thought that was a great
line."
lin a recent conversation, Berzon sharced
different at different times. Some people are much more comfortable if they have arelationship in which there is some emotional distance
from a partner. Some
people don't want that; they just want closeness all the time.
But what tends to happen-and I think it is not usually a conscious process—is that certain people feel imperiled when things get too intimate and too close. They have to do something to either move away themselves or push their partner away. And then that doesn't feel good, so then they have to do something else to bring the person back toward them so that there is closeness again.
It's not a problem a couple has to solve so much as something both individuals must be aware of, because it will probably go on for the length of their relationship. Exactly.
What are some of the negative forces specifically at work against long-term gay and lesbian relationships?
Well, of course, we have a tradition of failure in same-sex relationships. As I said in Permanent Partners, when I asked a colleague I hadn't seen for some years about two other people we had known, I asked, “Are Bill and Audrey still together?" And he looked at me like I was crazy. He said, “Well, of course they're together. They're married." Now, what gay people too often say is, "Are Joe and Bill still together?" or, "Is Susan still with Mary?" We reinforce that tradition of impermanency. I think that's one of the biggest problems we have.
Also, of course, our relationships are not socially sanctioned, and that's more difficult for some people than others, particularly if families are not accepting. When two people ... get married, almost always, in the heterosexual world, families are very supportive and everybody is thrilled and delighted. That does not always happen with gay people.
Also, I think the fact that you have two people of the same gender in a relationship creates some problems because they are two people who are socialized to the same role in
Dr. Betty Berzon
life. Men are socialized to be competitive and strong, and to not show feelings. True intimacy really requires collaboration and being able to be vulnerable to another person. So that's a difficulty that I think men have.
Women are socialized to be nurturing and relationship-oriented, and sometimes that means that two women become so dependent on one another that it really compromises their individuality. So that lack of complementarity, I think, is a subtle but probably important problem that same-sex couples have.
Can you name three essential components of successful long-term relationships?
I can name more than three. You pick out which three you like. I think it's important to always talk about what's happening. I think it's also important to expect conflict and not be afraid to fight, to be willing to learn from conflict and never to shut down, to be willing to negotiate.
Keeping up with change in a long-term relationship is very important because, of course, people change. Sometimes people come into my office and they say, "Well, the problem is he's just changed." [Laughs] "Yeah? So?" "Well, I didn't bargain for this!" As if some agreement got signed and nobody was going to change.
I think it's very important to continue to express affection. Too often people in longterm relationships settle down like old married people and forget about the importance of keeping the excitement alive, of expressing affection to one another as often as possible, of being not only supportive but appreciative of the other person and letting them know.
People become complacent in relationships, and then they come into my office and say that they're bored. What they really mean is they're simply not getting the kind of response and affection that were there in the beginning of the relationship. They miss it. They feel lonely.
For gay men, particularly, the issue of monogamy versus non-monogamy is a big one. What is your position on the subject?
Well, I think that what works best in enduring relationships is monogamy. For gay men, outside sex has really been an escape hatch that gets used when there are difficult things to deal with in the relationship. It's just much easier to go outside the primary partnership where there's always a challenge and excitement and so on. But that takes energy away from working on the relationship.
Lesbians, I think, have a different problem. It's much more difficult for women to separate sex and affection. So outside. sex very possibly might lead to an emotional attachment that is a threat to the primary relationship.
In a general way—and I think this applies to all relationships-monogamy really does enable trust, and it eliminates the distractions from working on the primary relationship. I have known of many experiments-going back to the '60s-in heterosexual situations where people tried all kinds of variations on the two-person couple in environments like Esalen, where anything goes. It never worked. Everybody agreed that it didn't work, that the most comfortable arrangement for any two people building a life together is monogamy. I know a lot of people would disagree with me.
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