Relationship Counseling - Relationship Counseling With Homosexual/bisexual Clients

Relationship Counseling With Homosexual/bisexual Clients

See also: Homosexuality and psychology, Sexual relationship disorder, and List of transgender-related topics

"Marital Therapy" is now referred to as "Couples Therapy" in order to include individuals who are not married or those who are engaged in same sex relationships. Most relationship issues are shared equally among couples regardless of sexual orientation, but LGBT clients additionally have to deal with heteronormativity, homophobia and both socio-cultural and legal discrimination. Individuals may experience relational ambiguity from being in different stages of the coming out process or having an HIV serodiscordant relationship. Often, same-sex couples do not have as many role models of successful relationships as opposite-sex couples. In many jurisdictions committed LGBT couples desiring a family are denied access to assisted reproduction, adoption and fostering, leaving them childless, feeling excluded, other and bereaved. There may be issues with gender-role socialization that do not affect opposite-sex couples.

A significant number of men and women experience conflict surrounding homosexual expression within a mixed-orientation marriage. Couple therapy may include helping the clients feel more comfortable and accepting of same-sex feelings and to explore ways of incorporating same-sex and opposite-sex feelings into life patterns. Although a strong homosexual identity was associated with difficulties in marital satisfaction, viewing the same-sex activities as compulsive facilitated commitment to the marriage and to monogamy.

Read more about this topic:  Relationship Counseling

Famous quotes containing the words relationship and/or clients:

    Living in cities is an art, and we need the vocabulary of art, of style, to describe the peculiar relationship between man and material that exists in the continual creative play of urban living. The city as we imagine it, then, soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, and nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city one can locate on maps in statistics, in monographs on urban sociology and demography and architecture.
    Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)

    ...a lot of my people are models. I like that for them. I admire models, so I think that’s right for my people. ...I love it when I have an important [client]. And the pictures and awards. One of my clients has these television awards—a beautiful statue of a woman. I think it’s an Emmy. People would be lucky to get one. She has two. I think that’s great.
    Elaine Strong (b. 1934)